About my work...
music, humor, animals
Cynthia Willett enjoyed a multi-disciplinary graduate education at several universities in political science, literature, and philosophy. Jacques Derrida, Gayatri Spivak, Paul Ricoeur, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Stanley Cavell were among her influential teachers. Her research explores diverse cultures for ideas not central to the philosophical canon: Toni Morrison on ancient discourses of tragic hubris and emotions circulating outside the self along with neo-phenomenological studies of affective atmosphere; a critical social theory of emancipatory eros as that tricky mythical creature of the comedic as well of romance’s visions; and a communicative ethics of reciprocity crossing over to non-verbal creatures such as human infants and animals. Recent books include Irony in the Age of Empire on laughter's role for an egalitarian politics tracing back to philosophical practices during dictatorships. Interspecies Ethics grew out of research from Emory’s Primate Center on capacities for playful humor and the politics of ridiculing shame as well as wonder among non-human animals. She coauthored Uproarious: How Feminists and Other Subversive Comics Speak Truth with a social historian. Her current project, A Musicology of Everyday Life, turns to music’s shift as a mirror of the social moment away from avant-garde sounds of dissonance to an emotional language of catharsis and an aesthetic of beauty, human and nonhuman. She co-teaches with faculty in music and literature courses on emotions, music, and environmental and animal studies as Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Philosophy at Emory University.
Edited Volumes
Theorizing Multiculturalism, edited collection (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998)
Co-editor, Journal of Speculative Philosophy SPEP 50th Anniversary Issue with Anthony Steinbock and Lauren Guilmette
Co-editor, Philosophy Today SPEP Supplement with Len Lawlor
Co-editor, Symposia on Race, Gender, and Philosophy (electronic journal, MIT); with David Pena Guzman (August, 2012)
Articles
"Political Animals, Power Plays, and an Ancient Common Ethics of Honor and Ridiculing Shame," coauthored with Julie Willett, Animals, Ethics, Humor, ed. Deborah Slicer and Kristian Cantens (Bloomsbury, forthcoming, 2026)
"The Humor of Connection: A Feminist Revolution of Form,” coauthored with Julie Willett, Lydia Amir ed. Philosophy of Humor Yearbook (forthcoming)
“Theorizing Feminist+ Use of Humor as Erotic Joy and Power” coauthored with Julie Willett in The Oxford Handbook of Screen Comedy, eds Will Costanzo and Pete Kunze (2025) https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197675502.013.0009
“Pan Indian Philosophy and Humor” Journal of Dharma Studies (forthcoming)
“On Second Thought: Amber Day’s Mothers and Whores: Female Performers and Comedic Controversies” Studies in American Humor, Series 4 Vol 8 Issue 1 (May 2022)
“Foreward” to Bootheina Majoul and Hanene Baroumi, eds Hermeneutics of Pleasure and Pain (Cambridge Univ Press, 2022)
“The Politics of Prank,” coauthored with Julie Willett, Special Issue: Critical Exchange, Contemporary Political Theory, 2020
“The Comic in the Midst of the Tragic with Tig Notaro, Hannah Gadsby and Others,” coauthored with Julie Willett, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 78, No.4 (Fall 2020), pp. 535-545
“Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad in Conversation with Bruce Janz, Jessica Locke, and Cynthia Willett,” Journal of World Philosophies, Vol. 4, No 2 (2019), pp. 124-153
“Three Questions for Spinoza and Moria Gatens,” Philosophy Today, Vol. 63, Issue 3 (Fall 2019), pp. 773-780.
“Can A Mirror Capture the Self?” Animal Sentience, Vol. 25, No. 36 (2019)
"Going to Bed White and Waking up Arab’: On Xenophobia, Affect Theories of Laughter, and the Social Contagion of the Comic Stage,” with Julie Willett, Critical Race Theory
"Water and Wing Give Wonder: Cosmopolitanism Across Species," Phaenex, December, 2013
“Trayvon Martin and the Tragedy of the New Jim Crow,” co-authored with Julie Willett, Trayvon Martin, George Yancy and Janine Jones, eds. Lexington (2012)
“Affect Attunement in the Infant-Caregiver Relationship and Across Species: Expanding the Range of Eros,” philoSOPHIA 2.2 (2012)
“The Seriously Erotic Politics of Laughter,” co-authored with Julie Willett, Yael Sherman Social Research Volume 79 No 1 (Spring 2012); reprinted with added section in Joanne Waugh and Sharon Crasnow, eds. Philosophical Feminism and Popular Culture (Rowman and Littlefield, forthcoming)
“Responsibility for Children in An Age of Orphans,” Timothy Jackson, ed. Best Love of the Child (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011)
“Limits of Liberalism,” Roy Martinez, ed. Racism and the Profession of Philosophy (Penn State, 2009).
“False Consciousness and Moral Objectivity in Kansas,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. 22, no. 4, 2009.
“Engage the Enemy,” Shannon Sullivan and Dennis Schmidt, The Difficulties of Ethical Life (Fordham, 2008)
“Tragic Hubris and Comic Freedom in the Era of the Superpower,” Eduardo Mendieta, eds. Pragmatism, Nationalism, Racism (2008).
“Overcoming Habits of Whiteness: On Shannon Sullivan's Work,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy , vol. 21, no. 3, 2008.
“Rethinking Autonomy in an Age of Interdependence: Analytic, Continental and Pragmatist Feminisms”, APA Newsletter (Spring, 2003).
“Beauvoir and Marcuse: A Dialectic of Eros and Freedom,” Between the Social and Psyche, eds. Kelly Oliver and Steve Edwin (SUNY, 2001).
“The Pyramid the Slaves Built: A Response to John Lachs,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. 15, number 3, fall, 2001.
“Eros and Hubris” New Critical Theory: Essays on Liberation, William S. Wilkerson and Jeffrey R. Paris, eds. (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001).
“Eros and Freedom” Confluences: Phenomenology and Postmodernity, Environment, Race and Gender The Seventeenth Annual Symposium of the Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center, Duquesne University, 1999.
"The Dialectic of Master and Slave: Hegel vs. Douglass" Subjugation and Bondage Tommy Lott ed. (Roman and Littlefield, 1997.)
"Tropics of Desire: Freud and Derrida" Research in Phenomenology vol. 22: no. 2 (1992).
"Hegel, Antigone, and Feminist Dialectic" Modern Engendering Bat-Ami Bar On, ed. (Albany: SUNY, 1993) (overlaps with below article).
"Hollywood Comedy and Aristotelian Ethics: Reconciling Differences" Sexual Politics and Popular Culture, ed. Diane Raymond, (Bowling Green Popular Press, 1990) pp.15-24.
"A Deconstruction of Wittgenstein" Auslegung vol. 10: nos.1,2 (1983) pp. 75-81.