Meet the Tutors: New & Visiting Santa Fe Faculty
September 15, 2020
Every year, the fall semester begins with the exciting flurry of students and faculty joining us from around the world. This year, our beautiful campus is quiet and nearly empty. Along with our Annapolis campus and many colleges around the country, we must continue to operate in a socially distant, online world. For the time being, the computer screen is our seminar table.
That said, it is with great enthusiasm—perhaps even more than usual—that we welcome our eight new and visiting tutors to the Santa Fe community this fall! You can learn a little about their backgrounds, experiences, and interests below.
Santa Fe New & Visiting Tutors 2020
ALISON CHAPMAN
2020 CLASSES: Freshman Seminar, Freshman Language & Freshman Mathematics
EDUCATION: BA (Hons) in English Literature at Trinity College in the University of Toronto; PhD (also in English Literature) at Harvard University
DISSERTATION TOPIC: How the nineteenth-century novel was shaped by aesthetic principles drawn from the ornamental arts.
PREVIOUS CAREER: Taught at Harvard for eight years in the English department, the General Education department, the Writing Program, and for “Humanities 10,” Harvard’s own “Great Books” course for first-year students.
PUBLICATIONS: Victorian Literature and Culture, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Persuasions
HOBBIES: Walking her dog and baking. She is an unskilled but enthusiastic hiker and camper.
Paola Villa
2020 CLASSES: Freshman Seminar, Freshman Mathematics & Freshman Lab
EDUCATION: Laurea in Lingue e Letterature Straniere (magna cum laude), Università degli Studi di Pavia; Ph.D. candidate in Letterature Comparate, Università degli Studi di Torino; Ph.D. in Italian Literature and History of Science (minor) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. BS in Physics (in progress) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
DISSERTATION TOPIC: The relationship between modern physics and Italian literature of the 1900s.
PREVIOUS CAREER: At the University of Wisconsin-Madison she was an Instructor in the Italian department, and a Teaching Assistant in the History of Science and Integrated Liberal Studies departments.
PUBLICATIONS: Delitti di Carta, Doppiozero
HOBBIES: Aside from work, eating is one of the few things that she takes seriously in life. She loves good food, good company and good old rock'n roll.
Shannon Chamberlain
2020 CLASSES: Freshman Mathematics & Junior Seminar
EDUCATION: BA in Early Modern history and literature (magna cum laude) at Harvard University; Ph.D in English literature from the University of California-Berkeley
DISSERTATION TOPIC: The influence of novels on the moral philosophy and economics of Adam Smith.
PREVIOUS CAREER: At Berkeley, she was a fellow at the Townsend Center for the Humanities and taught classes on subjects from Victorian novels to the television show “Veronica Mars.” Grant writer and Fulbright program advisor at the University of California-San Diego.
PUBLICATIONS: Persuasions, The Journal of Scottish Philosophy, and The Atlantic. She also writes and illustrates children’s books, the first of which is due out in 2021.
HOBBIES: Project on what the Great Books have to say about parents and parenting.
Steven Forde
2020 CLASSES: Junior Lab
EDUCATION: BA from Yale University, PhD from the University of Toronto
PREVIOUS CAREER: Teaching politics and political philosophy in conventional university settings
HOBBIES: Since moving to Santa Fe he has gained a Master Naturalist certification, and enjoys hiking and bicycling in the glorious setting of Northern New Mexico.
Martha Franks (SF78)
2020 CLASSES: Sophomore Seminar
EDUCATION: BA from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, law degree from the University of New Mexico, Masters in Theological Studies at the Virginia Theological Seminary
PREVIOUS CAREER: Southwestern water lawyer, working on a variety of cases involving environmental issues as well as water rights quantification issues, including cases before the United States Supreme Court, teaching for two years at a high school in Beijing, China, with her husband, (tutor) Grant Franks.
PUBLICATIONS: Books without Borders: Homer, Aeschylus, Galileo, Melville and Madison Go to China about her experience in China and the reactions of Chinese students in Beijing to a St. John’s-like curriculum.
HOBBIES: painting
Kit Slover (SF14)
2020 CLASSES: Freshman & Sophomore Seminar
EDUCATION: BA from St. John's College in Santa Fe; doctoral candidate in the philosophy department at Emory University
DISSERTATION TOPIC: “The Lie of Time: Aesthetic Conflict and Contested Subjectivity in Kant’s Critical Philosophy.”
PUBLICATIONS: Forthcoming publications include papers on Deleuze’s use of the differential calculus in Difference and Repetition, the concept of transcendental matter in Kant’s first Critique, and the notion of absolute knowing in Fichte’s 1804 Wissenschaftslehre.
Stephen Rosenberg
2020 CLASSES: Graduate Institute Liberal Arts: Philosophy/Theology Seminar
EDUCATION: BA in history at the University of York, after which he was awarded a British Academy Major State Studentship to do graduate work on the early modern period at the University of Cambridge. PhD in sociology, with a focus on social theory, historical sociology, and political economy from the University of Chicago.
Bree Wooten (SF07)
2020 CLASSES: Sophomore Seminar
EDUCATION: BA from St. John's College in Santa Fe; Master’s degree in philosophy from New York University; PhD studies in philosophy and psychoanalysis from the European Graduate School in Saas Fee, Switzerland
DISSERTATION TOPIC: Transference and Irony in Freudian and Lacanian Psychoanalysis
PREVIOUS CAREER: After spending a year writing and studying abroad in Slovenia, she joined the faculty at St. John’s, Santa Fe, in the spring of 2019 as a visiting tutor.
PUBLICATIONS: (forthcoming) Nietzsche on Guilt and The Structure of The Conscience as an Organ of Thought
HOBBIES: Avid fan of music and a drummer, as well as a fitness and sports enthusiast, with a background in soccer, marathon training, and Crossfit.