{"id":6,"date":"2026-02-05T17:22:56","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T17:22:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abbykluchin.com\/?page_id=6"},"modified":"2026-02-17T15:58:31","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T15:58:31","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/abbykluchin.com\/?page_id=6","title":{"rendered":"about me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I\u2019m Abby Kluchin, co-founder, core faculty member, and Associate Director at Large of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research<\/a> and co-host of the Ordinary Unhappiness<\/a> podcast. I am a teacher, a scholar, an editor, a founder, an experienced nonprofit administrator\u2014and above all, a reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did my undergraduate work in religion and philosophy at Swarthmore College and received my M.A., M. Phil., and Ph.D. in philosophy of religion from Columbia University. I\u2019ve taught philosophy and gender studies since 2013 at Ursinus College, where I also coordinate the Gender, Women\u2019s, and Sexuality Studies program and where I co-directed the Teaching & Learning Institute for four years. I love public speaking and have given talks, papers, workshops, and seminars in academic and popular settings everywhere from New York to Stockholm. My academic and popular writing appears in venues like philoSOPHIA,<\/em> Social Text, The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Parapraxis, Dilettante Army, The Revealer,<\/em> and elsewhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am something increasingly rare in the contemporary academy: a generalist.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In terms of my specific academic training and research, I have a deep focus in psychoanalysis, French and German philosophy, and feminist theory. But more than that, I\u2019m a person who cares profoundly about pedagogy: about helping others encounter new ideas, wrestle with difficult texts, and build skills to teach others. For me, reading is central to all these activities: I believe deeply in the power of a humanities education centered on primary sources. The throughline of my life\u2019s work has been expanding access to rigorous engagement with such texts beyond the boundaries of the traditional university.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The path that brought me here has been unconventional.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I was an exchange student in Japan, lived for several months under modified monastic vows at a Burmese monastery in India where I studied Buddhist philosophy and practiced multiple meditation traditions, immersed myself in French at Middlebury\u2019s Language Schools, taught classics of Western moral and political thought in Columbia University\u2019s Core Curriculum, co-founded a school, and started a podcast. I bring all of these varied experiences to bear in my work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my spare time, I do a lot of yoga and hiking, read tons of novels, and attempt to identify birds by ear (with varying levels of success). <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019m Abby Kluchin, co-founder, core faculty member, and Associate Director at Large of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and co-host of the Ordinary Unhappiness podcast. I am a teacher, a scholar, an editor, a founder, an experienced nonprofit administrator\u2014and above all, a reader. I did my undergraduate work in religion and philosophy at Swarthmore […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbykluchin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbykluchin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbykluchin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbykluchin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbykluchin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/abbykluchin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79,"href":"https:\/\/abbykluchin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6\/revisions\/79"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbykluchin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}