Michaela Tiller Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Ethics

Michaela Tiller

Programs

Bio

PhD, MA University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (Philosophy)
BA, Harvard College (Philosophy)

Areas of Expertise

Early modern (17th and 18th century) philosophy, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of religion, ethics, political philosophy

Courses I Teach: 

  • PH 103: Philosophy and the Good Life
  • PH 207: Philosophy of Religion
  • PH 270: Topics [Experience and Existence]
  • PH 273: Topics (EDI) [The Woman Question]
  • PH 321: Early Modern Philosophy [most recently Rethinking the Canon]
  • PH 327: Modern Philosophy (EDI) [most recently Margaret Cavendish]
  • PH 341: Justice, Fairness and Mercy
  • PH 361: Metaphysics
  • HU 102: The Modernizing World

"I love philosophy as a discipline because it asks us to think about the very act of thinking. Since everyone has beliefs and commitments, the questions we discuss are relevant to everyone's lived experience. My greatest joy in teaching is bringing life to texts and the figures who wrote them so that students can engage in debates spanning across centuries."

Current Research

The figures I write on are Catharine Trotter Cockburn, John Locke and Margaret Cavendish. I also maintain an interest in the work of Nicolas Malebranche and Zera Yacob. I am particularly interested in questions about the limits of human knowledge, the capacities of atypical perceivers and the nature of causal relations.

Recent News

  • I presented on ‘Cavendish & Crossdressing: On the Performance and Embodiment of Gender in English Drama’ at the University of Southampton Conference on Margaret Cavendish’s Philosophy of Literature in June 2025. This presentation is linked to a current project treating her literary works as a type of philosophical thought experiment.
  • My paper ‘Catharine Trotter Cockburn and the Strict Interpretation of Locke’ is awaiting publication from Bloomsbury in Essays in Honor of Alan Nelson, eds. Connolly and Jones. This was given as a presentation in May 2024 at the UNC Conference for the Retirement of Alan Nelson.
  • I was one of the participants in the 2023 Summer Session of the Center for Canon Expansion and Change at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.