Dean Kolbas

Special Instructor of Philosophy
B.A., University of Southern California; M.A., University of Kent at Canterbury; M.Phil, Ph.D., Cambridge University

Office hours:
n/a

Office: Library
Phone: 617-264-7778
Email: kolbase@emmanuel.edu

Dean Kolbas earned his B.A. Cum Laude at the University of Southern California in 1991, with a double major in Philosophy and History, after which he attended the University of Kent at Canterbury, in England, for his M.A. in Political Theory. He came up to Cambridge University in 1992, where he earned an M.Phil. in Social and Political Sciences and ultimately a Ph.D. in 1998. His dissertation on the Frankfurt School, and how the philosophy of Theodor Adorno applies to the debate about literary canons, was published as a book in 2001.

In addition to supervising undergraduates at Cambridge University, Professor Kolbas has taught philosophy at Corning Community College in upstate New York and has been at Emmanuel College since Spring 2005, initially as a part-time Adjunct Professor of Philosophy. He is currently a full-time Special Instructor in Philosophy at Emmanuel.

Recent Publications

Critical Theory and the Literary Canon, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2001.

"Canons and Canonicity," Encyclopedia of Literature and Politics, ed., M. Keith Booker, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 2005.

Selected Conference and Seminar Papers

"Adorno contra Bourdieu: Aesthetic philosophy or sociology of art?" International Philosophy Graduate Conference, University of Essex, U.K. 1997

"Aesthetics as radical politics?" Rethinking Marxism Conference, U-Mass Amherst. Amherst, Massachusetts December 1996

"Adorno's aesthetic theory and 'opening' the canon" Race, Class and Identity Seminar Series Pembroke College Cambridge University, U.K. 1996

"The function and fate of literary classics" Intersections: Postgraduate Interdisciplinary Conference George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 1996

"On political resignation" Postgraduate Seminars in Literary Theory King's College Cambridge University, U.K. 1995