September

Professor’s Room: Adam Graves

An occasional series that gets within the inner sanctums of academia – because clever people have interesting rooms.

By Cory Phare

September 13, 2017

Adam Graves is meta. Whether it’s referential student organization promotion or an Inception-like approach to this very Early Bird feature, the associate professor of philosophy and director of the Denver Project for Humanistic Inquiry makes the case for thinking – about thinking.

It’s no surprise, then, that his office environs would provoke similar ponderings of perspicacity.

Really makes you think, doesn’t it?

1. I’ve got posters of some of my favorite films up around the office. Carol Reed’s “The Third Man” is a film noir starring one of my artistic heroes, Orson Welles. It was shot on location in Vienna after the second World War.

2. My wife is an artist whose work consists of paintings and mixed-media installations. This is a catalogue of some of her recent work. One of the pieces is currently on display in a gallery in New York, and she’s got something in the works for next year at the Center for Visual Art. 

3. This is unapologetic product placement for D-Phi. We did a live videocast with Noam Chomsky where students got to ask him questions about the significance of the humanities and the nature of language.

4. These are artifacts I brought back from a solo expedition through the remote Asmat region of Western New Guinea (then Irian Jaya), when I was 17 years old. Currency wasn’t used in the region at the time, so I obtained them through trade. On the left is a bamboo horn that the Asmat used during raids, and on the right is a dagger made of bone.

5. A few summers ago, someone left this two volume, German edition of Nietzsche’s "Werke" on my desk, and I’ve never been able to identify the giver. I highlight them here in the unlikely event of that person reading this feature – Danke!

6. My mom gave me this plaque that reads: “Sarcasm: A free service I offer.” I found it amusing because (a) I don’t provide any free services and (b) I’m never sarcastic.

7. This is a recursion of a previous Professor’s Room, and I have nothing to say except it was hard to resist.

p.s. Calling all faculty and staff members…
Do you have an interesting office – and would you like to feature it in our series? Just email Cory Phare.