Wendell Kisner is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and has been teaching for over thirty years. His research and instructional interests include the texts of Agamben, Badiou, Deleuze, Derrida, Hegel, Heidegger, Levinas, Marion, Nietzsche, Plato, and Zizek, and topical areas of interest include ecological thought, philosophy of biology, phenomenology, hermeneutics, political philosophy, and interdisciplinary theory. He is author of Ecological Ethics and Living Subjectivity in Hegel's Logic: The Middle Voice of Autopoietic Life (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014). He lives in the Canadian Rockies and ventures into the mountains as often as possible to experience what Plato called the beginning of philosophy.
Ph.D. with distinction, Philosophy - DePaul University: Chicago, IL (1996)
MA, Philosophy - DePaul University: Chicago, IL (1992)
BA, Summa Cum Laude - Louisiana State University: Baton Rouge, LA (1985)
Major: Psychology
Minor: Philosophy
Professional affiliations
Book review editor for the Trumpeter, a peer-reviewed open access environmental journal dedicated to the development of ecological understanding and insight: Oct 2009 - present (http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/index).
Membership maintained for the MA-IS Program in the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies (https://interdisciplinarystudies.org/).
Books
Ecological Ethics and Living Subjectivity in Hegel's Logic: The Middle Voice of Autopoietic Life. (June 2014). Palgrave Macmillan. (https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137412102)
Book chapters
"Concrete Universality." (2014). Chapter in The Zizek Dictionary. Ed. Rex Butler. Routledge. (https://www.routledge.com/The-Zizek-Dictionary/Butler/p/book/9781844655823)
"Interdisciplinary ensembles and dialectical integration: a proposed model of integrated interdisciplinarity." (2012). In Valences of Interdisciplinarity. Raphael Foshay (ed.). Athabasca University Press. Revision of a paper presented at The Scope of Interdisciplinarity symposium (see below). (http://www.aupress.ca/books/120202/ebook/03_Foshay_2012-Valences_of_Interdisciplinarity.pdf)
"Agamben, Hegel and The State of Exception." (2008). In The Spirit of the Age: Hegel and the Fate of Thinking. Ashton, P., Nicolacopoulos, T., and Vassilacopoulos, G. (eds). Melbourne: re.press. Also published in Cosmos and History (see link below).
Peer-reviewed articles
“The Indigenization of academia and ontological respect.” (2020). Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, vol. 16, no. 1. (http://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/795/1449)
“The Medial Character of Interdisciplinarity: Thinking in the Middle Voice.” Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies No. 35, pp. 29-52 (2017). (http://interdisciplinarystudies.org/docs/Vol35_2017/03_29-52.pdf)
“Agamben’s Curio Cabinet, Animality, and the Zone of Indeterminacy.” Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy. Vol. 13, No. 1, 2017. (http://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/581/962)
"A Species-Based Environmental Ethic in Hegel’s Logic of Life." The Owl of Minerva, Vol. 40:1, 2009, pp. 1-68.
"The Fourfold Revisited: Heideggerian Ecological Practice and the Ontology of Things." (2008). The Trumpeter, Vol. 24, No 3. (http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/issue/view/95)
"The Category of Life, Mechanistic Reduction, and the Uniqueness of Biology." Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, special issue "What is life?" Vol 4, No 1, 2008. (http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/issue/view/6)
"The Concrete Universal in Žižek and Hegel." International Journal of Žižek Studies. Vol. 2, No. 2, 2008. (http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/IJZS/issue/view/8)
"Agamben, Hegel and the State of Exception." Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2007. Also published as a book chapter (see above). (http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/issue/view/5)
“Erinnerung, Retrait, Absolute Reflection: Hegel and Derrida.” (1995). The Owl of Minerva, Vol. 26, No. 2, 171-186.
Graduate Course Writing
ENVS 670: The Nature of Nature: ecology, non-human life, and human obligations – wrote, developed, and implemented. Developed in part to reduce the shortage of offerings in the MA-IS Program on environmentalism generally, this course is designed to first establish an intellectual foundation in some of the ideas and arguments that have been most influential in the field of environmentalism and to which a response is necessary, and then to open up new directions and streams of inquiry with respect to the future (https://www.athabascau.ca/syllabi/envs/envs670.html).
GLST 652: Democratic participation in the context of global capitalism - wrote, developed, implemented and revised; now in its second revision (https://www.athabascau.ca/syllabi/glst/glst652.html).
MAIS 601: Making Sense of Theory in the Humanities and Social Sciences - chaired the committee charged with ground-up revision (https://www.athabascau.ca/syllabi/mais/mais601.html).
MAIS 602: Doing Interdisciplinary Research - chaired the committee charged with ground-up revision (https://www.athabascau.ca/syllabi/mais/mais602.html).
Undergraduate Course Writing
PHIL 240: Ancient Philosophy - The Rise of Reason in a Mythic World - wrote, developed, and implemented (https://www.athabascau.ca/syllabi/phil/phil240.html)
PHIL 367: Existentialism and phenomenology - wrote, developed, and implemented (https://www.athabascau.ca/syllabi/phil/phil367.html).