Jennifer Gaffney, PhD
Associate Professor; Graduate Program Director
Bio
Jennifer Gaffney is an Associate Professor of Philosophy. Before coming to Loyola in 2020, she taught at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In 2016, Gaffney earned her PhD in philosophy from Texas A&M University. While completing her PhD in philosophy, she also earned an MA in history, focusing on Caribbean and Atlantic world history with an emphasis on the Haitian Revolution.
Gaffney’s research focuses on social and political philosophy, twentieth century European philosophy, Hannah Arendt, and diasporic studies. She is especially interested in issues concerning the limits of liberal citizenship, the politics of historical memory, and the exclusion of diasporic peoples from the modern liberal state. She is the author of Political Loneliness: Modern Liberal Subjects in Hiding (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2020) and has published in such journals as Philosophy and Social Criticism, Research in Phenomenology, Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy, and Philosophy Today.
Education
PhD, Philosophy, Texas A&M University
MA, History, Texas A&M University
BA, Philosophy, Rhodes College
Research Interests
Social and Political Philosophy, Continental European Philosophy
Publications/Research Listings
Political Loneliness: Modern Liberal Subjects in Hiding (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, for the series Philosophical Projections, July 2020, 225 pages).
“The Pregnant Body and the Birth of the Other: Arendt’s Contribution to Original Ethics,” Research in Phenomenology Vol. 50 (2020): 199–215.
“Solidarity in Dark Times: Arendt and Gadamer on the Politics of Appearance,” Philosophy
Compass, Vol. 13, No. 12 (2018): https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12554.
“At Home with the Foreign: Arendt on Heidegger and the Politics of Care,” Epoché, A
Journal for the History of Philosophy, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2018): 146–163.
“Memories of Exclusion: Hannah Arendt and the Haitian Revolution,” Philosophy and Social
Criticism, Vol. 44, No. 6 (2018): 701–721.
“Another Origin of Totalitarianism: Arendt on the Loneliness of Liberal Citizens,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 47, No. 1 (2016): 1–17.
“Can a Language Go Mad? Arendt, Derrida, and the Political Significance of the Mother Tongue,” Philosophy Today, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Summer 2015): 523–539.