Interview of Cornelia Tsakiridou, Ph.D.

Dr. Cornelia Tsakiridou was born in 1955 in Thessaloniki, Greece. During high school, she participated in the exchange program Youth for Understanding in the United States, studying and staying with a host family in California. Upon graduating, she spent a year in England deciding what she wanted to do before enrolling at the American College of Greece where she completed her undergraduate work in three years. Initially, Dr. Tsakiridou started her academic career as a psychology major but soon shifted her focus to philosophy and history. Dr. Tsakiridou moved to the United States where she intended on beginning work on her Masters at Villanova University before she transferred to Temple University. Dr. Tsakiridou was offered a full scholarship from Georgetown University to complete her Ph.D. where she wrote her dissertation on Hegel’s Aesthetics. She currently has two Masters degrees in philosophy and history from Temple University and her Ph.D. from Georgetown University. After completing her Ph.D. in 1990, Dr. Tsakiridou spent one year teaching at Bucknell University before moving to La Salle University. She currently holds the rank of Professor of Philosophy at La Salle University and the director of the Diplomat-In-Residence Program (DRP). Her specialized interests include aesthetics and iconography, the philosophy of art, film, and photography, and social and political philosophies concerning topics such as nationalism, modernity, and radical ideologies. She teaches philosophy courses ranging from the required introductory courses to more advanced subjects, including metaphysics. She is well-published, having contributed to chapters in larger works, as well as an array of her own journal articles. Her most recent publication, in 2013, is her book, Icons in Time, Persons in Eternity: Orthodox Theology and the Aesthetics of the Christian Image (Routledge, 2013), in which she features photographs of artworks taken by her personally. Dr. Tsakiridou here remarks on her academic career, starting as a high school student, evolving as a young scholar in a foreign land, and ultimately reflecting on a long and prosperous tenure as a professor as well as the lessons she has learned along her philosophical journey to today