Karen Detlefsen is Professor of Philosophy and Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also Affiliated Faculty, Alice Paul Center and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, and is Founding Director of Penn’s Project for Philosophy for the Young.
Dr. Detlefsen’s research focuses on early modern philosophy, including the history of philosophy of science, the history and philosophy of education, and women in the history of philosophy. She has published on a wide range of figures, including Astell, Cavendish, Conway, Descartes, Du Châtelet, Hobbes, Leibniz, Malebranche, and Wolff, covering topics in metaphysics, the natural sciences, ethics and political philosophy. She is also engaged with students and teachers in the Philadelphia Public School District bringing philosophy into pre-college classrooms. She has held research grants from the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Society, the Australian Research Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Her current research interest focuses on the philosophy of Emilie Du Châtelet: This started as a collaborative project with Andrew Janiak (Duke University), which received past funding from the American Council of Learned Societies. Dr. Janiak and Dr. Detlefsen continue collaborations on Du Châtelet’s natural philosophy. She is also working on her engagement with some questions in value theory (human happiness and virtue, for example), as well as her uses of various genres and methods to produce philosophy. Across all projects on Du Châtelet, they are concerned with the gendered context in which she forged her philosophy.
Dr. Detlefsen’s teaching interests include a wide range of course in the history of philosophy, global philosophy, and publicly-engaged philosophy (including public engagement components). She also enjoys opportunities to co-teach with colleagues across Penn, including regularly offering courses in the Robert K. Johnson Integrated Studies Program.
