Summer 2022 faculty

Visiting faculty
Shara Wasserman (Rome): Shara Wasserman is an American art historian and curator of contemporary art, and director of the Temple Rome Gallery of Art at Temple University in Rome. Wasserman has curated numerous international exhibitions. In Rome, she will accompany IDSVA students to museums and contemporary artist studios.

Ilham Ibnou Zahir (Marrakech): Ilham Ibnou Zahir received her PhD at Goldsmiths’ College where her dissertation explored the unsettling relationship between ancient philosophy and techne/the art of healing-medicine. Currently, she is exploring the concept of the giver of knowledge/wisdom, through philosophical problems in the intertwined subjects of theology, history, architecture, and craftsmanship.

Giovanni Tusa (Paris): Philosopher, documentary filmmaker, and video artist Giovanni Tusa is currently a Researcher in Philosophy and Ecology at the Universidade Nova of Lisbon. He is the co-author of De la Fin (Mimésis Visages, 2017), with Alain Badiou. His lecture will focus on considering the history of homo sapiens as an infinitesimal part of cosmic duration of the era recently designated by some as the “Anthropocene,” and will be largely based on the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy.

Franca Marini (Siena): Franca Marini is an international artist, currently creating site-specific installations and video art, with a particular focus on the topic of migration in Europe. Her work has been shown in Europe, United States, Central America and Palestine. In Siena she will take IDSVA students on a tour of museums, the cathedral, and the city.

Mel Edwards (Spannocchia): Melvin Edwards is a pioneer in the history of contemporary African American art and sculpture. In 1970 he became the first African American sculptor to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Mel Edwards received an honorary doctorate from IDSVA in 2022. At Spannocchia he will lecture on art as a way to experience life.

David Webb (Spannocchia): David Webb is Professor of Philosophy at Staffordshire University. He is the author of Heidegger, Ethics and the Practice of Ontology (Bloomsbury Press) and Foucault’s Archaeology: Science and Transformation (Edinburgh University Press), among others. At Spannocchia, he will lecture on Michel Serres’s reading of Lucretius in The Birth of Physics.

Core faculty
Howard Caygill: Among the most important European philosophers and cultural historians of our time, Howard Caygill is the author of several books, including his most recent publication, Force and Understanding: Writings on Philosophy and Resistance (Bloomsbury, 2021). Professor Caygill will lecture on Kant, Hegel, and Benjamin in relation to Monet, Rodin, the Musée d’Orsay and the Paris arcades.

Dejan Lukić: Dejan Lukić is trained as an anthropologist (PhD, Columbia University, 2007). His research encompasses continental philosophy, science and religion, and art and ecology. He has published two books and numerous catalogue essays. He is currently writing a manuscript titled Deranged Vivarium: Variations on Coexistence.

Silvia Mazzini: Philosopher and theatre author Silvia Mazzini writes on the philosophy of poverty and teaches History of late-modern Continental Philosophy at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). She has published For a Many-fold Possible World: Arts and Politics in Ernst Bloch and Gianni Vattimo (Peter Lang, 2010), among others.

Simonetta Moro: Simonetta Moro is a visual artist with a focus on painting, drawing and mapping practices, and has exhibited her work internationally. Her research in cartographic aesthetics informs many of her artworks and publications, including the book, Mapping Paradigms in Modern and Contemporary Art: Poetic Cartography (Routledge, 2021).

George Smith: IDSVA President and Founder, George Smith, serves on the IDSVA Core Faculty and writes on literature, the visual arts, visual culture, psychoanalytic theory, and philosophy of education. His most recent book, The Artist-Philosopher and Poetic Hermeneutics, was published by Routledge in 2021.

IDSVA is a low-residency PhD program in Visual Arts: Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Art Theory. As a truly nomadic institution, IDSVA has no brick-and-mortar campus, but combines long-distance courses and in-person intensive residencies.

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