Professor Alperson is currently a Fulbright Scholar at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland. In 2010-2011 he served as the Styrian Endowed Professor at the Institute of Music Aesthetics at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Graz, Austria. He is also a Senior Scholar at Temple’s Center for Vietnamese Philosophy, Culture, and Society of which he was the Founding Director.

Professor Alperson’s main interests are in aesthetics, the philosophy of the arts, theory of culture, value theory, aesthetic method, and theories of interpretation and criticism, with special interests in the philosophy of music and philosophical questions concerning creativity, performance, and improvisation. Professor Alperson was the editor of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, the Journal of the American Society of Aesthetics, from 1993 – 2003 and is the General Editor of the Blackwell Series, Foundations of Aesthetics. He is currently at work on a book on the philosophy of music.  He is also a jazz musician.

• Ph.D., University of Toronto
• M.A., University of Toronto

Selected Publications

• “Musical Improvisation and the Philosophy of Music,” in George Lewis and Ben Piekut (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
• Vollkommenes Hält Sich Fern: Ästhetische Näherungen. Vienna, London, New York: Universal Editions, 2012. Andreas Dorschel, co-author.
• “The Philosophy of Music Education,” in Gracyk, Theodore and Kania, Andrew (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music, New York: Routledge, 2011.
• “Robust Praxialism and the Anti-Aesthetic Turn,” Philosophy of Music Education Review, forthcoming, 2011.
• “A Topography of Improvisation”, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, LXVIII/3, Summer 2010.
• “The Philosophy of Music Education”, in Gracyk, Theodore and Kania, Andrew (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music, (forthcoming, 2010).
• “Anglophone Philosophy of Music: A View from Somewhere,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 57/6: 879-884, 2009.
• “Facing the Music: Voices from the Margins,” Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy, 29: 91-96, 2009.
• “The Instrumentality of Music,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, LXVI/1, Winter 2008.
• “Music, Mind, and Morality: Arousing the Body Politic,” The Journal of Aesthetic Education, XLII/1, Spring 2008, Noël Carroll co-author.
• “The Sounding of the World: Aesthetic Reflections on Traditional Gong Music of Vietnam,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, LXV/1, Winter 2007, Nguyen Chi Ben, To Ngoc Thanh, co-authors.
• “The Philosophy of Music: Formalism and Beyond,” in The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics, Peter Kivy (ed.),Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 2004.
• “Creativity in Art,” in The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, Jerrold Levinson (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
• “High Fidelity: Reflections on Musical Authenticity and Musical Value,” Paradigmi: Rivista di Critica Filosofica, LXIII, September/December 2003.
• Diversity and Community (Editor) (Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge, MA and Oxford, UK, 2002).
• Musical Worlds: New Directions in the Philosophy of Music (Editor) (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998).
• “Improvisation” and “Performance,” in The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, Michael Kelly, ed. (Oxford, 1998).
• The Philosophy of the Visual Arts (Editor) (Oxford, 1992).

Courses Taught

• The Philosophy of Music
• The Aesthetics of Jazz
• Music as Practice: Production and Reception
• Senior Seminar: The Philosophy of Culture