Anthony Paul Smith

Assistant Professor
Department of Religion
La Salle University, Philadelphia USA

If you are having trouble accessing any of my writings please do not hesitate to get in touch with me by email: anthonypaul(dot)smith(at)gmail(dot)com.

Education
PhD (Unconditional), July 2011, University of Nottingham, Philosophical Theology.

  • Thesis: ‘Ecologies of Thought: Thinking Nature in Philosophy, Theology, and Ecology’.
  • Committee: Prof. Philip Goodchild (principal supervisor), Prof. Agata Bielik-Robson (internal reader), Dr. Steven Shakespeare (external reader, Liverpool Hope University).

M.A. with Distinction, 2007, University of Nottingham; Philosophical Theology.

  • Thesis: ‘Eternal Custodians of a Machine for the Making of Gods: Thinking Ecological Restoration with Bergson and Deleuze/Guattari’ [available online].
  • Supervised by Prof. Philip Goodchild.

B.A., 2005, DePaul University; Philosophy.

  • Cum laude.
  • One quarter in Paris at L’Alliance Française with additional coursework in philosophy, art, and literature conducted by Prof. Michael Naas.

Teaching Experience

Assistant Professor, Religion Department, La Salle University

  • Spring 2014
    • Exploring Religion
    • Theologies of Suffering [A revision of a former Contemporary Religious Thought course. In addition to using Philip Goodchild’s work on suffering to orient the class I focused the group projects on reading and presenting texts. This change in format led to greater student engagement and forced more one-on-one discussion.] [Syllabus available online.]
  • Fall 2013
    • Exploring Religion [I revised the course to move back and forth from an insider perspective to an outsider perspective and to focus on questions of gender and race in terms of religious experience.] [Syllabus available online.]
    • Catholicism in the Modern World [Looked at the development of Catholic Social Teaching and contemporary theological movements post-Vatican II. Figures studied included Henri de Lubac, Leonardo Boff, Elizabeth Johnson, and numerous encyclicals and other Papal documents.] [Syllabus available online.]
  • Fall and Spring 2012
    • Exploring Religion [Explore a variety of theories of religion related to religious experience before turning to the expression of that experience in the autobiographies of St. Augustine and Malcolm X.] [Syllabus available online.]
    • Contemporary Religious Thought [Exploring the problem of suffering and abstraction through the Book of Job and contemporary responses to it from Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Atheist thinkers.] [Syllabus available online.]

Adjunct Professor, Department of Religious Studies, DePaul University.

  • Roman Catholic Theological Thinking: Nature and Environmental Ethics from Aquinas to Liberation Theology (Autumn Quarter 2010). [Figures covered included Aquinas, Boff, Ruether, as well as looking at official Vatican documents signed by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.]
  • Nature, Cosmos, God (Autumn and Spring Quarters, 2011-12). [The course investigates our understanding of nature by looking at the naturalism of E.O. Wilson, several creation narratives, and the Medieval philosopher-theologians Augustine, Maimonides, and Ibn-Sina.] [Draft syllabus available online.]

Adjunct Professor, Department of Philosophy, DePaul University

  • Introduction to Philosophy: Plato to Contemporary French Philosophy (with some films) (Autumn Quarter 2011). [The course focused on the theme of love and took a broad sweep through the history of Western philosophy from Plato to Irigaray and Laruelle.] [Syllabus available online.]

Adjunct Professor, Department of Environmental Studies, DePaul University

  • Environmental Ethics (Spring Quarter 2012). [This course gave a general survey of the mainstream of environmental ethics before turning to debates about the metaphysics of humans, animals, and vegetables that prefigures contemporary ethics. We also devoted time to the work of Aldo Leopold as a forerunner of an unified theory of ecology and philosophy.] [Syllabus available online.]
  • Introduction to Environmental Studies (Winter Quarter 2012).
  • Nature and the City: Focal Point Seminar (Winter and Spring Quarters 2012). [This course is constructed as an interdisciplinary investigation of the usual dichotomy between the city and nature. We look at scientific studies from urban ecology as well as a novel by J.G. Ballard and end the course with Bruno Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern.] [Syllabus available online.]

Adjunct Lecturer, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham.

Teaching Assistant for Dr. Conor Cunningham, Philosophy of Religion, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham, Spring Semester 2008.

Teaching Assistant for Dr. Michael Mack, Introduction to the Study of Religion, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham, Spring Semester 2008.

Books
A Non-Philosophical Theory of Nature: Ecologies of Thought, New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. [AUFS Book Event.]

Articles and Chapters

Some drafts of articles are available online at my Academia.edu page.

