Dr. Jessica Wiskus teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in music theory and history as well as the philosophy of music, including courses cross-listed with the Department of Philosophy in aesthetics.

She received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Yale University. As a horn player, she has received prizes from the Coleman Chamber Music Competition, the International Horn Society, and Artists International, whose organization sponsored her chamber program in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. Her current academic research program draws upon this professional performance experience, focusing upon the phenomenology of music. She has received several grants and awards from Duquesne University, including a Presidential Scholarship Grant, Faculty Development Grant, and Creative Teaching Award. In 2006 she received the Rockefeller Prize from the American Philosophical Association, and in 2008 she served as a Fellow at The Camargo Foundation (Cassis, France), writing a monograph on the intersection between the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and the work of Mallarmé, Cézanne, Proust, and Debussy.

Her work is published as book chapters and articles in Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy (2008), Perspectives de l’esthétique musicale, entre théorie et histoire (2007), Philosophy Today (2007), Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities (2006), Chiasmi International: Trilingual Studies Concerning the Thought of Merleau-Ponty (2006), Yeditepe’de Felsefe (2006), Analecta Husserliana (2006), and Interculturalism and Interdisciplinarity (2005). She has presented at music and philosophy conferences throughout the United States and Europe, including papers for the Dublin International Conference on Music Analysis, Strasbourg International Congress on Musical Aesthetics, International Conference of the College Music Society, Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Nordic Society for Phenomenology, British Society for Phenomenology, World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research, International Merleau-Ponty Circle, American Philosophical Association, International Association for Philosophy and Literature, International Conference on Arts and Humanities, and the Global Conference of Interculturalism, among many others. Her goal is to inspire a trans-disciplinary dialogue so as to articulate the significant role of music in Western artistic and philosophical thought.