Peter S. Fosl

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Peter Stanley Fosl (born Peter Stanley Wasel on March 15, 1963) is Professor of Philosophy at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, and the winner of a 2006 Acorn Award for outstanding professor in Kentucky.

[edit] Education and professional life

Fosl graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Bucknell University in 1985 with Bachelor of Arts degrees in both philosophy and economics; he spent the Lent Term of 1984 at the London School of Economics. In 1986, Fosl became a Woodruff Fellow at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, winning Emory's Award for Excellence in Graduate Research in 1989 and taking a Master of Arts in Philosophy the following year. During the 1990-91 academic year, Fosl was a Fulbright Student at the University of Edinburgh. In 1992 Fosl received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Emory, writing his dissertation under the direction of Donald W. Livingston.

From 1992-1998 Fosl worked as an assistant professor at Hollins College outside Roanoke, Virginia, where he was tenured and promoted to associate professor in early 1998. Later that same year, Fosl took an appointment as associate professor of philosophy at Transylvania University where he received a Bingham Award for Teaching Excellence; he has chaired the philosophy program there since 1999. In 2004, Fosl was promoted to full professor and in 2005 named Transylvania's Professor of the Year. From 2004-2006, Fosl was Transylvania's Bingham-Young Professor, a circulating endowed professorship, and director of the university's Bingham-Young program on Liberty, Security and Justice.

In 2006, Fosl was honored with the Acorn Award as outstanding professor in the state of Kentucky at a four-year public or private university (a second Acorn recognizes a Kentucky community college professor). Fosl's award noted "[t]he outstanding quality of his teaching, expertise in his fields of study, the originality of courses and scholarship, and the role he plays as a mentor...."^[1] That same year he was named a Kentucky Colonel.

Fosl is co-editor of the two-volume British Philosophers 1500-1799 and 1800-2000 (published by Thomson Gale) and co-author with Julian Baggini of The Philosopher's Toolkiit and The Ethics Toolkit (both published by Blackwell Publishing).

Fosl is the author of various articles and books on the history of philosophy, skepticism, David Hume, the philosophy of religion, ethics, and philosophical method. He is a contributing editor to The Philosophers' Magazine, on the editorial board of Transcendent Philosophy, and a panelist with AskPhilosophers.org.

[edit] Personal life

The grandchild of Lithuanian immigrants Piatras Wasiliauskus and Sarah Yorkis as well as Windish-Slovenian immigrant Theresa Colver and Thomas Colver, Fosl hails from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, home of Bethlehem Steel. His parents, Marian R. Colver Wasel and Joseph H. Wasel, resided in Butztown, PA.

Fosl is married to Catherine Fosl, associate professor of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Louisville, director of the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research, and author of Subversive Southerner, the biography of civil rights activist and author Anne Braden. Fosl, né "Peter Stanley Wasel", combined his surname with that of "Catherine Foster" when they married. He resides in Louisville, Kentucky, with his son and stepson. He remains a member of the Louisville Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (or Quakers).