About

I'm a Vanier Scholar and PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of British Columbia. I work on the philosophy of emotion and imagination, at the intersection of philosophy of mind, aesthetics, and South Asian philosophy. My doctoral research focuses on rasa (aesthetic emotion) theory in Classical Sanskrit and modern South Asian aesthetics, and on the experience of death and dying. I also work on the philosophical psychology of daydreaming and other imaginative experiences.

I am writing a book on death and imagination for Columbia University Press. Beyond philosophy, I am a publishing poet and hold an MFA in poetry from the University of Virginia, where, as a Poe/Faulkner Fellow, I taught poetry courses and served as Editor-in-Chief of the literary magazine Meridian.

Dissertation
Life’s Painful Beauty: Rasa and Deathbed Aesthetics
Committee
Evan Thompson (supervisor), Catherine Prueitt (co-supervisor), Dominic McIver Lopes
AOS
Philosophy of Mind · Aesthetics · Indian Philosophy
AOC
Buddhist Philosophy · Value Theory
Languages
Classical Sanskrit (advanced reading and translation)

Research

Book

  • Death: A Guide for Imaginers
    Columbia University Press, No Limits series, ed. Costică Brădățan
    under contract

Articles

  • forthcoming
    Abstract

    Dying can be ugly. This fact is relevant to the growing subfield of everyday aesthetics, to the philosophy of death, and to all of us as mortal beings. Disgusting experiences in particular seem to impose a limit on the dying person’s aesthetic agency. If disgust is the fitting response to medical and body horror in everyday contexts, we might think that we can aesthetically respond to these properties only with rational disgust (cold comfort for the dying person seeking beauty in painful circumstances) or with deluded aesthetic enjoyment (false beauty). I develop a Bhattacharyyan solution to this dilemma, defending a third option. According to K. C. Bhattacharyya (KCB, 1875–1949), even acute disgust in everyday life can be rationally enjoyed as an aesthetic emotion in virtue of adopting an emotional perspective of ‘courageous love’ through a specific imaginative procedure. I argue that courageous love is a merited, positive aesthetic-emotional response to disgusting experiences on the deathbed.

  • forthcoming
    Abstract

    This paper examines an enduring puzzle about enjoying aesthetic disgust as it arises for Abhinavagupta (c. 975–1025 CE). Abhinavagupta claims that all aesthetic emotions (rasas), including the disgust (bībhatsa) rasa, are pleasurable for the sensitive appreciator. Yet he elsewhere characterizes disgust as incompatible with enjoyment of its object. Taken together, these are puzzling claims. I trace the puzzle through a number of Abhinavagupta’s works and those on which he commented in the Pratyabhijñā Śaiva tradition. Along the way, I consider three possible but philosophically unsatisfying answers, each of which provides important pieces of the solution. Putting these pieces together with the Pratyabhijñā defense of impurity’s value and phenomenological analysis of imagination, I reconstruct an Abhinavaguptan solution according to which reflexive appreciation of expanding the limits of human imagination can explain how it is possible to enjoy experiencing aesthetic disgust and why we have reason to seek out this difficult pleasure.

  • A Dynamic Approach to Compulsive Fantasy: Constraints and Creativity in “Maladaptive Daydreaming”
    with Jennifer Burrell and Kalina Christoff Hadjiilieva
    Behavioral Sciences 15(10): 1333
    2025
    Abstract

    Compulsive fantasy, often called “maladaptive daydreaming,” involves frequent engagement with immersive fantasies that can sometimes interfere with everyday life and cause distress. This paper expands on Christoff and colleagues’ Dynamic Framework of Thought (DFT) to offer a process-based analysis of compulsive fantasy as it relates to other mental phenomena such as daydreaming and creative thought. Drawing on existing literature and posts on online forums by self-identified maladaptive daydreamers, we also propose an account of how compulsive fantasy episodes may unfold in terms of the oscillating dynamics of various constraints on thought, and how these dynamics may be related to a perceived struggle with agency. Our analysis supports the use of “compulsive fantasy” as a more accurate designation than “maladaptive daydreaming” for this phenomenon: compulsive fantasies are not daydreams, because they are more constrained in their mental dynamics. We show that fantasy and daydreaming are not inherently harmful, but can become so when they are accompanied by relatively strong and sustained automatic constraints on thought.

