Here are some other things not in my CV.  I grew up in East Harlem, New York City, where my grandfather, George ("Bill") W. Webber was a founding member of The East Harlem Protestant Parish, President of The New York Theological Seminary and founder of Witness For Peace in Nicaragua and El Salvador.  My grandmother, Helen ("Dibby") Webber founded the East Harlem Tutorial Program, an after-school reading and bilingual education program for East Harlem kids and teens.

 

I lived two floors down from my grandparents with my father, Thomas L. Webber, who was a community School Board member, educational consultant, and Director of the Edwin Gould Academy in Spring Valley, New York, a foster-care boarding school for kids through high-school with behavioral problems.  He is the author of Deep Like the Rivers: Education in the Slave Quarters (W.W. Norton) and Flying Over 96th Street: Memoir of an East Harlem White Boy (Scribner) and a former opera singer with The Amato Opera Company.  My mother, Andrea B. Webber, is an internist at Montefiore/North Central Bronx Hospital and a professor at the Einstein Institute.  She is a former cellist, gardener and water-color artist and is a connoisseur of Henry James literature.  It is with some sadness that she acknowledges that she has produced a daughter who is more interested in the work of his brother, William.

 

Most of my childhood was spent in ballet class, at School of American Ballet (the training school for The New York City Ballet), at Ballet Academy East, where I studied with Francis Patrelle (Director of The Berkshire Ballet and Dances Patrelle), and in private and group classes with Wilhelm Burmann, former NYCB soloist, at Ballet Arts in Carnegie Hall.  I also received private coaching from Dolores Kehr, formerly of Diaghilev's Ballet Russes, and took open, professional-level classes with Melissa Hayden, David Howard, Finis Jhung and Madame Darvash.  In high school I was a ballet major at New York's LaGuardia High School for Music and the Performing Arts where I spent half the day in ballet, modern, jazz and acting classes and the rest of the day in academics.  My professional ballet experience includes work as "Gypsy Girl" in The Amato Opera Company's production of Rigoletto and as a corps de ballet member of the Eglevsky Ballet in Long Island.

 

My younger brother, Matt Webber, was also a dancer for a time, attending School of American Ballet, Ballet Academy East and then majoring in theatre at LaGuardia high school and Vassar College. He is now a musician, poet and the owner of The Soft Spot bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

 

After a series of injuries ended my hopes for a ballet career I was accepted to Columbia University, where I majored in Philosophy and was fortunate to have Arthur Danto (who is still a friend and mentor) as my first philosophy teacher.  At Columbia I also had Village Voice critic Andrew Sarris for History of World Cinema and beat poet, Kenneth Koch, for Poetry.  In the summer after my Freshman year I was awarded a Congressional Black Caucus Fellowship to work in the office of Congressman Charles B. Rangel in Washington, DC.  During the Christmas break of my sophomore year I was a member of Witness for Peace in Nicaragua, where we lived in war-torn villages and helped to dig trenches and build infrastructure.  For my junior year abroad I went to King's College, University of London, where I studied Aesthetics with Anthony Savile, was a feature writer for The King's College Student Newsletter and where I performed in King's College's student production of Cabaret.  Back at Columbia for my senior year I was a contributor to The Columbia Spectator and a member of the Columbia Parliamentary Debating Association.

 

At Georgetown University Law Center I was Notes Editor for The Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, worked as a welfare advocate in the Georgetown Family Poverty Clinic, and performed with the Georgetown Gilbert & Sullivan Society.  I also volunteered for The American Arts Alliance (a non-profit arts advocacy organization in Washington, DC) and interned for the Corporation for Public Broadcasing in the Legislative Drafting division.

 

I'm currently a Philosophy doctorate student at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, where so far I have been fortunate to have Miriam Solomon, Carol Gould, Joseph Margolis, Gerald Vision and David Wolfsdorf as professors.  Miriam Solomon, Carol Gould and Susan Feagin (editor of The Journal for Aesthetics and Art Criticism) have worked particularly hard to help me develop my philosophic writing skills and I am extremely thankful for their help.  I am also grateful for the many hours Joseph Margolis has spent answering my lengthy and detailed questions about his work. In addition, I was lucky to cross paths with Noel Carroll when he was at Temple and receive the benefit of his thoughts on how to write philosophy of dance.  I am glad to be under Temple's wing, and I look forward to the opportunity to work with Paul Taylor, Phil Alperson and Kristin Gjesdal in the future.  In the meantime, I have been enjoying the intelligence, freshness and vivacity of the Temple undergrads I am teaching in Art & Society and I look forward to "philosophizing" some future lawyers when I teach the Senior Pre-Law seminar in the Spring.

 

Finally, I still maintain Chicago as my home base, where I live with my supportive, brilliant, talented husband, Art Bresnahan (a corporate and telecommunications attorney with Skadden, Arps, Meagher and Flom and a budding musician), and my adorable, precocious children, Isabel (age 10) and Arthur (age 8), both avid readers who excel at math in South Loop Elementary's gifted program.  My family has agreed to do without me for the 3-4 days per week I am at Temple in exchange for my promise to be extra nice to them when I am home.  So far it's been working well; I get uninterrupted work done while at Temple and spending weekends at my kids' ice hockey games enables me to clear my head for the following week's work.  This has been an enriching time for me; I feel I am now living an "authentic" life (yes, I am reading Heidegger), with all the clarity and personal satisfaction that entails.  In short, life is good.