‘Against Tradition to Liberate Tradition: Weaponized Apophaticism and Gnostic Refusal’. Angelaki (Forthcoming 2014).

‘Humiliated in Language: On Translation and Taqiyya’. The Enigmatic Absolute: Speculation in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion. Edited by Joshua Ramey and Matthew Haar Farris. Surrey: Ashgate, 2015.

‘Post-Secularism’. Reading the Abrahamic Faiths: Rethinking Religion and Literature. Edited by Emma Mason. New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2014.

‘Nature Deserves to Be Side by Side with the Angels: Nature and Messianism by way of  Non-Islam’. Angelaki (Forthcoming 2014).

‘”Who do you say that I am?”: Secular Christologies in Contemporary French Philosophy’. Analecta Hermeneutica 4 (2013). [Available online.]

‘Laruelle and the Messiah before the Saints’. Postmodern Saints of France. Edited by Colby Dickinson. New York and London: Bloomsbury 2013.

‘The Speculative Angel’. Speculative Medievalisms: Discography. Edited by the Petropunk Collective. New York: Punctum Books, 2013. [Available online as part of an open-access book.]

‘The Ethical Relation of Bodies: Thinking with Spinoza Towards an Affective Ecology’. Spinoza Beyond Philosophy. Edited by Beth Lord. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012.

‘Thinking from the One: Science and the Ancient Philosophical Figure of the One’. Laruelle and Non-Philosophy. Edied by John Mullarkey and Anthony Paul Smith. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012.

‘A Stumbling Block to the Jews and Folly to the Greeks: Non-Philosophy and Philosophy’s Absolutes’. Analecta Hermeneutica 3 (2012). [Available online.]

‘The Judgment of God and the Immeasurable: Political Theology and Organizations of Power’. Political Theology  12.1 (2011): pp. 69-86.

‘The Philosopher and the Heretic’. Translator’s Introduction to François Laruelle’s Future Christ: A Lesson in Heresy. London and New York: Continuum, 2010.

‘What Can Be Done with Religion?: Non-Philosophy and the Future of Philosophy of Religion’. After the Postsecular and the Postmodern: New Essays in Continental Philosophy of Religion. Edited by Anthony Paul Smith and Daniel Whistler. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010. [Available online.]

‘Too Poor for Measure: Working with Negri on Poverty and Fabulation’ w/ Daniel Colucciello Barber. Journal of Cultural and Religious Theory (2010). [Available online.]

“Philosophy and Ecosystem: Towards a Transcendental Ecology”. Polygraph 22, (2010): pp. 65-82.

‘Towards Believing in this World: On the Ecology of the Actual and the Virtual’. SubStance, 38.3, (April 2010): pp. 101-112.

Translations
Books

François Laruelle, Introduction to Non-Marxism. Minneapolis: Univocal, Forthcoming 2015.

François Laruelle in conversation with Phillippe Petit, Intellectuals and Power: The Insurrection of the Victim. Cambridge: Polity, 2014.

François Laruelle. Principles of Non-Philosophy. w/ Nicola Rubczak. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013.

François Laruelle, Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy. w/ Drew S. Burk. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2012.

François Laruelle. Future Christ: A Lesson in Heresy. London and New York: Continuum, 2010.

Articles and Chapters

Gilles Grelet, ‘Proletarian Gnosis’. A City of Heretics: François Laruelle’s Non-Philosophy and Its Variants. A special issue of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. Forthcoming 2014.

François, Laruelle, ‘Principles for a Generic Ethics’. A City of Heretics: François Laruelle’s Non-Philosophy and Its Variants. A special issue of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. Forthcoming 2014.

François Laruelle, ‘Philosophy and Non-Philosophy’, ‘From the First to the Second Non-Philosophy’ and ‘The Non-Philosophical Paradigm’. w/ Nicola Rubczak. From Decision to Heresy: Selected Writings on Non-Philosophy. Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2013.

François Laruelle, ‘Gender Fiction’, Foreword to Katerina Kolozova, Cut of the Real: Subjectivity in Poststructuralist Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.

Edited Volumes

A City of Heretics: François Laruelle’s Non-Philosophy and Its Variants. A special issue of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. Forthcoming 2014.

Gilles Deleuze, Spiritual Scientist: An AUFS Book Event. Edited by Anthony Paul Smith and Joshua Ramey. Brooklyn: Punctum Books, Forthcoming 2014.

Laruelle and Philosophy. Edited by John Mullarkey and Anthony Paul Smith. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012.

