Janet McCracken is the chair of

Classical studies Classics, also classical studies or Ancient Greek and Roman studies, is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, ''classics'' traditionally refers to the study of Ancient Greek and Roman literature and their original languages ...

and professor of

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

Lake Forest College Lake Forest College is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Lake Forest, Illinois. Founded in 1857 as Lind University by a group of Presbyterian ministers, the college has been coeducatio ...

. She specializes in

aesthetics Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and taste (sociology), taste, which in a broad sense incorporates the philosophy of art.Slater, B. H.Aesthetics ''Internet Encyclopedia of Ph ...

Biography

McCracken earned a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

from

Vassar College Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States. The college be ...

and a

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA or AM) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Those admitted to the degree have ...

and

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

from

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

. She currently serves as the director of the Ethics Center at Lake Forest College and was the Krebs Provost and Dean of the Faculty from 2005 to 2011 and the associate dean of the faculty from 2000 to 2002. Her husband Chad McCracken also teaches philosophy at Lake Forest College.

Selected publications

Books

* Taste and the Household: The "Domestic Aesthetic" and Moral Reasoning. author (State University of New York Press, October 2001) * Thinking About Gender: A Historical Anthology. editor and commentary. (Harcourt-Brace College Publishers, 1997)

Chapters in anthologies

*"Perry Mason as Greek Tragedy: the Eternal Allure of Aristotle." Perry Mason and Philosophy. ed. by Robert Arp. Open Court, forthcoming 2018. *"Grief and the Memnonics of Place: A Thank You Note," in Passion, Death, and Spirituality: The Philosophy of Robert C. Solomon (Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures). Edited by Kathleen Higgins and David Sherman. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2012 *The Aesthetics of Playtime Recycling," in The Aesthetics of Human Environments. Edited by Arnold Berleant and Allen Carlson. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2007. Based on a presentation, "Recycling Aesthetics," (American Society for Aesthetics Fall 2002 Conference, October 31, 2002.)

Journal articles

*"The Non-Western of the New West." Film & History, vol. 44, no. 2 (Fall 2014): 82-87. *"Dogs and Birds in Plato." Philosophy and Literature, vol. 38, no. 2 (October 2014): 446-61. *"Falsely, Sanely, Shallowly: Reflections on the Special Character of Grief." International Journal of Applied Philosophy, vol. 19, no. 1 (2005): 139-56.

References

Janet McCracken - Krebs Provost and Dean of the Faculty - Professor of Philosophy