@deweycenter.siu.edu
The Center for Dewey Studies is the home of research, publishing, and archival materials that focus on the life, work, and legacy of John Dewey. Director: https://bsky.app/profile/thehangedman.com Website: https://deweycenter.siu.edu/
A photograph of the Dewey Center conference room
work space, library and office support, and a small stipend. Priority deadline for applications for next academic year is April 15, 2026. Learn more at
deweycenter.siu.edu/visit/fellow...
(2/2)
Applications are open for the SIU Center for Dewey Studies Visiting Fellows Program. Fellows are in residence for one or two semesters, enjoy the scholarly resources and intellectual community of the Center, and receive...
(1/2)
Hosted by the Ireland Dewey Center at University College Dublin. March 6th at 2:00pm UTC (8:00am in Carbondale). Learn more at deweycenter.siu.edu/center-infor...
(2/2)
The International Dewey Centers Network Presents A Joint Online Colloquium Series Dorit Barchana-Lorand, “Advocacy for Art Education from a Deweyan Perspective” with comments by Michał Wieczorek. Representing the Irish Dewey Center at University College Dublin. Dorit Barchana-Lorand is visiting UCD from Kibbutzim College in Tel Aviv. Her research has evolved from engaging Kant’s aesthetics to exploring the intersection of art, education, and society. Her newest book is Philosophical Questions in Art Education (2025). Michał Wieczorek is an Ad Astra Fellow/Assistant Professor in the School of Education, UCD. He studies how new technologies impact the values, goals and practices of education.
Reminder: The next International Dewey Colloquium will take place tomorrow. Dorit Barchana-Lorand will speak on "Advocacy for Art Education from a Deweyan Perspective" (with comments by Michał Wieczorek).
(1/2)
A photograph of John Dewey looking through letters or photographs with two women
individuals, but it is doing an injustice to itself for it is depriving itself of just that much of social capital.” – John Dewey, “Address to National Negro Conference.” (1909, MW 4: 157).
(2/2)
“[A] society that does not furnish the environment and education and the opportunity of all kinds which will bring out and make effective the superior ability wherever it is born, is not merely doing an injustice to that particular race and to those particular...
(1/2)
The International Dewey Centers Network Presents A Joint Online Colloquium Series Dorit Barchana-Lorand, “Advocacy for Art Education from a Deweyan Perspective” with comments by Michał Wieczorek. Representing the Irish Dewey Center at University College Dublin. Dorit Barchana-Lorand is visiting UCD from Kibbutzim College in Tel Aviv. Her research has evolved from engaging Kant’s aesthetics to exploring the intersection of art, education, and society. Her newest book is Philosophical Questions in Art Education (2025). Michał Wieczorek is an Ad Astra Fellow/Assistant Professor in the School of Education, UCD. He studies how new technologies impact the values, goals and practices of education.
Learn more at
deweycenter.siu.edu/center-infor...
(2/2)
Join us this Friday for the next International Dewey Colloquium (Online). The Ireland Dewey Center at University College Dublin presents Dorit Barchana-Lorand, "Advocacy for Art Education from a Deweyan Perspective" (comments by Michał Wieczorek) on 3/6 at 2:00pm UTC (8:00am in Carbondale)
(1/2)
A photograph of John Dewey reading.
...democratic means some workable adjustment of the values, standards, and ends which are now in a state of conflict.” – John Dewey, “Anti-Naturalism in Extremis.” (1943, LW 15: 58-59).
(2/2)
“The problem of attaining mutual understanding and a reasonable degree of amicable cooperation among different peoples, races, classes, is bound up with the problem of reaching by peaceful and...
(1/2)
Why I think, in the current A.I. moment, we should be reading Paul Churchland. #philsky #philsci
thehangedman.com/philosophy/p...
W. E. B. Du Bois’s relationship to John Dewey illuminates Du Bois’s integration of aesthetics into social scientific inquiry. While Du Bois engaged Dewey’s view of truth as something that emerges through communal inquiry and contributes to the reconstruction of social life, he adapted this pragmatist framework to the particular demands of a racially stratified society. For Du Bois, truth required not only empirical rigor but also forms of expression capable of countering distortion and cultivating recognition where racial ideology blocked perception. Du Bois understood beauty as one such medium of truthful inquiry. The data visualizations he produced for the 1900 Paris Exposition shows how aesthetic form organized complexity, conferred dignity, and intervened against racist misrepresentation. In this sense, beauty functions for Du Bois as both a methodological and ethical instrument, enabling truth to accomplish the transformative work he believed it must do. Dr. Kimberly Harris is Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Corcoran Department of Philosophy at the University of Virginia, and author of The Truth of Race: The Philosophical Thought of W. E. B. Du Bois.
Now on YouTube! See Kimberly Harris’s Carus lecture, "Truth in Form: Du Bois's Aesthetic Epistemology and the Deweyan Social Imagination."
Link to Video: youtu.be/RapW0fQ7rlE?...
Join us for Arto Charpentier's Lunchtime Talk in a few minutes.
youtube.com/live/NE9PRqS...
A photograph of John Dewey in China with several others.
...common meaning differing from its scientific signification, is the designation given to the accumulation of facts which draw our attention because they are different from our own customs.” – John Dewey, “A Philosophical Interpretation of Racial Prejudice.” (1922, MW 13: 438).
(2/2)
“Race is an abstract idea. Since the origin of the most important races of the present world is mixed, if we were to follow science, the idea of race is generally speaking a mythical one. Against this conception, man seeks something concrete, tangible, and visible. Thus race, in its...
