Additional information
by Simon Riches (Editor)
Initially regarded as a cult figure with a strong following amongst sci-fi and horror film fans, Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg emerged as a major and commercially viable film director with mainstream hits such as A History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007). With his unique ability to present imagery that is both disturbing and provocative, Cronenberg creates striking films, noteworthy not just for their cinematic beauty but also for the philosophical questions they raise. The
Author Biography
Keith Allen is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of York. He was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, London, and studied philosophy at University College London and the University of Cambridge. His research interests include the philosophy of perception, the nature of color, and the history of philosophy. Cynthia Freeland is professor and chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Houston. She is author of The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror (Westview, 1999) and co-editor (with Thomas Wartenberg) of Philosophy and Film (Routledge, 1991). Her articles "Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films", and "Realist Horror" have been anthologized several times. Other film articles include "Horror and Art-Dread", in The Horror Film (Rutgers, 2004), and "The Sublime in Cinema," in Passionate Views (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). Freeland has also authored books on topics in ancient philosophy, feminism, and art theory. Jones Irwin is a Lecturer in Philosophy and Education at St Patrick's College, Dublin City University. He has previously taught at the University of Warwick and at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. His research interests are in philosophy of education, political philosophy and aesthetics. He is the editor of War and Virtual War (2004) and with Diane Powell of Interculturalism: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives (forthcoming). In 2008/09, he is Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Philosophy, Literature and the Arts at University of Warwick, UK. Peter Ludlow is a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University. He has done much interdisciplinary work on the interface of linguistics and philosophy and has also established a research program on conceptual issues in cyberspace, particularly questions about cyber-rights and the emergence of laws and governance structures in and for virtual communities. He has also written on topics in aesthetics that intersect with popular culture, including fan fiction and the ontology of virtual worlds. Colin McGinn is professor of philosophy at the University of Miami. He has made major contributions to various areas of philosophy, most notably in the philosophy of mind. Amongst many notable publications, he is the author of The Character of Mind (1982, OUP), Knowledge and Reality (1998, OUP), The Making of a Philosopher (2002, HarperCollins), and The Power of Movies (2005, Pantheon). Daniel Moseley is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He completed his Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Virginia in May 2010, where he wrote a dissertation entitled "The Virtues of Integrity". Moseley is also featured in the comical documentary The Parking Lot Movie (2010), which premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival and received strong reviews from the New York Times and NPR. R. Barton Palmer is the Calhoun Lemon Professor of Literature at Clemson University, where he also serves as director of the film studies program. Palmer is the author, editor, or general editor of more than forty books on various literary and cinematic subjects, including most recently (with Robert Bray) Hollywood's Tennessee: the Williams Films and Postwar America, To Kill a Mockingbird: The Relationship Between the Text and the Film, (with David Boyd) After Hitchcock: Imitation, Influence, and Intertextuality, and Joel and Ethan Coen. He has contributed essays to many of the volumes in the Philosophy and Popular Culture series and is the co-editor, with Steven Sanders, of the forthcoming The Philosophy of Steven Soderbergh. Brook W. R. Pearson received his PhD in 2000 from the University of Surrey, in Philosophy, Classics and Religious Studies (published in 2001 as Corresponding Sense, Leiden: Brill). Formerly Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Roehampton University, London, he is now teaching in the Department of Humanities at Simon Fraser University in Canada. He is currently editing the unpublished works of the analytical philosopher John Wisdom at the Wren Library of Trinity College Cambridge, and is very interested in the relations between philosophy, film and psychoanalysis. Duncan Pritchard holds the Chair in Epistemology at the University of Edinburgh. Previously, he was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Stirling. His main research area is epistemology, and he has published widely in this area, including Epistemic Luck (Oxford University Press, 2005), What is this Thing Called Knowledge? (Routledge, 2006), and Knowledge (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). He is presently working on a book on the value of knowledge with Alan Millar and Adrian Haddock. Simon Riches is Research Associate at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, and teaches philosophy at Heythrop College, University of London. He holds a PhD in philosophy from University College London and has previously taught in their philosophy department. He also studied philosophy at the University of Southampton and psychology at the University of East London. His research interests lie in epistemology and the philosophy of psychology. He is a contributing author in UPKY's The Philosophy of David Lynch. Daniel Shaw is Professor of Philosophy and Film at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania. He is managing editor of the print journal Film and Philosophy, and has co-edited an anthology on the philosophy of horror entitled Dark Thoughts: Philosophic Reflections on Cinematic Horror. His monograph for the Wallflower Press Short Cuts series, Film and Philosophy: Taking Movies Seriously is now available. Paul F. Snowdon is Grote Professor of Mind and Logic at University College London. Before that he was a Fellow and Lecturer at Exeter College Oxford. He has written about the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, and the history of philosophy. Graham Stevens is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Manchester. He is the author of The Russellian Origins of Analytical Philosophy (Routledge, 2005) and has published numerous articles on various topics in philosophy of language, metaphysics, and philosophical logic. He is currently writing a book on definite descriptions.
