Dr. Timothy D. Craker

Education

• B.A., Houghton College, 1981
• M.A., State University of New York at Binghamton, 1987
• Ph.D., State University of New York at Binghamton, 1991

Before coming to Mercer, Tim Craker attended an NEH Institute on Ethics and Aesthetics, and more than 20 years later he is still asking what is at stake in acts of reading and interpretation. Though he has published a few essays on Wittgenstein in relation to the Continental philosophical tradition, his questions about why time spent reading and interpreting is worthwhile have been addressed primarily in course development and General Education program development, from the Academic Writing Seminars to the General Education Capstone. It is possible that this focus on the classroom infrastructure and experience had something to do with his reception of an award for teaching.

Research and professional interests

For a while now, Tim Craker has turned his attention to questions of what it means to interpret certain texts, practices, and artifacts as part of the Americas as a whole, with the Americas understood as being both connected to and separated from the world by the Atlantic World on one side and the Pacific Rim on the other. Among other things, this change in emphasis has resulted in taking students to Panama and Guatemala.

“It is possible that what is at stake in the experience of exploration—whether in the classroom or outside of the classroom—are the ways we imagine ourselves with others. Imagine that.”

Contact Dr. Craker

678.547.6487
craker_td@mercer.edu