Bard Professor Kathryn Tabb Receives $40,000 NEH Fellowship in Support of Her Book Project Agents and Patients: John Locke’s Ethics of Thinking

(January 18, 2024)

Bard College News

Bard College Assistant Professor of Philosophy Kathryn Tabb has been awarded $40,000 by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to fund her book project, Agents and Patients: John Locke’s Ethics of Thinking, that explores Locke’s theory of psychopathology and its implications for his philosophical theories. Based on her dissertation, which focused on laying out Locke’s theory of madness as caused by the association of ideas, this book will be the first to present Locke’s theory of irrationality, and will invite other scholars to challenge how we think about Locke—and perhaps other historical figures—on key themes such as personal identity, nativism, religious toleration, freedom and enslavement, private property, and empire. The NEH grant will support her work over an 8-month term beginning in January. Previously, Tabb was an investigator for the NEH grant project, “Humanities Connections Curriculum for Medicine, Literature, and Society” (2017–20).