Christy Mag Uidhir awarded outstanding monograph prize

Assistant professor of philosophy honored for his book Art and Art-Attempts by American Society of Aesthetics

The American Society of Aesthetics awarded its Outstanding Monograph Prize to Christy Mag Uidhir, assistant professor of philosophy, for his book, Art & Art-Attempts.

Each year, the society awards a $1,000 prize for an outstanding monograph in the philosophy of art or aesthetics that was published in the previous calendar year. The selection is made by a committee appointed by the society’s president and the committee members remain anonymous.

Dr. Mag Uidhir traveled to Savannah, Ga. this past winter to accept the prize at the society’s annual meeting.

Published by Oxford University Press, Art & Art-Attempts explores and explains how intentional action can make art “art” rather than a natural or accidental occurrence. Examples or intentional action are acts of creation, production, appropriation, ostentation, or exhibition.

In the book, Dr. Mag Uidhir aims neither to propose nor to defend any particular, precise answer to the question "What is art?" Instead, he shows the ways in which taking intention-dependence seriously as a substantive necessary condition for being art can be profoundly revelatory, and perhaps even radically revisionary, as to the scope and limits of what any particular, precise answer to such a question could viably be.

Dr. Mag Uidhir earned two B.A.’s in history and philosophy from Texas Christian University, his M.A. in history from Brown University and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Rutgers University. He was a postdoctoral associate at Cornell University and an assistant professor at City College of New York before joining the UH faculty in 2011.

In addition to writing his monograph Art & Art Attempts, Dr. Mag Uidhir also edited Art & Art Objects, which was also published in 2013 by Oxford University Press. His numerous articles have been published in Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism, American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies and several other peer-reviewed academic journals.