Emotions have a tendency to be all-consuming, confusing and complex. But for Vassar College’s newest tenure-track philosophy professor Kathryn Pendoley, the complex nature of human consciousness is exactly what drives her years of research on the philosophy of psychology and mind.
Pendoley began her career as an educator while in graduate school by working at Hunter College and Brooklyn College. The recently tenured professor will spend the fall semester of her third year at Vassar teaching two courses: Philosophical Questions and Philosophy of Science.
“Often, ‘Philosophy of Science’ students are coming from other majors, and they are bringing their different ideas and expertise about what is happening in different sciences,” explained Pendoley, who has been teaching the course for three years. “It has been really interesting to watch students with different starting assumptions. Vassar students are fantastic at talking with each other and really exchanging ideas, especially about these sorts of questions.”
Pendoley arrived in Poughkeepsie in the Fall 2021 as a Visiting Assistant Professor after receiving her Ph.D. in philosophy at the City University of New York in 2020, where she had dedicated her time to understanding the nature of emotion and how it is investigated through a neuroscientific lens.
“There is this intuition that your experience of emotion can be a big part of caring about having an experience at all because you care about how you feel, be it good or bad,” Pendoley says. “When I was first getting into philosophy of mind, I thought, ‘People are talking about consciousness, but they are not talking about their felt experience emotionally,’ so I wanted to think about that.”
For Pendoley, her knowledge of emotions informs more than just her research. While Pendoley encourages her students to remain devoted to their coursework, she also advises them to be mindful of their emotional states and to strive to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
“Vassar students are particularly good about remaining alive to the way that career can be connected with play,” Pendoley notes. “Philosophy can be so hard to read or think about, so when you’re immersed in something and you’re really working through it, it’s really important to remain alive to the parts of it that are really exciting to you, even through challenges.”
When she is not teaching or meeting with students, the professor spends her time on the Vassar campus furthering her research on the intersection of philosophy and emotion. Currently, Pendoley is in the process of drafting a research paper on the way that emotions operate within social contexts when oppression is present. In the Spring of 2023, Pendoley published a paper called “Stubborn Emotions, Stubborn Beliefs,” which focused on the enduring nature of both.
Outside of work, Pendoley enjoys hiking with her dog, Frankie, and walking in Vassar’s Preserve. She also workshops her poetry with friends, a pastime that impacts her instructional style.
“My group of friends has a way of listening very carefully and helping someone’s work grow, even if it is not a style you would choose,” Pendoley says. “I strive to always treat people like that. [Working with my friends] has helped me get better at listening to what someone else is trying to do and meeting it on its own terms.”
This school year, Pendoley aims to spend time discussing ideas with her colleagues and becoming better acquainted with the Vassar community.