Professor and Director Anna Söderquist
Anna Söderquist earned her PhD and MA from The New School for Social Research, and her BS from Northeastern University. She is a US-Denmark Fulbright Alumni (2013-14) and lived in Copenhagen for many years before moving to Northfield.
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Curriculum Vita
Student Interview with Anna Söderquist – Kiara Fitzpatrick ’25, 10/2022
Courses:
Fall 2023: PHIL 233, “Kierkegaard and Existentialism”
“An introduction to Kierkegaard’s work and to existentialism, this course emphasizes the aesthetic, ethical, and religious ‘stages on life’s way.’ Existential questions concerning the meaning of human existence, passion and faith, freedom and choice, despair, and the absurd are examined”
Spring 2023: PHIL 236, “History of Modern Philosophy”
“This course examines the development of Western philosophy in the 17th and 18th centuries, with a focus on the emergence of a distinctively modern sense of self. We look at the liberating, creative forces in this productive period through such thinkers as Descartes, Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, Pascal, Spinoza, Leibniz, Lady Masham, Rousseau, and Kant. And we ask: What epistemological and metaphysical commitments about the self and its world have we inherited? What are some of the problematic outcomes of modernity?”
Fall 2022: PHIL 233, “Kierkegaard & Existentialism”
“The course takes us into central ideas from the existential tradition, from the notion of human beings as essentially free, to the anxiety and despair we experience in the face of our freedom. We become familiar with thinkers such as Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Hannah Arendt. And we tap into art, film, and literature that open up existential themes in powerful ways. Throughout the course, we take seriously the existential call to see experiences of loss and meaninglessness as occasions to examine how we live. And we look at the roles of personal engagement and human relationships in the search for authentic existence.”
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