Dr. Lucio Privitello is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Coordinator of the Philosophy and
Religion Program (fall 2010 through spring 2014), Tsantes Endowed professor of Ancient
Greek Philosophy, past President of the Classical Humanities Society of South Jersey
(CHSSJ), (from fall 2010 to spring 2012), past Zeta Chapter faculty Advisor for the
Philosophical Honors Society Phi Sigma Tau at Stockton, (2006-2010) and Fellow of
the ICHS and The Examined Life, Lucio Angelo Privitello holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy
from Villanova University (2003), an M.A. in Philosophy from Villanova (2001), an
M.A. in Philosophy from Temple University (1986), and a B.F.A. in Sculpture from the
Rhode Island School of Design (1981). In Italy he earned a Diploma Superiore in Ceramics
and Design from the Art Institute of Grammichele, Sicily (1977), and was an apprentice
in painting and sculpture for five years with Maestro Giuseppe Benassi in Parma, Italy.
It has always been a dream to share my cultural background to its fullest. In 1972,
while living and studying in Sicily, I was introduced to my first text in the history
of philosophy. The text was Plato’s Republic, Book VII and I was sitting with my uncle, Professor Gino Coppoletta, on the slopes
of the volcano Etna. Through him my introduction to Plato, Empedocles, and the native
Sophist Gorgias came alive amidst the backdrop of a mountain of lava where against
so many odds plush vegetation breaks through and lives are lived against the shoulders
of destructive and creative power. What an ideal classroom those slopes proved to
be. It is the apprenticeship to such forces that I seek to create and share with my
classes. I am convinced, as George Santayana put it, that “half of our standards
come from our first masters, and the other half from our first loves”. I have been
extremely lucky in both these departments, and work my standards because of their
lasting lessons in an artistic-philosophical form of life. I have lectured and facilitated
mini-seminars for The Examined Life series, entitled “Education and the Art of Teaching:
The Apprenticeship in Ideals in Plato’s Socrates”, along with a presentation on Plato’s
use of fables. I have also presented a lecture for the Classical Humanities Society
of South Jersey, and spoke on Hesiod’s Theogony, entitled “In Union with Love: A Mytho-genealogy of Eros in Hesiod’s Theogony”. On March 26, 2011, I present a CHSSJ lecture entitled: “The Presence and Structure
of the Classics in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time”. These venues are extremely productive due to the roots and fruits of having a community
of friends committed to Hellenic Studies, and scholarship here at Stockton. I am happy
to continue my relation with the CHSSJ, and continue to contribute as a faculty member
and fellow of The Pappas Interdisciplinary Center for Hellenic Studies with ICHS Director
Prof. Papademetriou, and ICHS colleagues, where I remain interested in proposing,
organizing, and guiding a study trip to Sicily. My publications range from articles
in classical American philosophy (Chauncey Wright), French philosophy and literature
(Georges Bataille), Italian Cinema, Sicilian Literature, and French philosophy (Deleuze/Visconti/Lampedusa),
along with International and National Conference presentations in Ancient Greek Philosophy,
Pedagogy, Aesthetics, and Humor Studies, and classical American philosophy. Within
the Philosophy and Religion Program I teach Ancient Greek Philosophy, History of Modern
Western Philosophy, Introduction to Philosophy, and Senior Seminars, one entitled
“Volumes and Edges in Contemporary Philosophy”, and most recently, “Parmenides: Philosophy
and/as Law”. I have run, and continue to run Independent Studies (Hegel, Hobbes, Sade/Masoch,
Creativity and Creations, Vico/Dilthey/Bourdieu and the Social Sciences, and Phenomenology
and the Arts), as well as a specialty course on Nietzsche, and a course proposed on
Leibniz. My General Arts and Humanities courses (GAH) are “The Ways of Love”, “Humor’s
Logic and Laughter’s Wisdom”, “In the Animal’s Image”, and “Philosophies of Life and
Death: : True Blood and Philosophy”. A few recent lectures and publications have been: “The Voluptuous
Immobility of Sicilian Temporality: Il Gattopardo.” Lecture presentation for the Romance Language Department, University of Pennsylvania,
and the Italian Consulate General (2010), “Teaching Marcuse: A Critical Pedagogy of
Aesthetic Dimensions.” presented at the Marcuse conference, University of Pennsylvania
(2012), the publication of “Josiah Royce and the Problems of Philosophical Pedagogy,
(Part 2)” The Transactions of the C.S. Peirce Society, Spring, Vol. 46, No. 2, pp.300-320 (2011), and “Josiah Royce and the Problems of
Philosophical Pedagogy, (Part 1)” The Transactions of the C.S. Peirce Society, Winter, Vol. 46, No. 1, pp.111-142 (2010). In 2011, and from the experience of teaching
my GAH classes “Philosophies of Life and Death: True Blood and Philosophy”, I asked each student to focus on one paper that was perfected into
a book chapter on the issues of life, death, immortality, love, and mythology and
that used scholarly texts to unfold issues in the HBO series True Blood, and published the volume: Blood Type: Writ(h)ing In & On True Blood, Vol. 1. (Volume editor), (Margate, NJ: Comteq Publishing). Due to this publication
we were in a feature article in Press of Atlantic City, July 30, 2011, Section B, pp. B1, B3. All sales went into a Stockton Scholarship
Fund. There will be a second, and final volume of Blood Type: Writ(h)ing In & On True Blood, published in 2014.