I am a tenured philosophy professor and trans woman living in Northern California. I own and run Renee Press, a small-batch publisher specializing in underrepresented or marginalized philosophy. When I am not teaching or counseling, I enjoy hiking and spending time with friends and family.
I believe in philosophy’s power to change minds and teach skills for living a meaningful life. I love teaching the philosophers who challenge conventional thinking, pull the rug out from under us, and force us to re-evaluate where we stand on an issue. As a tenured professor at Los Medanos College in California, I teach courses such as personhood and self, medical ethics, political philosophy, ethics of a good life, philosophy through film and literature, and introductory philosophy courses.
Over the last ten years, in response to feedback from these courses, I have worked on constructing a theory of meaning as a primary critique of the value-driven theories of self, ethics, and life that dominate contemporary society. While my interests are heterogeneous, my background focuses on existential and post-modern hermeneutic phenomenology.
