University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Tina Botts, Affiliated Faculty

Office: Stabler Hall, Room 307
Phone: 501-569-3312
Email: tbotts@memphis.edu

Introduction

My love of philosophy began with a love of truth, and a search for what that concept meant and how it could be parameterized, if at all. My search began in the hard sciences, fueled by an exposure to quantum mechanics and what I perceived to be its metaphysical implications, specifically the untenability of dualism. This led me to the Pre-Socratics (Heraclitus, Zeno). After a brief liaison with analytic philosophy, my search for truth then led me to hermeneutics, and finally to continental philosophy broadly defined. Heidegger, Gadamer, and the later Wittgenstein were particularly influential on my thought processes; as were Thomas Kuhn, Einstein, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and Taoism.

An early admiration for Atticus Finch, together with a love of deductive reasoning, then led me to law school and an inquiry into the relationship between truth and justice. The problem of interpretation, central to legal theory, is solved for me through a hermeneutical approach. I agree with Ronald Dworkin that questions about the nature of law are answered inside debates about philosophy of language and metaphysics. The later Wittgenstein’s language-as-use is particularly helpful for me toward this end, as is a postmodern metaphysic recognizing the inseparability of meaning from social constructions of various sorts.

I am very happy to be teaching here at UALR as I believe there is no more important or enjoyable pursuit than being involved in the intellectual growth of others.

Teaching Interests

Philosophy of Law, Hermeneutics, Philosophy of Race, Ethics, and Political Theory.

Research Interests

Philosophy of Law, Hermeneutics, Philosophy of Race, Ethics, and Political Theory.

Professional Activities

• Dissertation Teaching Fellowship, Arkansas State University
  College of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2009-2010
  Courses taught include Philosophy of Law, Constitutional Law, and Identity Politics 

• Chair, Session on “Modernist Primitivism: Aesthetic Colonialism?” and “Feminism, International Law, and the Spectacular Violence of the ‘Other’: Decolonizing the Laws of War”, California Roundtable on Philosophy and Race, University of California — Berkeley, October 2008

• Creator and conductor of Law School Admission Council PLUS Program workshop on critical reading, critical writing, and analytic reasoning skills for top undergraduate law school candidates from all over the country who are members of traditionally underrepresented groups in the legal profession.  William H. Bowen School of Law.  Summer 2008.

• Consultant, UALR Early Admittance Law Program, 2007- present

• Director, UALR Early Admittance Law Program, 2006 - 2007

• “Separate But Equal Revisited: The Case of Same Sex Marriage,” presented at the Law and Society Association’s annual conference in Baltimore, Maryland, July 2006 and at “Gender Unbound,” an international conference sponsored by the AHRC Research Center for Law, Gender, and Sexuality, a joint venture of the law schools at the University of Kent, the University of Keele, and the University of Westminster, at Keele University, England, UK, July 2007

• “Sexuality Before the Law: Freud, Foucault, and Butler Stand Before Derrida’s Concept of Law and Ask to be Admitted,” to be presented at the 6th Biennial Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s) Conference, sponsored by The Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition and University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Little Rock, Arkansas, Fall 2007.

Educational Background

Ph.D., Philosophy, 2009 (expected)
University of Memphis

Ph.D. Philosophy candidate
University of Maryland at College Park

J.D., 1992
Rutgers School of Law - Camden

B.A. Philosophy, 1988
University of Maryland at College Park