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About
Marist Fall 2026 Open House
Join us for a Fall Open House and see Marist for yourself. Explore our stunning riverfront campus, learn more about academics and admissions, and get a firsthand look at life as a Red Fox. Along the way, you'll hear from students, faculty, and staff about the opportunities, connections, and experiences that make Marist special. Register Below:
About
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Academics
Marist Fall 2026 Open House
Join us for a Fall Open House and see Marist for yourself. Explore our stunning riverfront campus, learn more about academics and admissions, and get a firsthand look at life as a Red Fox. Along the way, you'll hear from students, faculty, and staff about the opportunities, connections, and experiences that make Marist special. Register Below:
Academics
-
Admission & Financial Aid
Marist Fall 2026 Open House
Join us for a Fall Open House and see Marist for yourself. Explore our stunning riverfront campus, learn more about academics and admissions, and get a firsthand look at life as a Red Fox. Along the way, you'll hear from students, faculty, and staff about the opportunities, connections, and experiences that make Marist special. Register Below:
Admission & Financial Aid
-
Student Life
Marist Fall 2026 Open House
Join us for a Fall Open House and see Marist for yourself. Explore our stunning riverfront campus, learn more about academics and admissions, and get a firsthand look at life as a Red Fox. Along the way, you'll hear from students, faculty, and staff about the opportunities, connections, and experiences that make Marist special. Register Below:
Student Life
- Athletics
C.R. Muller
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
Director of Core/Liberal Studies
Bio
I am a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and the Director of the Core/Liberal Studies program at Marist. I started teaching full-time at Marist in 2011 and teach a wide range of courses: Philosophical Perspectives, First-Year Seminar: Family Matters, Knowledge and Reality, Foundations of American Social Thought, and Symbolic Logic. My academic interests are similarly wide-ranging, spanning racebending in fiction, cheap art, using play, playfulness and games to achieve pragmatic goals, and puppetry. My research is united under the question of how fiction, play, imagination, and art intersect with other aspects of our lives, such as political activism, queer identity, sexual agency, body image, race, and gender. In addition to my academic work, I enjoy running, biking, playing with my kids, writing sonnets, playing accordion, and walking on stilts at local parades and festivals.
Education
PhD, Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012|
MA, Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2007
MA, Philosophy, Tufts University, 2004
BA, English Literature, Swarthmore College, 2000
Research Interests/ Areas of Focus
Areas of Specialization: Aesthetics, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Language
Areas of Interest: Logic, American Philosophy, Philosophy of Gender, Philosophy of Race
Selected Publications
"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Punch?: The Predicament of Puppet Horror." In The Bride of the Philosophy of Horror, forthcoming 2027.
"Using Games to Scaffold Sexual Agency." APA Studies on Feminism and Philosophy, forthcoming Spring 2027.
"Play and Playfulness as Queer Resistance." APA Studies in LGBTQ+ Philosophy, forthcoming Fall 2026.
"How to Become an Aesthetic Explorer: Three Games." Debates in Aesthetics 20, no. 2 (2026): 75-88. https://debatesinaesthetics.org/debates-in-aesthetics-vol-20-no-2/
"In Defense of Racebending." Contemporary Aesthetics, 23 (2025): https://contempaesthetics.org/2025/11/17/in-defense-of-racebending/.
"Cheap Art and Creative Activism." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 81, no. 2 (2023): 269-279. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpad009.
"The Objective Value of Appreciating Beauty and Living Morally: Reply to Hooker" (with Camelia Moczydlowski). Journal of Practical Ethics, April 2, 2019. https://www.jpe.ox.ac.uk/letters/the-objective-value-of-appreciating-beauty-and-living-morally-reply-to-hooker/
"Counting Again" (with David Sanson and Ben Caplan). Grazer Philosophische Studien, 94, nos. 1-2 (2017): 69-82. https://doi.org/10.1163/18756735-000017.
"Journaling and Pre-Theoretical Discussion as Inclusive Pedagogy." AAPT Studies in Pedagogy, 3: Inclusive Pedagogies (2017): 72-86. https://doi.org/10.5840/aaptstudies2017111729.
"Brutal Identity" (with Ben Caplan). In Fictional Objects, edited by Anthony Everett and Stuart Brock, 174-207. Oxford University Press, 2015.
"Exercises in Empathy: Commentary on Barnbaum." In Philosophy through Teaching, edited by Emily Esch, Kevin Hermberg, and Rory E. Kraft, Jr., 65-69. Philosophy Documentation Center, 2014.
"Against a Defense of Fictional Realism" (with Ben Caplan). The Philosophical Quarterly 64, no. 255 (2014): 211-224. https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqt043.
Selected Presentations
"Play, Pretense, and Power," American Society for Aesthetics, Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD, October 2025.
"White Skin, Black Masks: Race in Puppet Theater," American Society for Aesthetics, Rocky Mountain Division, Santa Fe, NM, July 2025.
"Imagining Transformative Experience," American Philosophical Society, Eastern Division, New York City, NY, January 2025.
"Are Racially Diverse Fictions Anti-Racist?" American Society for Aesthetics, Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, November 2023.
"How to Have Fun in Your Online or Hybrid Course," American Association of Philosophy Teachers, Annual Conference, Zoom, July 22, 2020.
"Racebending in Fiction: Does the Character Survive?" American Society for Aesthetics, Eastern Division, Philadelphia, PA, April 5, 2019.
"Grounding Fictional Objects," Canadian Philosophical Association Annual Congress, Montreal, Quebec, June 2018.
"Gender- and Race-Bending: Does the Character Survive?", Workshop on the Metaphysics of Art and Music, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, February 2017.
"Cast of Characters: The Temptation of Realism about Characters in Theater," American Society for Aesthetics, Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA, November 2016.
"'I'm a Real Boy!': Predication and Fictional Characters," American Philosophical Association, Central Division, Chicago, IL, February 2014.
