My research concerns how art and creative practices broadly speaking engage us as cognitive and ethical 'works-in-progress'. I have a specific interest in literature and its philosophical and ethical roles. Issues I am currently working on include: how the exercise of aesthetic judgement contributes to status as a person, what we can have at stake in relation to fictional characters, and whether certain forms of humour have a morally interesting impact. Authors who are provoking some of this work include Thomas Hardy, Flannery O'Connor, Herman Melville, Nathaniel West, J. M. Coetzee, and Toni Morrison. I also have an ongoing interest in how to think about poetry and the range of experiential and intellectual demands it can place on readers.

Selected publications

• 'Caring about Characters', forthcoming in Philosophy and Literature.
• 'Beauty, Interest, and Autonomy', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70 (2), 2012.
  
• 'Literature and the Idea of Morality', in A Companion to the Philosophy of Literature, eds. Garry Hagberg and Walter Jost (Blackwell, 2010).
• 'Poetry and Cognition', in A Sense of the World: Fiction, Narrative and Knowledge, eds. John Gibson, Wolfgang Huemer, and Luca Pocci (Routledge, 2007).
• 'Artistic Value and Opportunistic Moralism', in Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, ed. Matthew Kieran (Blackwell, 2006).
• Philosophy of Literature: Contemporary and Classic Readings, co-edited with Dominic Lopes (Blackwell, 2004).
• 'Literary Fiction and the Philosophical Value of Detail', in Imagination, Philosophy, and the Arts, eds. Matthew Kieran and Dominic Lopes (Routledge, 2003).
• 'Images of Community in American Popular Culture,' co-authored with Nancy Potter, in Diversity and Community, ed. Philip Alperson (Blackwell, 2002).
• 'Art and Knowledge', in The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, eds. Berys Gaut and Dominic Lopes (Routledge, 2001).

• Reading Fiction and Conceptual Knowledge: Philosophical Thought in Literary Context, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56(4), 1998.

• Henry James: Making Moral Life Interesting, Henry James Review 18, 1997.

• 'Subtlety and Moral Vision in Fiction', Philosophy and Literature 19, 1995.

Selected book reviews

• British Journal of Aesthetics 2009, 49(2): review of Art, Emotion and Ethics by Berys Gaut
• Philosophy in Review 2009, XXIX(5): review of On Form: Poetry, Aestheticism and the Legacy of a Word by Angela Leighton
• Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008: review of Aesthetics and Literature by David Davies 
• British Journal of Aesthetics 2007, 47(2): review of Aesthetics, Imagination and the Unity of Experience by R. K. Elliott
• Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 2002, 60(2): review of Fiction and Metaphysics by Amie Thomasson

E-mail: eileen.john@warwick.ac.uk

2011-12 Summer Term office hour: Wed 9.30-10.30 am and by appointment

Office: Social Studies 2.59

Links to:

Textual Studies

MA module Literature and Knowledge

Centre for Research in Philosophy, Literature and the Arts

British Society of Aesthetics

American Society for Aesthetics