C. Allen Speight

Allen Speight is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Graduate Admissions in the Department of Philosophy at Boston University. A former Fulbright and DAAD Fellow, his research and teaching interests center on aesthetics and the philosophy of art and culture as well as the philosophy of religion and ethics, with a particular historical interest in the period of German Idealism. His first book, Hegel, Literature and the problem of Agency (Cambridge University Press), traced the importance of literary genres – tragedy, comedy and the romantic novel of the beautiful soul – to the philosophical project of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.  He is also author of The Philosophy of Hegel (McGill), editor of Philosophy, Narrative and Life (Springer), co-editor (with Sarah Vandegrift Eldridge) of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and Philosophy (Oxford) and (with David Eckel and Troy DuJardin) of The Future of the Philosophy of Religion (for more information see his BU website.)  Prof. Speight is currently working on projects concerning the philosophical significance of early art and the origins and future of secularism.  His graduate level teaching has included courses on aesthetics and the philosophy of art, the philosophy of narrative and Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, among other topics.