(1/2)
A photograph of Arto Charpentier with text summarizing his upcoming talk reading: "Metaphysics as Method: A Methodological Reading of Dewey’s Metaphysical Theory? Whether Dewey can—and should—offer a metaphysics has long been a matter of intense interpretive dispute. Focusing on the programmatic formulations of his 1915 essay, “The Subject-Matter of Metaphysical Inquiry,” I defend two interrelated claims. First, by advancing the project of a science-based metaphysics in this early essay, Dewey shows how metaphysics can be pursued in a pragmatist way: not as an absolutist or foundationalist enterprise, but as a hypothetical, fallibilist, and experimental form of inquiry. Second, I argue that the primary value of Dewey’s metaphysical theory lies less in offering a definitive account of the “generic traits” of reality than in the methodological guidance it provides for conducting inquiry—guidance that should be tested and assessed in light of the concrete consequences of its use. My overall aim, then, is to elucidate the possibility of Dewey’s metaphysical theorizing and demonstrate its usefulness within his broader reconstructive project. Arto Charpentier is a postdoctoral fellow in philosophy at Jean Moulin University Lyon 3 (France). He earned his PhD from the École normale supérieure (Paris) in 2023 with a dissertation on John Dewey’s cultural naturalism and its instrumental function for social inquiry. His research lies at the intersection of pragmatism, social philosophy, and philosophy of science. He co-edited Repenser la nature. Dewey, Canguilhem, Plessner (Rethinking Nature: Dewey, Canguilhem, Plessner) (Rue d’Ulm, 2023) with Marco Dal Pozzolo and Matteo Pagan.
Please join us on Thursday at 1:30pm for Arto Charpentier, “Metaphysics as Method: A Methodological Reading of Dewey’s Metaphysical Theory.” Learn more at
deweycenter.siu.edu/center-events/
A photograph of the Center for Dewey Studies conference room
Congratulations to the winners of the 2025-2026 Center for Dewey Studies Essay Award: Stephen Houchins, Jessica Soester, and Michael Timm. They have been working since Fall on their essay projects, which cover a wide range of topics in Dewey Studies. See more at
deweycenter.siu.edu/center-infor...
A photograph of John Dewey sitting in a chair with text reading “The crisis in liberalism is connected with failure to develop and lay hold of an adequate conception of intelligence integrated with social movements and a factor in giving them direction.” Citation: Liberalism and Social Action. (1935, LW 11: 33).
...of social action. When the conclusions of inquiries that deal with man are left outside the program of social action, social policies are necessarily left without the guidance that knowledge of man can provide.” – John Dewey, Liberalism and Social Action. (1935, LW 11: 34).
(2/2)
“Social and historical inquiry is in fact a part of the social process itself, not something outside of it. The consequence of not perceiving this fact was that the conclusions of the social sciences were not made (and still are not made in any large measure) integral members of a program...
(1/2)
A photograph of the Center for Dewey Studies Reading Room
Live on OpenSIUC: Working Papers from the 2024-2025 Center for Dewey Studies Essay Award. opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cds_cdea/
A photograph of John Dewey waiting to give a radio address with another man. Overlaid is text reading: “Destitution on the one side and wealth on the other are factors in the determination of that psychological and moral constitution which is the source and the measure of attained culture.” Citation: Individualism, Old and New (1930, LW 5: 103)
...of the vast multitudes who now live, work and play in surroundings that perforce degrade their tastes and that unconsciously educate them into desire for any kind of enjoyment as long as it is cheap and ‘exciting.’” – John Dewey, Individualism, Old and New (1930, LW 5: 103).
(2/2)
“The interest of the younger generation in art and esthetic matters is a hopeful sign of the growth of culture in its narrower sense. But it will readily turn into an escape mechanism unless it develops into an alert interest in the conditions which determine the esthetic environment...
(1/2)
A photograph of John Dewey with several others in formal wear
...produced by totalitarian suppression, will constitute the ‘wave of the future.’” – John Dewey, “The Basic Values and Loyalties of Democracy” (1941, LW 14: 277).
(4/4)
...work together; it is the essence of cooperation. As I have said, it has never been widely practiced, and this failure is a large factor in producing the present state of the world. We may hope that it, not the equality...
(3/4)
...scale. Nationalism, expressed in our country in such phrases as ‘America First,’ is one of the strongest factors in producing existing totalitarianism, just as a promise of doing away with it has caused some misguided persons to be sympathetic with Naziism. Fraternity is the will to...
(2/4)
"So I close by saying that the third loyalty which measures democracy is the will to transform passive toleration into active cooperation. The ‘fraternity’ which was the third member of the democratic trinity of the France of the Revolution has never been practiced on a wide...
(1/4)
A photograph of a young John Dewey and several of his classmates
...corrupt to be entrusted with this work. How could it be expected to undertake it when the undertaking meant its own destruction?” – John Dewey, Democracy and Education. (1916, MW 9: 98-99).
(2/2)
“The first step in freeing men from external chains was to emancipate them from the internal chains of false beliefs and ideals. What was called social life, existing institutions, were too false and...
(1/2)
A photograph of John Dewey
...of organizing the existing forces so they may achieve their greatest efficiency, pacifists have had little recourse save to decry evil emotions and evil-minded men.” – John Dewey, “Force, Violence and Law” (1916, MW 10: 213-214).
(2/2)
“It is hostility to force as force, to force intrinsically, which has rendered the peace movement so largely an anti-movement, with all the weaknesses which appertain to everything that is primarily anti-anything. Unable to conceive the task...
(1/2)