Graduate Program
General Information
The Department of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico offers programs leading to the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in philosophy. Many areas of concentration are open to students. Both Anglo-American and Continental approaches are well represented, and the department has special strengths in:
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Because of our small size, students can expect a high degree of personal attention and interaction with the faculty.
The Department of Philosophy maintains an active colloquium series with frequent visiting lecturers. The department also has an endowed lecture series: the Brian O'Neil Memorial Lecture Series in the History of Philosophy. Past speakers in O'Neil speakers have included Richard Popkin, Richard Wollheim, Barry Stroud, Alan Code, Alexander Nehamas, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Allen Wood. In recent years the department has hosted the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division meeting and the annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy.
The University of New Mexico is located in Albuquerque. Founded in 1706, Albuquerque is New Mexico’s largest city with a population of approximately 500,000. The metropolitan area boasts a population of over 700,000. With a relatively mild climate (not too warm...not too cold) the city has become a relocation destination for people across the country.
Albuquerque lies at the base of the Sandia mountains and straddles the Rio Grande river. Both offer hiking, and mountain-biking year-round and skiing is available in the Sandia Mountains as well as Santa Fe, Taos and many other locations in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Fly fishing is another outdoor activity easily enjoyed by UNM philosophy faculty and graduate students.
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The arts are well represented and include theater, opera and light opera, symphonic and chamber music, ballet and dance, and many art galleries. Two other culturaly renowned cities, Santa Fe and Taos, are within easy driving distance.
Albuquerque also has a host of other recreational activities including excellent golf courses, a world class zoo, an art history museum, the botanical gardens, aquarium and, of course, the city is proud to annually host the world famous Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. Parks, tennis courts, and bike trails are also generously scattered across the city. Albuquerque, as well as the UNM campus is also recognized for its unique infusion of Adobe, classic, and modern architectural influences.
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New Mexico is uniquely multi-cultural, incorporating Native-American (Pueblo, Navajo, and Apache), Hispanic, and Anglo populations. Traditional Native-American and Hispanic-American arts and crafts abound. These influences are also richly expressed in the spectrum of food, art, and music of the community. New Mexico is also recognized for its plethora of important archaeological sites.
For more information on Albuquerque or New Mexico, please visit:
The M.A and Ph.D. degrees
The M.A. is a two-year program requiring thirty-two hours of graduate coursework. (UNM is on a semester calendar. A course usually carries three hours of credit. A normal course load for a graduate student is nine hours.) Twelve of those hours-four courses at the graduate seminar level-must satisy distribution requirements in the history of philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, and the theory of knowledge. At the end of his or her period of study each M.A. student must pass an oral M.A. exam, focused on a paper of 30-40 pages.
The Ph.D. is a four-to-six year program requiring forty-eight hours of graduate coursework, of which fifteen must satisfy distribution requirements in the areas mentioned above. Ph.D. students must pass a comprehensive exam in the fourth semester (see comprehensive exam reading list), a language exam (reading competence in one language is required for the Ph.D.; a course in metalogic may be substituted for the language requirement by students working in appropriate areas), a dissertation prospectus exam, and an oral dissertation defense based on the dissertation.
In addition to these requirements, all graduate students, whether M.A. or Ph.D., must meet a "background core" requirement consisting of six courses in basic areas (namely, metaphysics, theory of knowledge, ethical theory, Greek philosophy, modern philosophy and symbolic logic; courses taken to satisfy the graduate distribution requirements will not count toward satisfying the background core requirement). Most students entering the program with a B.A. in philosophy will already have satisfied this requirement.
Usually, thirty-three of the forty-eight hours of coursework required for the Ph.D. and twenty hours of the courses required for the M.A. may be taken in subjects of the student's choosing. For the Ph.D. in particular, we encourage students to focus early on a particular area of interest while continuing to acquire a broad education in philosophy which will qualify them to become teachers.
For Detailed information on the Graduate Program and its requirements, click here.
Department Strengths
Indian Philosophy
For students concentrating on Indian thought the department emphasizes:
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The UNM Department of Philosophy encourages applications from students who wish to specialize in Indian philosophy at the Ph. D. level. The department has three faculty members who either specialize or have research interests in Indian thought: Richard Hayes (history of Buddhism, Buddhist logic and epistemology), John Taber (history of the Brahmanical systems, Indian logic, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of language), and John Bussanich (Greek philosophy, mystical and religious philosophies, Indo-Greek comparative philosophy).
The department is able to provide instruction
in Sanskrit through the advanced level but also encourages students
to attend intensive language courses offered elsewhere (e.g., the University
of Chicago, American Institute of Indian Studies summer program in Pune).
At this time we have four Ph.D. students working in Indian philosophy.
Please see the graduate student's interest
page for more information on all of our students.
American Philosophy
The department offers Ph. D. students the chance to study two main traditions of American philosophy: transcendentalism and pragmatism.