After the Postsecular and the Postmodern: New Essays in Continental Philosophy of Religionarue. Edited by Anthony Paul Smith and Daniel Whistler. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010. [Editors’ Introduction available online.]

Scholarly Book Profiles and Reviews
‘Review Essay of Jacob Taubes, Occidental Eschatology and From Cult to Culture.’ Historical Materialism (Forthcoming 2015).

‘Review of Michael Naas, Miracle and Machine: Jacques Derrida and the Two Sources of Religion, Science, and the Media’. Derrida Today (Forthcoming 2014).

‘Review of Pamela Sue Anderson, Re-Visioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion: Reason, Love and Epistemic Locatedness’. Theology and Sexuality (Forthcoming 2014).

‘Review of John D. Caputo and Linda Martín Alcoff (eds.), St. Paul Among the Philosophers’. The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 42.3 (October 2011).

‘Review of Michael Lewis, Heidegger beyond Deconstruction: On Nature’. The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 40.1 (January 2009), pp. 98-111.

‘Review of Alberto Toscano, The Theatre of Production: Philosophy and Individuation between Kant and Deleuze.’ Journal of Cultural and Religious Theory 9.3 (Fall 2008), pp. 49-52 [available online].

‘Review Essay of Peter Hallward, Out of this World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation.’ Angelaki 12.1 (April 2007), pp. 151-156.

‘Profile of Creston Davis, John Milbank, and Slavoj Žižek (eds.), Theology and the Political: The New Debate.’ Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 8.2 (Spring 2007), pp. 214-217 [available online].

Invited Lectures

‘”Will nothing ever be with nothing ever again?”: The Theological Construction of Personhood and Its Negation within the Limits of Race Alone’, Keynote address at the “Phenomenological Personhood: Scientific, Theological, Political” conference, The New York Phenomenology Group, The New School, March 2014.

Panelist for ‘Post-Non-Post’, York University, November 2013.

‘Failure and Victimology: On Laruelle’s Mutation of Marxism’, Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism, University of Western Ontario, November 2013.

‘Islamic Mysticism and Contemporary Philosophy’, Guest Lecture for Prof. Simon Critchley and Dr. Eugene Thacker’s ‘Mysticism’ Graduate Seminar, The New School, November 2013.

‘Honesty is a hindrance when you want to be what is true: Taqiyya and Contemporary Philosophy’, Humanities Guest Speakers Series, Rowan University, April 2013.

‘Translation and Gingivitis’, Blnkt Speaker Series, Philadelphia, Feburary 2013. [Audio available online.]

‘Faux amis?: François Laruelle and the Speculative Turn’, Dublin Unit for Speculative Thought Speaker Series, Dublin, January 2013. [Audio available online.]

‘Victims over Victors: Laruelle’s Ethical Theory’, Liverpool Forum for European Philosophy and the Association of Continental Philosophy of Religion, Liverpool Hope University, December 2012. [Audio available online.]

‘An Introduction to Non-Philosophy’, Guest Lecture for Dr. Simon O’Sullivan’s ‘The Production of Subjectivity’ MA Course, Goldsmiths College, December 2012.

‘Aesthetics, or the Performation of Non-Philosophy’, Abandoned Projectors: A Pavilion Forum, Pavilion, Leeds Art Gallery, November 2012. [Audio available online.]

‘Liberating Lived Experience from the Thought-World: François Laruelle and the Work of Non-Philosophy’, The After-Life of Phenomenology Workshop, Northwestern University’s Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities and Department of Philosophy, October 2012.

“The Speculative Angel”, Speculative Medievalisms: A Laboratory-Atelier, January 2011. [Audio available online.]

“The Perversity of Nature: Can we bring science and the humanities together?”, DePaul University’s Institute for Nature and Culture, November 2010.

‘Is the City a Machine for the Making of Gods’, Apple 6 by Vaux, London, July 2010. [Audio available online.]

‘What Can Be Done with Religion?: François Laruelle’s Non-Philosophy and the Future of Philosophy of Religion’, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham, March 2010.

‘The History of Non-Philosophy: Or, What is Behind the Move from the First to the Second Non-Philosophy?’, Symposium on Non-Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick, March 2010.

‘”Nature is not…”: Apophatic Ontologies of Nature’, Department of Politics, Philosophy and International Relations, University of the West of England, February 2009.

‘A Science of Philosophy: Introduction to Non-Philosophy’, Philosophy Society, University of Dundee, January 2009.

Conference Presentations

‘The Real and I: On Hallaj and the Tradition of Islamic Immanence’, American Academy of Religion, Baltimore, MD, November 2013. [Audio available online.]

