Email: fleibowitz@oregonstate.edu
Flo joined the OSU faculty in 1977. She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from The John Hopkins University. Her primary research field is aesthetics; her work has addressed the experience of film viewing, taste and reasoning in film reviews, the colorization controversy and art in the electronic age, and whether films can philosophize. Her scholarly writing has appeared in such journals as Philosophy and Literature, the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Persistence of Vision, and in anthologized collections. Flo teaches courses in introduction philosophy, aesthetics, and metaphysics and created the department's course in "Art and Morality." She was a winner of the 1987 American Society for Aesthetics essay competition and wrote a series of op-ed essays for the Portland Oregonian on art and morality during the public-funding controversies of the 1990's. Her recent work includes "Pianists in the Movies," Why Intention Matters," and an essay on the aesthetics of alpine gardening co-authored with her husband, Loren Russell, a past national secretary of the North American Rock Garden Society. Flo is a past president of the American Society for Aesthetics, Pacific Division, a frequent member of its national meeting program committee, and she has served on the selection committee for the OSU Phi Kappa Phi Emerging Scholar Award. She is listed in Who's Who of American Women. In the community, Flo has served on the exective committee of Chamber Music Corvallis. She is a Cat 4 amateur bicycle racer for the EWEB Windpower team. In 2006, she won the state championship road race in the women 50 and over division and was ranked 9th (of 143) in the Best All-Around Rider points competition for masters women.
For a sample of Flo's writing, see her essay "Art and Morality in the 18th Century" in the Faculty Monograph section of this web site.
More Sample Publications"Agency, Theories of Expression, and the Movies", in Murrary M. Smith and Richard Allen, eds., Film Theory and Philosophy (Oxford U.P., 1997), 329-342.
"Pianists in the Movies", Philosophy and Literature (Fall 1997) 21:2:366 - 381.
"Pornography and Persuasion", Philosophy and Literature (Spring 1994) 18:118-123.
"Apt Feelings, or Why Women's Films Aren't Trivial", in David Bordwell and Noel Carroll, eds., Post-Theory (Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 219-229.
"Colorization and the Expression of Mood", Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (Fall 1991) 49:4:363-365.
"The Element of Desire: Beauty, botany,and Philosophy," (with Loren Russell), Rock Garden Quarterly 64:1 (2006), 42-47.
"Why Intention Matters: Noel Carroll on Film Interpretation," Film and Philosophy 5/6 (2002), 151-155.