| NEW FACULTY: CHERYL CHEN
Over the next several weeks, Bryn Mawr Now will present a series of brief profiles of new tenure-track faculty members.
The series continues with philosopher Cheryl Chen. Other profiles in the series:
Cheryl Chen never meant to study philosophy. "I just had a vague sense that it was something that every college student should take at some point," she says. "I took my first philosophy course the first semester of my first year in college, and the course completely blew my mind. I had arrived at college planning to be an English major — I liked to write — but ended up declaring in philosophy at the beginning of the spring semester of my first year."
Chen was so taken with philosophy that she turned it into a career. After her undergraduate years at Amherst College, she earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2002; she came to Bryn Mawr as a teaching fellow in the same year. The College made her a tenure-track assistant professor last spring.
Chen's teaching reflects her passion for the study of the mind and perception. In addition to two entry-level courses, she is also teaching several courses of her own design, including "Concepts of the Self" and "Philosophy of Perception." The subject matter of the latter course, which uses both modern and historical texts, overlaps closely with Chen's book project Why Perception Matters, about the relation between thought and perceptual experience. "Philosophers have long held that there are intimate relations between thought and perceptual experience," Chen says, "and some assert that no thought is possible without perception."
Chen has created a model she calls "global clairvoyance" as a tool for analysis of the relationship between thought and perception. "I try to imagine a person who has no perceptual experiences at all, and is instead caused to form all of her beliefs through clairvoyance," she explains. "So she believes that, say, it's snowing today in Pennsylvania, not because she sees the snow or hears a weather report, but because the belief just pops into her head. It probably sounds kind of silly, but I think it's a useful way to tease out some interesting connections between perception and thought."
Outside the academic world, Chen has a new challenge: motherhood. Her first child, a son named Benjamin, was born in June. "I'm learning how to work more efficiently: I have to try very hard not to waste a single minute of the day," she says. "But overall, motherhood has been an incredibly enriching experience."
— Allison Siegenthaler '07
<<Back
to Bryn Mawr Now 2/17/2005
Next story>>
|
