Distinguished Professor Dean Zimmerman to Deliver 38th Annual Mary Olive Woods Lecture at WIU

Rutgers University Distinguished Professor Dean Zimmerman will present the 38th annual Mary Olive Woods Lecture at Western Illinois University at 7 p.m. Thursday, September 18 in the University Union Grand Ballroom.

Zimmerman's presentation, “Why Would Anyone Be a Dualist? Souls, Bodies, and the Afterlife,” will explore how philosophical reflection on the nature of consciousness and the vagueness of ordinary material objects may support the Christian view of the afterlife and the dualism of persons.

Zimmerman is the founder and current co-director (with Brian Leftow) of the Rutgers Center for the Philosophy of Religion. He is the founding editor of Oxford Studies in Metaphysics and currently co-edits the series with Karen Bennett. Zimmerman has also co-edited multiple scholarly volumes in metaphysics and philosophy of religion and his work includes over 60 academic articles.

He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Minnesota State University–Mankato and a Doctor of Philosophy from Brown University, where he studied under the guidance of Roderick Chisholm. Before joining Rutgers, Zimmerman taught at the University of Notre Dame and Syracuse University.

The annual Mary Olive Woods Lecture is sponsored by the Department of Race, Religion, Gender and Multidisciplinary Studies, the Department of Mathematics and Philosophy and the Mary Olive Woods Foundation. The event is open to the public.

For more information on the Mary Olive Woods Lecture, visit wiu.edu/cas/race_religion_gender_multidisciplinary/mary_olive_woods.php.