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Russell Goodman regularly teaches a survey of American thought from the Puritans to the Neopragmatists, and more specialized seminars on such figures as Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, Richard Rorty, and Stanley Cavell. He is working on a new history of American philosophy before pragmatism. Brent Kalar, whose historical interests run from Kant through Nietzsche, has research and teaching interests in Emerson and Cavell. Paul Livingston, who works in twentieth century analytic and continental philosophy, considers Cavell in his Philosophy and the Vision of Language (2008).
The classical American philosophers have roots in nineteenth century philosophy, while contemporaries such as Cavell, Rorty, and Hilary Putnam have roots in analytic philosophy. The department has strengths in both areas, so that students working on the American philosophers may study the intellectual contexts in which they write, from Kant and Hegel, to Wittgenstein, Quine, Kuhn, and Davidson.
Continental Philosophy
The
UNM doctoral program in Philosophy offers a wealth of resources and
opportunities to students desiring to focus their studies on topics
in Continental philosophy ranging from the early nineteenth century
up through the present.
Seven faculty members in the department specialize in Continental philosophy or have research interests related to this area: Russell Goodman, Barbara Hannan, Adrian Johnston, Brent Kalar, Paul Livingston, John Taber, and Iain Thomson. The figures covered by these faculty members include: Fichte, Schelling, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Marx, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Lacan, Levinas, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Irigaray, Kristeva, Badiou, Žižek, and Agamben. (UNM is also home to the Max Scheler Archives, one of two such archives in the world.)
The major movements and orientations in the Continental tradition are well-represented and regularly taught in the department: German idealism, existentialism, phenomenology, structuralism, post-structuralism, critical theory, and psychoanalysis.
Given the importance of the history of philosophy to the continental tradition, our Ph.D. program should be especially attractive to prospective doctoral students, who will have the opportunity to develop a thorough understanding of the historical contexts crucial to comprehending the discussions and debates central to Continental philosophy.
Placement Statistics
Of the fourteen students who received their Ph.D. in philosophy at UNM since 1999, nine have been hired for full-time tenure-track positions, three have been hired for full-
time, non-tenure-track positions, and two are teaching part-time. For a complete list of our Ph.D. graduates and where they are today, click here.
Screening of Applications
All application documents are reviewed carefully by a departmental committee of at least three, but sometimes as many as six or seven, faculty members. The writing sample, academic record, and letters of recommendation are as important as the GRE scores. For the M.A., we are especially interested in candidates who have the potential to go on to the Ph.D. (at UNM or elsewhere). For the Ph.D., we are particularly interested in candidates whose interests match our strengths and who we think have the potential to be strong candidates for teaching positions when they graduate. Since we only admit students to the Ph.D. for whom we can provide financial aid, and since financial resources tend to be limited, admission to the Ph.D. program can be highly selective. Last year, 28 applied for the Ph.D., 4 were accepted, and 3 of those accepted are now in the program. Admission to the M.A. program, since it does not hinge on financial aid, is competitive but not as selective as for the Ph.D.
The UNM Department of Philosophy takes affirmative action factors into consideration in making admission decisions.
Financial Aid
The UNM Department of Philosophy admits students to its Ph.D. program only if it has a reasonable expectation that it will be able to provide five years of full financial support which may be pro-rated for students who have already completed some graduate work in philosophy. The support may be in the form either of a Philosophy Teaching Assistantship (TA-ship) or an English TA-ship (teaching freshman English courses). TA-ships carry a stipend of at least $15,600 (2010-2011 academic year) and a tuition waiver. Philosophy TA’s serve as graders for Philosophy 101 their first semester and teach one section of Philosophy 156, Reasoning and Critical Thinking, in subsequent semesters. Philosophy graduate students supported by English TA-ships teach English 101, Exposition and 102, Analysis and Argument, in the English Department. It is possible that students who enter the program supported by English TA-ships may have the opportunity of switching over to Philosophy TA-ships in subsequent years, given the availability of such TA-ships.
Doctoral students are also eligible for the Gwen J. Barrett Memorial Fellowship, a dissertation fellowship which is available to Ph.D. students in their fifth year. More information is available here.
Ph.D. students who are in the process of writing a dissertation also may be eligible, by nomination of the department, for the Graduate Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship.
Currently there is no departmentally funded financial aid available for M.A. students in their first year. Many M.A. students, however, are given tuition waivers in their second year upon establishing residency. Also, grading positions and half TA-ships are sometimes offered to M.A. students in their second and subsequent years.
The Office of Graduate Studies has a number of funding programs available to Ph.D. and M.A. students. Many of these programs allow for direct student application. For more information on these programs, please visit the Funding Resources section of the Office of Graduate Studies website.
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Minority Support
The UNM Department of Philosophy has always had a significant number of minority students in its graduate program. One ongoing TA-ship is dedicated to supporting a Hispanic-American Ph.D. student. Other financial aid opportunities for minorities are provided through UNM's Office of Graduate Studies.