Rate My Professor Tammy Nyden

Tammy Nyden is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Grinnell College, where she joined the faculty in 2005 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2010. She earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Claremont Graduate University, M.A. in Philosophy from Baylor University, and B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Nyden's research focuses on Early Modern Philosophy, with particular emphasis on Spinoza, Cartesianism, and the Dutch Enlightenment, alongside the philosophy and history of science, Asian philosophy, and Nietzsche. She is affiliated with programs in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies, Education Studies, Digital Studies, European Studies, and Science, Medicine, and Society.

Nyden has authored Spinoza's Radical Cartesian Mind (2007) and co-edited Cartesian Empiricisms with Mihnea Dobre (2013). Her publications also include 'Radical Cartesian Politics: Van Velthuysen, De la Court, and Spinoza' (1999), 'De Volder’s Cartesian Physics and Experimental Pedagogy' (2013), 'Living Force at Leiden' (2014), 'Affectus: laetitia, tristitia, and cupiditas' (2011), 'Parallelism a la Mode,' and 'Conscientia' (2011). As the 2023–24 Faculty Fellow at Grinnell College’s Center for the Humanities, she is developing a book proposal titled Children’s Mental Health Justice, examining how punitive excess disguised as care, rooted in Enlightenment philosophies, contributes to epistemic and social injustices affecting children, caregivers, and families. She received the Iowa City Human Rights Commission’s Isabel Turner Award in 2016 for her advocacy in improving children’s mental health services, including co-founding Parents Creating Change and the Coalition for a Children’s Mental Health Redesign in Iowa. Nyden teaches courses on 17th- and 18th-century European philosophy, epistemic injustice, Spinoza, philosophy of science, Asian philosophy, the school-to-prison nexus, and children’s mental health justice. She co-directs Mothers on the Frontline, a nonprofit advancing children’s mental health justice, and has delivered public lectures such as 'Motherblame-stigma, Epistemic Injustice, and the Government’s Failure to Care' at Scholars’ Convocation.