Rate My Professor Catherine Wesselinoff

Catherine Wesselinoff is a Lecturer in Philosophy in the School of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia, a position she has held since 2019. She earned her BA (Honours) in English and Philosophy from the Australian National University, a Master of Studies in English Literature from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Sydney in 2022. In addition to her academic role on the Sydney campus, Wesselinoff serves as Lead for Strategic Programs and Partnerships for the Institute for Ethics & Society (IES) and the Centre for the History of Philosophy (CHOP), where she also acts as Seminar Convenor. She teaches courses in aesthetics, moral philosophy, political philosophy, and the history of philosophy, contributing to the university's emphasis on these disciplines within its School of Philosophy and Theology.

Wesselinoff's research focuses on philosophical aesthetics, particularly exploring questions of beauty, virtue, and the moral significance of artistic experience. She is currently working on her second monograph, Kallistics: A Philosophical History of Beauty. Her first monograph, The Revival of Beauty: Aesthetics, Experience, and Philosophy, published by Routledge in 2024, analyzes the 20th-century Anti-Aesthetic movement and the 21st-century Beauty Revival, providing a positive defense of beauty as a lived experience involving sensory, cognitive, and affective dimensions. Key peer-reviewed publications include 'Apophatic Beauty in the Hippias Major and the Symposium' in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (Vol. 82, Issue 1, 2024, pp. 36-44), 'Is Jealousy Justifiable?' in The European Journal of Philosophy (Vol. 31, No. 3, 2023, pp. 703-10), 'Beauty's Comeback' in Debates in Aesthetics (Vol. 19, No. 2, 2025), and 'Virtue Aesthetics, Beauty, and Baumgarten' forthcoming in Disputatio. She has delivered conference presentations such as 'Arguments Against Beauty' at the European Society of Aesthetics Conference (2025), 'In Case of Fire: Danger and the Sublime' as keynote at the ACU Graduate Presentation Conference (2025), 'The Anti-Aesthetic Movement' at the Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference (2022), and 'Movements of Beauty' at the Australasian Postgraduate Philosophy Conference (2021). These contributions advance discussions in aesthetics and moral philosophy.