Emily FitzGerald is an assistant professor of Humanities. She teaches courses centered on both Western and Eastern philosophical and religious traditions that cater to all majors and interests. Her research and teaching are centered on embodiment, an inherently interdisciplinary topic couched in phenomenology that stresses the importance of recognizing and celebrating our multifaceted enmeshment with our worlds and each other. Within this focus, she frequently leverages her 2+ decades of experience as a martial artist to consider how our embodiment both affects and is affected by everyday interactions with movement, technology, and materiality.
Emily also serves as a Faculty Support Fellow through the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), where she helps create and host events and leads one-on-one mentorship conversations with faculty for pedagogical development.
Select Publications and Presentations
- “The Human in the Machine: Reimagining Algorithms through Embodied Ethics” at the APA Central Division Meeting, 2026
- “Class Discussion, Epistemic Justice, and Trust in an Epistemically Diverse Classroom” co-presented with Dr. Emma Prendergast at the AAPT Central Division Meeting, 2026
- “Fragrant Imagination: The Vimalakirti Sutra as Speculative Fiction” at the annual AAR National Meeting, 2025
- “Nope – How to Refuse the Cannibalistic Culture of the Spectacle” – chapter in The Real Aftermath: How COVID-19 Changed the Way Science Fiction Is Conceived, Read, and Interpreted from Vernon Press, 2025
- “Imagining Embodiment in Karate Kata” – Journal of Martial Arts Studies, 2024
- “The Mother, the Daughter, and the Wholly Monster: Personhood in Monstress” – chapter in Horror Comics and Religion: Essays on Framing the Monstrous and the Divine from McFarland & Company, 2024
- “How to Practice Embodied Pedagogy” – the American Philosophical Association Blog, 2024
- “Performativity and Potentiality in Karate Kata Practice” – International Conference for the Centre for Phenomenology in South Africa, 2023
Upcoming Courses
- World Religions: Asian Traditions
- Existentialism
- Tech Ethics
- Phenomenology