Stephanie Ross

Stephanie Ross (“Taffy”) received her B.A. from Smith College in 1971 and her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1977. Most of her research focuses on issues in the philosophy of art. In addition to a book on garden aesthetics, What Gardens Mean (University of Chicago Press, 1998), she has published articles on a range of topics including allusion, modern music, women and fiction, musical conducting, the death of art, landscape appreciation, and aesthetic qualities. She has also contributed invited encyclopedia entries and handbook articles on such topics as expression, the picturesque, and artistic style.

At present, Stephanie is pursuing a new research project on the structure of aesthetic appreciation by taking up questions like the following: If you encounter a work of art and deem it to be amusing, red, bombastic, and original, does the work possess each of these qualities? Does it possess them in the same way? Can you convince others that this is the case? Is there a right way to appreciate each work of art? Might most of us manage only partial or imperfect appreciation of the art we encounter?

In addition to her teaching and research, Stephanie serves as book review editor of the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, the pre-eminent aesthetics journal in the United States, and also as the Director of Graduate Studies for the Philosophy Department, overseeing the M.A. Program inaugurated in Jan. 2000. When not occupied with philosophical matters, Stephanie can be seen jogging in Forest Park with one or another of her two Airedales.

Representative Publications

“Style,” in The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, ed. by Jerrold Levinson (Oxford University Press, 2003), 228-244.

“Nature, Gardens, Art: The Problem of Appreciation,” in Art and Essence, edited by Stephen Davies and Ananta Ch. Sukla (Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press, 2003), 39-53.

“Gardens’ Powers,” The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 33, No. 3 (1999), 4-17.

“Conducting and Musical Interpretation,” co-authored with Jennifer Judkins, British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 36 No. 1 (1996) 16-29.

“Gardens, Earthwork, and Environmental Art,” in Landscape, Natural Beauty, and the Arts, ed. by Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 158-182.

“Women, Morality, and Fiction,” co-authored with Jenefer Robinson, Hypatia, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1990), 76-90.

“Philosophy, Literature, and the Death of Art,” Philosophical Papers, Vol. 18, No. 1 (1989), 95-115.

“The Picturesque: An Eighteenth-Century Debate,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 45, No. 2 (1987), 271-279.

“Chance, Constraint, and Creativity: The Awfulness of Modern Music,” Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 19, No. 3 (1985), 21-35.

“Painting the Passions: Charles LeBrun’s Conference on Expression,” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 45, No.1 (1984), 25-47.

“What Photographs Can’t Do,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 41, No. 1 (1982), 5-17.

“Art and Allusion,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 40, No. 1 (1981), 59-70.

“Caricature,” The Monist, Vol. 58, No. 2 (1974), 285-293.

| Return to Philosophy Department Home |

Last update: 6/9/05