  • Courageous Love: K. C. Bhattacharyya on the Puzzle of Painful Beauty
    with Dominic McIver Lopes
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 10(4): 728–743
    2024
    Abstract

    K. C. Bhattacharyya proposed a distinctively modern theory of rasa, or aesthetic emotion, according to which aesthetic emotions are feelings that have other feelings as their intentional objects. This paper articulates how Bhattacharyya’s theory offers a novel solution to the “paradox of sorrow”: a puzzle about how it is both possible and rational to enjoy the kind of negative emotions that are inspired by tragic and sorrowful tales. Bhattacharyya’s solution is distinct from the conversion and compensation views that dominate the existing literature, and it derives its significance from how it ties aesthetic experience to self-awareness.

  • Daydreaming as Spontaneous Immersive Imagination: A Phenomenological Analysis
    with Evan Thompson
    Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 5(1): 1–34
    2024
    Abstract

    Research on the specific features of daydreaming compared with mind wandering and night-dreaming is a neglected topic in the philosophy of mind and the cognitive neuroscience of spontaneous thought. The extant research either conflates daydreaming with mind-wandering, treats daydreaming and mind-wandering as opposed, or characterizes daydreaming as any and all “imagined events.” These imprecise, dueling definitions pose an obstacle to future research in spontaneous thought. They also fail to illuminate the phenomenal core of daydreaming, namely, its dreamlike qualities. We argue that daydreaming is spontaneous immersive imagination in the waking state. Our investigation distinguishes daydreaming, conceptually and phenomenologically, from mind-wandering and night-dreaming. We also distinguish prototypical experiences of daydreaming from adjacent imaginative activity, including fleeting imagery and deliberate fantasy. We argue that precision about the phenomenal character of daydreaming can guide neurophenomenological investigations, including, for instance, assessing reports of so-called “maladaptive daydreaming.”

Book Chapters

  • Daydreaming
    In The Cambridge Handbook of Thought, ed. Andre Zamani and Kalina Christoff Hadjiilieva, Cambridge University Press
    forthcoming
  • Negative Rasas and the Paradox of Horror
    In Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art, 2nd ed., ed. Brandon Polite, Elizabeth Scarbrough, and Aaron Meskin, Wiley
    in preparation

Reviews

Honors & Grants

  • Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, SSHRC2024
  • Brian Laetz Graduate Essay Prize, UBC2024
  • President’s Academic Excellence Initiative PhD Award, UBC2022
  • Henry Hoyns Fellowship, University of Virginia2017

Talks

Upcoming

  • Nov 22, 2026
    Macabre Visualization and Emotional Cultivation
    Buddhist Studies Unit, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, Denver, CO
  • Mar 24–27, 2027
    Equal Love for All: Mysore Hiriyanna on Aesthetic Experience and Communal Feeling
    APA Pacific Division Meeting, Portland, OR
  • Apr 15, 2027
    Aesthetic Shock and Emotional Insight: A. K. Coomaraswamy on Saṁvega
    Numata Lecture Series in Buddhist Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT
  • 2027
    Death Denial and the Fog of Experience
    Mortal Feelings Conference, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
  • 2028
    The Place of Beauty in Rasa Theory
    Lecture Series: Beauty in the Indian Aesthetic and Devotional Imagination, Jnanapravaha Mumbai Institute, Mumbai, India

