David Kolb has been studying the relations of modernization and tradition in German philosophy, in architecture and urbanism, and in hypertext and digital modes of scholarly writing. He has taught courses in the philosophy of art and architecture, metaphysics, and the history of Greek, medieval, and German philosophy. After retiring from Bates he now lives in Eugene, Oregon, and continues writing and lecturing.David Kolb grew up mostly in the New York City suburbs, studied with the Jesuits in New York and Maryland, received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University, taught at Fordham University, the University of Chicago, Nanzan University in Japan, and at Bates College in Maine, as the Charles A. Dana Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the college. Since 2002 he has devoted himself full-time to writing and lecturing.Most of what he has written asks about what is means to live with historical connections and traditions at a time when we can no longer be totally defined by that history. New kinds of linked and less centered unities emerge in cities, in architecture, in lives, and in texts and ways of writing. He has explored this through German philosophers, through architecture and urbanism, and through new styles of writing and scholarship.
