Stephanie Ross Professor Emeritus
561 Lucas | 516-5634 | sross@umsl.edu | C.V.
Stephanie Ross received her B.A. from Smith College in 1971 and her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1977. Most of her research focuses on issues in the philosophy of art. In addition to a book on garden aesthetics, What Gardens Mean (University of Chicago Press, 1998), she has published articles on a range of topics including allusion, modern music, women and fiction, musical conducting, the death of art, landscape appreciation, and aesthetic qualities. She has also contributed invited encyclopedia entries and handbook articles on such topics as expression, the picturesque, and artistic style. Her book Two Thumbs Up: How Critics Aid Appreciation proposes a neo-Humean account of our transactions with works of art. The book explores the nature of critical disagreement and the prospects for realism in aesthetic by taking up questions like these: If you encounter a work of art and deem it to be amusing, colorful, bombastic, and original, does the work possess each of these qualities? Does it possess them in the same way? Can you convince others that this is the case? Is there a right way to appreciate each work of art? Are there experts who can guide us in these matters? What reason might we have to follow their advice? How should we seek them out? Might most of us manage only partial or imperfect appreciation of the art we encounter?
