C. Thi Nguyen Awarded the 2020 Article Prize

The American Philosophical Association is pleased to announce that Dr. C. Thi Nguyen (University of Utah) has been awarded the 2020 Article Prize for his article, “Games and the Art of Agency,” The Philosophical Review (2019).

The Article Prize is for the best, published article by a younger scholar in the previous two years.

From the selection committee: Nguyen’s article offers a remarkably original and wide-ranging reflection on the status of games as art. But importantly, he also mines the aesthetic experiences provided through the artistic medium of games as a source of insight into the nature of human agency. It is precisely in part the apparent artificiality and arbitrariness of games, Nguyen argues, which make them “a valuable tool for human self-development.”

C. Thi Nguyen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah. His research concerns the ways in which our social structures and technologies can shape our values, agency, and rationality. He has written on games, trust, art, echo chambers, cultural appropriation, monuments, and group intimacy. He writes publicly oriented philosophy for venues such as Aeon Magazine and The New York Times; and is an editor at the aesthetics blog, Aesthetics for Birds. His first book is Games: Agency as Art (OUP). His current research project concerns how institutional metrics and gamification can capture our values and undermine our autonomy. Nguyen’s website is https://objectionable.net.