Dr. Victor Haines taught in the Department of English at Dawson college from 1974 to 2011, and is currently a Scholar in Residence. Dr. Haines’ research focuses on aesthetics, games of make-believe, the semantic form of the word performance, moral sense and the sense of beauty.  He is currently working on a book that argues that now there are two kinds of natural philosophy: the lexical semantics of natural language for the human world our minds make for us to live in and the experimental verification of theories not available to the apprehension of common sense.

Publications since 2000

• Art: The Game of Appreciation. Montreal: Bigwin Press, 2011.
  “Recursive Chaos in Defining Art Recursively.” The British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 44 (2004): 73-83.
• Review of Robert Burch and Massimo Verdicchio, eds, Between Philosophy and Poetry: Writing, Rhythm, History. New York: Continuum Books, 2003 in Philosophy in Review/ Comptes rendus philosophiques, Vol 24 (2004): 170-172.
• “Chaucer’s Clerk: On the Level?” in Chaucer and Language ed. Robert Myles, McGill Queen’s Press, 2001, pp. 83-106.
  “Appreciating Art Appreciation.” Journal of Value Inquiry 34 (2000): 529-543.
• “Drawing Evil with a Happy Face: the Iconography of the felix culpa.” in The Problem of Evil: An Intercultural Exploration ed. Sandra A. Wawrytko, VIBS, Editions Rodopi 2001.

Education

• Ph.D.  1975, English, McGill University.  Dissertation:  “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as figura of the felix culpa.”  Supervisor:  Martin Puhvel.
• M.A. 1966, English, Carleton University. Thesis: “An Introduction to Prosody with Notes on W. H. Auden’s Prosody.” Supervisor: George B. Johnston.
• B.A. 1965, Honours English, Mathematics, and Physics, Queen’s University, Kingston
• B.A. 1963, Queen’s University, Kingston