‘Rejecting the World in the Name of Man: On François Laruelle’s Gnostic Mysticism’, Mystical Theology: Eruptions from France, All Hallows College, Dublin, January 2013. [Audio available online.]

‘Creatural Resistance: The Book of Job and Ecological Niche Theory’, The Society for Literature, Arts, and Science, Milwaukee, WI, September 2012. [Audio available online.]

‘Generic Taqiyya as Condition for Contemporary Mysticism’, Absolute Mysticism Panel, Thinking the Absolute: Speculation, Philosophy and the End of Religion, Liverpool Hope University, July 2012. [Audio available online.]

Panelist for ‘The Secular and the Speculative: Exploring Themes from Anthony Paul Smith’s and Daniel Whistler’s After the Postsecular and the Postmodern: New Essays in Continental Philosophy of Religion’, The American Academy of Religion General Conference, San Francisco, November 2011. [Audio available online.]

“From the Fractured One of Shi’ism: On a Speculative Theory of Concealment and Dissimulation”, Speculative Philosophies and Religious Practices: New Directions in the Philosophy of Religion and Post-Secular Practical Theology, University of Chester, June 2011. [Audio available online.]

“The Poverty of Nature: What does Nature have to do with Liberation?”, Religion & Liberation: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Durham University, December 2010. [Audio available online.]

‘The Ethical Relation of Bodies: Thinking with Spinoza Towards an Affective Ecology’, Spinoza and Bodies, Spinoza Research Network Conference, University of Dundee, September 2009. [Audio available online.]

‘Shooting the Animal: On Animal-Philosophy and Film-Philosophy’, Second Annual Film-Philosophy Conference, University of Dundee, July 2009.

‘”Nature is not…”: An Apophatic Critique of Nature’, The American Academy of Religion General Conference, Chicago, November 2008. [Audio available online.]

‘Heresy, Mysticism, and the Struggle for Utopia: On the Importance of Religion for François Laruelle’s Non-Philosophy’,  2nd Annual Conference in Continental Philosophy of Religion, Oxford University, September 2008.

‘The Damp Earth – The Mother of God: Nature, Divinity, and the Life beyond Reason’, The Grandeur of Reason, Centre of Theology and Philosophy, Rome, September 2008.

‘Believing in this World: Towards a Philosophy of Religion after Deleuze’, What is Philosophy after Deleuze?, University of Dundee, April 2008.

Panelist for ‘The Political and the Religious: Exploring Recent Turns’, The American Academy of Religion General Conference, San Diego, November 2007.

‘The Earth Hidden Within the World: Phenomenology and Sophiology’, 1st Annual Conference in Continental Philosophy of Religion, Oxford University in association with the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion, September 2007.

‘On Poverty in Negri’, w/ Daniel Colucciello Barber, European Consortium for Political Research, Università di Pisa, September 2007

‘Immanence and Religion: Theological Determination, Vital Forces, and the Return of the Religious.’ Theory, Faith, Culture: An International Interdisciplinary Conference, Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University, July 2007.

‘The Vital Practice of Religion: Or, How Religion Becomes Resistance.’ NEXUS: An Interdisciplinary Conference, Department of English, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, April 2006.

Interviews

“Interview with Liam Jones“, Figure/Ground, February 2013

“Interview with Derick Varn“, The (Dis)Loyal Opposition to Modernity, November 2012.

“After the Postsecular“, Anthony Paul Smith and Daniel Whistler interviewed by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, August 2010.

Fellowships and Awards
Overseas Research Scholarship, School of Humanities, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham, 2007-2010.

Building Experience and Skills Travel Scholarship, Graduate School, University of Nottingham, May 15th – July 1st, 2009.

Responding to Excellence in the Arts Postgraduate Scholarship, School of Humanities, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham, 2006-2007.

Research Fellow, Institute for Nature and Culture, DePaul University, 2004-Current.

Service

Co-organizer and co-founder, La Salle Lectures in Religion and Culture, 2013-current.

Co-organizer, François Laruelle’s Non-Philosophy: Theology, Gnosticism, and Theory, University of Nottingham, March 5th 2010. [Audio available online.]

Research Coordinator, Arts & Humanities Research Agenda, Institute for Nature and Culture, DePaul University, May – July 2009.

Founder, Dialogue Postgraduate Seminar Series, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham, September 2008-Current.

Co-organizer, Eclectic Criticism Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Conference, University of Nottingham, May 2008.

Languages
French (reading and translation).
Latin (reading).

Professional Associations
American Academy of Religion
International Association for Environmental Philosophy