Carlin Romano is a critic-at-large for the The Chronicle of Higher Education and a lecturer in Philosophy and Media Theory at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication.[1] He was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in criticism, cited for "bringing new vitality to the classic essay across a formidable array of topics." During a spell at Bennington College he taught philosophy.[2]
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One of 815 Fulbright Scholars in 2002, he lectured at Smolny State University, St. Petersburg[3] and was a Joan Shorenstein Center fellow in Fall 1993,.[4] Romano was a Milena Jesenska fellow in 2009 at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna.[5] In 1989 Romano became one of 1900 to receive an Eisenhower Fellowship; in his case to travel to Israel. [6]
From 1981 onwards, Romano reviewed books about philosophers for The Village Voice Literary Supplement and his writing has also appeared in The Nation, The New Yorker, Harper's, The Times Literary Supplement, Tikkun, Book Forum, Salon, Slate, International Herald Tribune, Lingua Franca, Columbia Journalism Review, and Die Welt.[7]
Romano contributed an article on Umberto Eco to Oxford University Press's The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. In 1993, Basil Blackwell Ltd published Danto and His Critics (edited by Mark Rollins) and included an essay by Romano entitled, "Looking Beyond the Visible: The Case of Arthur C. Dantwo," on the subject of Arthur Danto, who won the Book Critics Circle Prize for Criticism in 1990.[8] In his essay, Romano sets up a dichotomy between "pragmatism" and "Hegelianism" and finds statements in Danto's books that he claims fit into one of these two schools of thought. The Institution of Philosophy: A Discipline in Crisis? (published 1989 by Open Court, edited by Avner Cohen and Marcelo Dascal), includes a proposal by Romano to set up a World Court of Philosophy in which appointed philosophers would stipulate philosophical conclusions.[9][10] He wrote about G. C. Lichtenberg in the July 2004 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.[11]
Book reviews by Romano include one for the The Weekly Standard published in October, 2001,[12] The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet for the Times Literary Supplement,[13] and a three-paragraph review for the March 13, 1995 issue of The New Yorker.
The 18 October 2009 issue of The Chronicle article by Romano entitled "Heil Heidegger!" was highly critical of both the German philosopher's work and its continued acceptance amongst American academics and intellectuals on account of Heidegger's past Nazi affiliations.[14] The article appeared at the same time as the publication in English of French philosopher Emmanuel Faye’s Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy in Light of the Unpublished Seminars of 1933-1935 (first published in 2005, in France), also highly critical of Heidegger for the same reason.[15] In his article, Romano calls on librarians to stop stocking the collected works of the German philosopher, which appear under the term Heidegger Gesamtausgabe. Romano's controversial article caused renewed public dialogue about the relation between a person's politics and the merit of their work.[16]
The publication of "the most controversial by far"[17] book review of Only Words, written by Romano, provoked a strong reaction with his description of himself imagining himself raping Catherine MacKinnon.[18] This performative counterexample to MacKinnon's apparent contention that a rape in words is equivalent to a rape in deeds intensified the debate about legal sanctions against pornography. Romano said in defense of this review, "The worst thing that can happen to a flamboyant claim is to be tested by a good example." [19]