Felicia Nimue Ackerman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Felicia Nimue Ackerman (born 1947) is an American author, poet, and philosopher and professor of philosophy at Brown University, as of 2020.[1] She is a prolific writer of letters to the editor of The New York Times.[2]

Early life and education[]

Ackerman was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1947.[3]

She received her BA, summa cum laude, from Cornell University in 1968, and earned her PhD from the University of Michigan in 1976. Regarding her first name, she writes "Felicia Nimue is a double first name like Mary Jane, and I'm called the whole thing".[4]

Selected publications[]

Her research interests center on the philosophy of literature, bioethics, and moral psychology:

  • Ackerman, Felicia Nimue, "Patient and Family Decisions about Life-Extension and Death", in Rosamond Rhodes; Leslie P. Francis; Anita Silvers (15 April 2008). The Blackwell Guide to Medical Ethics. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 5–. ISBN 978-0-470-68060-5.
  • Ackerman, Felicia Nimue (2009-02-12). "Death is a Punch in the Jaw: Life‐Extension and its Discontents". The Oxford Handbook of Bioethics. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199562411.003.0015.

According to Oxford Handbooks Online Scholarly Research Review, "her short stories on bioethical themes have appeared in Commentary, Mid‐American Review, Prize Stories 1990: The O. Henry Awards (Doubleday, 1990), and Clones and Clones: Facts and Fantasies About Human Cloning (Norton, 1998)."[5]

She has published fifteen short stories, including:

  • "Flourish Your Heart in This World", in M. Nussbaum and C. Sunstein (eds.), Clones and Clones: Facts and Fantasies about Human Cloning (Norton, 1998): 310–31, reprinted in American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and Medicine, Spring 1999: 134–40.
  • "The Other Two Sides", in S. Hales (ed.), What Philosophy Can Tell You About Your Cat (Open Court, 2008): 89-100, reprinted in American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and Medicine, Spring 2009: 18–21, and in Italian translation, Il Gatto e la Filosofia, ed. Steven D. Hales, trans. F. Verzotto (Colla Editore, 2011).

She writes a monthly op-ed column for The Providence Journal.[6]

Ackerman is also a frequent letter writer to The New York Times, especially on subjects relating to the treatment of the elderly.[4][7][8] Andrew Marantz of The Atlantic says letters editor Thomas Feyer named Ackerman the top contender as record holder for the most letters published, exceeding 200 letters since 1987.[4] In a WNYC interview, Feyer also noted Ackerman writes as many as five letters to the editor per day.[9]

Awards[]

From January to June 1985, she served as Senior Fulbright Lecturer in Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.of The Atlantic

In 1988–89, she served as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.[6]

In 1990, her short story, "The Forecasting Game: a story" was published in the annual Prize Stories 1990 O. Henry Awards collection.[10]

References[]

  1. ^ "Felicia Nimue Ackerman | Philosophy". www.brown.edu. Retrieved 2020-10-18.
  2. ^ Garfield, Bob (April 25, 2014). "Dear Editor". National Public Radio. Archived from the original on January 21, 2014. Retrieved September 18, 2020.
  3. ^ "U.S. Public Records Index, 1950-1993, Volume 2". search.ancestry.com. Retrieved 2018-06-14.
  4. ^ a b c Marantz, Andrew (April 9, 2014), "All the letters that are fit to print", The New Yorker
  5. ^ Ackerman, Felicia Nimue (2009-02-12). "Death is a Punch in the Jaw: Life‐Extension and its Discontents". Oxford Handbook of Bioethics. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199562411.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199562411-e-015 – via Oxford Handbooks Online.
  6. ^ a b Felicia Ackerman profile, brown.edu; accessed March 31, 2017.
  7. ^ Heft-Luthy, Sam (November 14, 2012), "150 letters later, bioethics prof still offers wit and wisdom", Brown Daily Herald
  8. ^ Summers, Nick (November 22, 2006), "New N.Y. Times Policy Requires All Letters to Be From Single Brown Professor", Ivygate, archived from the original on December 28, 2014
  9. ^ Garfield, Bob (April 24, 2014). "Dear Editor | On The Media". WNYC Studios. Retrieved 2018-06-14.
  10. ^ Abrahams, William Miller (1990). Prize stories 1990 : the O. Henry awards. Internet Archive. New York : Doubleday.
Retrieved from ""