MA Faculty Profiles

Listed below you will find brief profiles of faculty members who frequently teach M.A. courses and who you can expect to routinely engage with as an M.A. student in Philosophy and the Arts at Stony Brook University.

Peter Carravetta Professor of Philosophy Ph.D. New York University, 1983	Megan Craig Associate Professor of Philosophy Practicing Multimedia Artist Ph.D. The New School for Social Research, 2007	Robert Crease Professor of Philosophy Ph.D. Columbia University, 1987
Peter Carravetta holds a PhD in Italian from NYU and has taught Italian literature and philosophy, cultural studies, methods of critique, postmodernism. A published poet, he joined the Philosophy Department in 2018. His book, Language at the Boundaries (Bloomsbury 2021) deals with the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy. His most recent publication, The Humanist Project. Will, Judgment, Society from Dante to Vico (Lexington 2024) focuses on the ideals of humanism from the vantage point of the post-human age. Presently he’s working colonialism and emigration in the second half of the XIX century.  For more details, please see www.petercarravetta.com.	Dr. Megan Craig is a core member of the Philosophy and Art program at Stony Brook University and has been a faculty member since 2007. All of her graduate courses encourage creative writing and collaboration. Dr. Craig was the Director of the M.A. Program in Philosophy and the Arts from 2010 until 2017.   You can follow her work on Instagram @waterstreetprojects or on her website, www.megancraig.com.	Robert P. Crease is a professor in  the Philosophy Department at Stony Brook University. He is a philosopher and historian of science and also writes about the performing arts. Several of his books have been about the aesthetic and cultural valence of science, including The Prism and the Pendulum, the Ten Most Beautiful Experiments in Science, and The Great Equations. Crease has also written an award-winning play about scientific issues. His website is robertpcrease.com.
Anne O’Byrne Doctoral Program Director Associate Professor of Philosophy Ph.D. Vanderbilt University, 1999	Lorenzo Simpson Professor of Philosophy Ph.D. Yale University, 1978	Anthony Steinbock Department Chair Professor of Philosophy Ph.D. Stony Brook University, 1993
Anne O’Byrne specializes in political philosophy and has recently been working on the problem of time for radical democratic theory. How do democracies sustain themselves? What does today’s demos owe the past, and how does it anticipate the future? These questions and concerns connect to an interest in public art and to the practices of remembering and forgetting that shape political life. Her research is informed by the work of Arendt, Derrida, Rancière, Nancy, and others.	Dr. Lorenzo Simpson has been a member of Stony Brook's philosophy faculty since 1998. His research focuses on hermeneutics, Critical Theory, the philosophy of race, and the philosophy of music. He is a saxophonist and is currently working on a book about the jazz composer Duke Ellington's compositional practice. He has recently taught graduate seminars entitled “Critical Theory and Aesthetics,” “Improvisation,” and “Adorno's Negative Dialectics.” Dr. Simpson’s Hermeneutics as Critique: Science, Politics, Race, and Culture was recently published (March 2021) by Columbia University Press.	Anthony J. Steinbock is Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University and works in the areas of phenomenology, contemporary German and French philosophy, philosophy of religion, and aesthetics, especially the philosophy of film. Two of his most recent books include Knowing by Heart: Loving as Participation and Critique (Northwestern, 2021), and It’s Not about the Gift: From Givenness to Loving (Rowman & Littlefield Int., 2018).