Recent

  • 2026
    From Disinterested Pleasure to Unitive Feeling: Three Neo-Rasa Takes
    Canadian Philosophical Association Annual Meeting, Halifax, NS
  • Feb 18–21, 2026
    Comments on Jed Forman, Out of Sight, Into Mind
    Book panel, APA Central Division Meeting, Chicago, IL
  • Oct 26, 2025
    Deathbed Aesthetics: Disgust and Courageous Love
    Asian Philosophy Workshop, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC
  • Jul 13, 2025
    Aesthetic Emotion in Indian Renaissance Aesthetics
    Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
  • Apr 21, 2025
    Bees for Enactivists
    Philosophy of Animal Minds and Behavior Association, Santa Barbara, CA
  • Apr 16–19, 2025
    Neo-Rasa: Expansive Empathy, Not Disinterest
    Symposium: South Asian Rasa Theory Meets Contemporary Aesthetics, APA Pacific Division Meeting, San Francisco, CA
  • Oct 25, 2024
    Abhinavagupta and Two Puzzles About the Disgust Rasa
    American Society for Aesthetics Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL
  • May 20, 2024
    Rasa and Negative Emotion
    Rasa 101, Rasa Fest, University of British Columbia
  • 2024
    Three Varieties of Immersive Imagination: Daydreaming, Fantasy, and Visualization
    Graduate Student Research Conference, University of British Columbia
  • Nov 18–21, 2023
    Towards a Cross-Disciplinary Approach to Poetic Meaning: Rasadhvani and the Heresy of Paraphrase Thesis
    Hindu Philosophy Roundtable, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, San Antonio, TX
  • 2023
    Introduction to K. C. Bhattacharyya’s Aesthetics
    Graduate Aesthetics Seminar, University of California, Santa Cruz
  • Mar 10, 2023
    Doing Deathbed Aesthetics with K. C. Bhattacharyya
    American Society for Aesthetics Pacific Division Meeting, Berkeley, CA
  • Mar 2, 2023
    Daydreaming as Spontaneous Immersive Imagination
    Uehiro Graduate Philosophy Conference, University of Hawaii, Manoa, HI
  • Feb 25, 2023
    Everyday Aesthetics and Deathbed Experiences
    International Association of Japanese Philosophy session on Yuriko Saito, APA Central Division Meeting, Denver, CO
  • Nov 23, 2022
    Comments: Towards a Yogācāra-Informed Enactive Approach to Dreams
    Author Meets Critics: Sonam Kachru, Other Lives: Mind and World in Indian Buddhism, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, Denver, CO
  • 2022
    Comments on James Reich, To Savor the Meaning: The Theology of Literary Emotions in Medieval Kashmir
    Author Meets Critics, American Society for Aesthetics Annual Meeting, Portland, OR
  • Oct 16, 2022
    Courageous Love: K. C. Bhattacharyya and the Paradox of Painful Beauty
    Workshop on K. C. Bhattacharyya, Smith College, Northampton, MA

Teaching

University of British Columbia

As instructor of record

  • Minds and Machines (PHIL 250)2026
  • Philosophical Wisdom of Early India (PHIL/ASIA 375)2024

As teaching assistant

  • Philosophical Wisdom of Early India2024, 2026
  • Philosophy of Mind2025
  • Comparative Conceptions of the Self2023, 2025
  • Existentialism2023
  • Philosophy in the 17th Century2023
  • Philosophy of Religion2022
  • Introduction to Moral Philosophy2022

Advising

  • Honours thesis advisor, Cognitive Systems Program2024, 2025

University of Virginia

As instructor of record

  • Poetry Writing: Dream, Death, and Myth (ENCW 2300)2018–2019
  • Writing and Critical Inquiry: Harry Potter and the Ethical Imagination (ENWR 1510)2019–2020
  • Writing and Critical Inquiry: Writing about the Environment (ENWR 1510)2020
  • Skills of Scholarship (LASE 3111)2019
  • Honours thesis advisor, Area Program in Poetry Writing2018, 2019

Poetry & Prose

Lyric Essays

Lyric Poems

Short Fiction

  • “Hosting” · BOOTH · Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee

Reviews

Interviews & Features

CV & Contact

Curriculum Vitae (PDF) Updated October 2026
emily.lawson@ubc.ca Department of Philosophy, Buchanan Hall, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC