Stephen Asma
Ph. D. Philosophy
Email 312-344-7583
His wide-ranging natural history of monsters will be published by Oxford University Press in 2009. In this book, titled On Monsters, Asma tours Western culture's worst nightmares. It begins with the Ancient Greeks, examining Alexander's letter to Aristotle about the monsters of region India. The book tours a landscape of medieval monsters, Darwinian monsters, Freudian monsters, contemporary political monsters, and then culminates with an examination of our biotech monsters to come. Along the way, readers learn about dog-headed saints, apocalyptic hydras, demons, witches, evolutionary hopeful monsters, psychotic serial-killers, and more.
His website is: www.stephenasma.com
Email 312-344-7583
Stephen T. Asma is Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Columbia College Chicago, where he holds the title of Distinguished Scholar. In 2003, he was Visiting Professor at the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia. There, he taught "Buddhist Philosophy" as part of their pilot Graduate Program in Buddhist Studies, and he studied Theravada Buddhism throughout Southeast Asia. His book, entitled The Gods Drink Whiskey: Stumbling Toward Enlightenment in the Land of the Tattered Buddha (HarperOne, HarperCollins) chronicles his adventures in Asia. He has also lived and studied in Shanghai, China.
Asma is the author of several books: Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums (Oxford, 2001;2003), Following Form and Function (Northwestern Univ. Press, 1996), and Buddha for Beginners (Hampton Roads, 2009). He has written many articles on a broad range of topics that bridge the humanities and sciences, including “Against Transcendentalism” in the book Monty Python and Philosophy (Opencourt Press, 2006) and “Dinosaurs on the Ark: Natural History and the New Creation Museum” in The Chronicle of Higher Education (May, 2007). He has also written for the Chicago Tribune, In These Times magazine, the Skeptical Inquirer, the Chronicle Review, Skeptic magazine, and Chicago Public Radio's news-magazine show Eight-Forty-Eight. Asma has been an invited lecturer at many institutions, including Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology and Chicago’s Field Museum.His wide-ranging natural history of monsters will be published by Oxford University Press in 2009. In this book, titled On Monsters, Asma tours Western culture's worst nightmares. It begins with the Ancient Greeks, examining Alexander's letter to Aristotle about the monsters of region India. The book tours a landscape of medieval monsters, Darwinian monsters, Freudian monsters, contemporary political monsters, and then culminates with an examination of our biotech monsters to come. Along the way, readers learn about dog-headed saints, apocalyptic hydras, demons, witches, evolutionary hopeful monsters, psychotic serial-killers, and more.
His website is: www.stephenasma.com