Arthur C. T. Strum

Resident Assistant Professor

Arthur-Strum

I love the open horizons of first-year IHON courses – reading all kinds of books from the past and the present, and trying to understand, alongside my students, what they might be saying to us. Teaching these first-year courses has made me a much better reader and thinker.

Phone: 253-535-8774

Email: strumac@plu.edu

Office Location: Hauge Administration Building - 206

  • Professional
  • Biography

Education

  • Ph.D., German Studies, Cornell University, 1997
  • M.A., Cornell University, 1991
  • B.A., Stanford University, 1988

Areas of Emphasis or Expertise

  • Humanities Education
  • German Idealist philosophy and Romanticism
  • German philosophy and literature of the Enlightenment
  • Immanuel Kant
  • History and Meaning of Jazz
  • Aesthetics
  • American and African-American Culture and Literature
  • German philosophy
  • Critical Theory
  • Theory/History of Public Sphere
  • Alexander Kluge

Biography

I have taught in the IHON Program since it began in 2008 and have been a Core Faculty member since 2015. I currently regularly teach sections of IHON 111, IHON 112, and IHON 329, and often offer various IHON 200-level courses. What do I love about IHON? As one of the current first-year faculty, I love the open horizons of these courses – reading all kinds of books from the past and the present, and trying to understand, alongside my students, what they might be saying to us. Interestingly, teaching these first-year courses has made me a much better reader and also thinker. I also enjoy the open-ended conversations I have with IHON students in our seminars at every level of the program, and am appreciative of our students’ willingness to share their thoughts with me.

I began my academic career as Assistant Professor in the German Studies at Stanford University, teaching courses on German philosophy, literature, and film. Since coming to Pacific Lutheran University in 2008, my teaching and research has focussed on wider horizons in the humanities which are often obscured by scholarly specialization. I try to write and teach for what Virginia Woolf called “the common reader”—those seeking insight into how literature, philosophy, and other forms of human expression, ancient and modern, can illuminate everyday life.

I served as Interim Director of the IHON program (2024-2025), and directed and helped develop the IHON-Oxford Program from 2016-2023. I also occasionally teach in PLU’s Philosophy department. I co-wrote a book on the conceptual history of the public sphere (Öffentlichkeit: Geschichte eines kritischen Begriffs (The Public Sphere: History of a Critical Concept), Metzler, 2000), and have published articles on Kant’s philosophy, on the legacy of the Enlightenment, on the field of German Studies, and on humanistic pedagogy, as well as on other topics. I am also a co-founder of the Tacoma Institute for Convivial Culture, which offers low-cost courses focussing on transformative texts of literature, philosophy, and religion.

IHON Courses recently taught:
IHON 111
IHON 112
IHON 257: the Political Problem of Social Media
IHON 257: Aesthetics and Politics of the British ‘Postcolonial’ Novel
IHON 329: Public Thinking