The Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Race Reading Group‘s first Fall semester meeting will be:
Tuesday September 4th from 11:15 am to 12:45pm in room 5489 at The Graduate Center, CUNY.
The Graduate Center is located at 365 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 10016.
We will read:
Emmalon Davis’ “On Epistemic Appropriation.”
Graduate Center Professor of Philosophy Linda Alcoff will read from and discuss her new book, Rape and Resistance, with interlocutors Rupal Oza and Alyson Cole.
Co-sponsored with the CUNY Graduate Center PhD Program in Philosophy, Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP), and The Feminist Press.
I argue we can make progress in three contemporary debates about transnational feminisms by a) clarifying the normative commitments central to feminism and b) rethinking the role of normative ideals in transnational political practices. These debates concern the purported tension between taking seriously critiques of Western imperialism and retaining feminism’s status as a normative doctrine. Understanding feminism as opposition to sexist oppression unthethers feminism from commitments to controversial forms of individualism and antitraditionalism. Understanding transnational feminist praxis as a practice of nonideal justice-enhancement permits a universalist feminist position that is not monist about the endpoint of gender justice or the strategies that should be taken to achieve it.
The CUNY Graduate Center Advanced Research Collaborative (ARC), the Center for the Humanities, and the Philosophy Program present an interdisciplinary conference on:
“#MeToo and Epistemic Injustice”
Over the past year, the #MeToo movement has forced into national consciousness what has long been an underground truth known by women: the horrifying pervasiveness of sexual harassment and assault as routine everyday occurrences, largely unpunished. How can one explain the resistance there has traditionally been, as recently brought out in one high-profile case after another, to taking women’s testimony seriously? Using Miranda Fricker’s innovative concept of “epistemic injustice” as a focus—the refusal to give members of subordinated groups a fair hearing—this 2-day interdisciplinary conference will examine the problem in its multiple dimensions. Eighteen theorists from a wide variety of subjects—philosophy, political theory, media studies, history, gender and women’s studies, LGBTQ theory, Africana and Native American studies, law, and disability theory—will look from their distinctive perspectives at women’s vulnerability to sexual harassment and assault, and the ways in which it is complicated by class, race, nationality, sexuality, and disability.
October 5-6, 2018
Venues:
- Oct 5th – Roosevelt House, 47-49 East 65th St.
9:30 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. - Oct 6th – Skylight Room (9100), CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave.
10:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Speakers:
- Linda Martín Alcoff, Philosophy, Hunter College & CUNY Grad Center
- Susan Brison, Philosophy, Dartmouth College
- Ann Cahill, Philosophy, Elon University
- Nirmala Erevelles, Disability Studies & Education, University of Alabama
- Karyn Freedman, Philosophy, University of Guelph
- Miranda Fricker, Philosophy, CUNY Grad Center
- Mishuana Goeman, Gender Studies & American Indian Studies, UCLA
- Suzanne Goldberg, Columbia Law School
- Raja Halwani, Liberal Arts, Art Institute of Chicago
- Alison Jaggar, Philosophy, University of Colorado Boulder
- Kate Manne, Philosophy, Cornell University
- Danielle McGuire, Independent Historian
- Sarah Clark Miller, Philosophy, Penn State University
- Rupal Oza, Women & Gender Studies, Hunter College & CUNY Grad Center
- Andrea Press, Media Studies & Sociology, University of Virginia
- Tricia Rose, Africana Studies, Brown University
- Dina Siddiqi, Women & Gender Studies, Hunter College
- Shatema Threadcraft, Government, Dartmouth College
Conference organizers: Linda Martín Alcoff and Charles W. Mills
The CUNY Graduate Center Advanced Research Collaborative (ARC), the Center for the Humanities, and the Philosophy Program present an interdisciplinary conference on:
“#MeToo and Epistemic Injustice”
Over the past year, the #MeToo movement has forced into national consciousness what has long been an underground truth known by women: the horrifying pervasiveness of sexual harassment and assault as routine everyday occurrences, largely unpunished. How can one explain the resistance there has traditionally been, as recently brought out in one high-profile case after another, to taking women’s testimony seriously? Using Miranda Fricker’s innovative concept of “epistemic injustice” as a focus—the refusal to give members of subordinated groups a fair hearing—this 2-day interdisciplinary conference will examine the problem in its multiple dimensions. Eighteen theorists from a wide variety of subjects—philosophy, political theory, media studies, history, gender and women’s studies, LGBTQ theory, Africana and Native American studies, law, and disability theory—will look from their distinctive perspectives at women’s vulnerability to sexual harassment and assault, and the ways in which it is complicated by class, race, nationality, sexuality, and disability.
October 5-6, 2018
Venues:
- Oct 5th – Roosevelt House, 47-49 East 65th St.
9:30 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. - Oct 6th – Skylight Room (9100), CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave.
10:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Speakers:
- Linda Martín Alcoff, Philosophy, Hunter College & CUNY Grad Center
- Susan Brison, Philosophy, Dartmouth College
- Ann Cahill, Philosophy, Elon University
- Nirmala Erevelles, Disability Studies & Education, University of Alabama
- Karyn Freedman, Philosophy, University of Guelph
- Miranda Fricker, Philosophy, CUNY Grad Center
- Mishuana Goeman, Gender Studies & American Indian Studies, UCLA
- Suzanne Goldberg, Columbia Law School
- Raja Halwani, Liberal Arts, Art Institute of Chicago
- Alison Jaggar, Philosophy, University of Colorado Boulder
- Kate Manne, Philosophy, Cornell University
- Danielle McGuire, Independent Historian
- Sarah Clark Miller, Philosophy, Penn State University
- Rupal Oza, Women & Gender Studies, Hunter College & CUNY Grad Center
- Andrea Press, Media Studies & Sociology, University of Virginia
- Tricia Rose, Africana Studies, Brown University
- Dina Siddiqi, Women & Gender Studies, Hunter College
- Shatema Threadcraft, Government, Dartmouth College
Conference organizers: Linda Martín Alcoff and Charles W. Mills
In preparation for the next transnational feminist strike on March 8th, we will have a discussion about the new feminist wave with some of its protagonists and organizers from around the world and a conversation around Arruzza, Bhattacharya, Fraser, “Feminism for the 99%. A Manifesto” (Verso 2019).
Program:
4:00 p.m.: Welcome and Opening Remarks: William Milberg (Director of the Heilbroner Center for Capitalist Studies) and Cinzia Arruzza (NSSR)
4:15–6:00 p.m.: The New Feminist Wave
Speakers:
- Ximena Bustamante (IWS)
- Julia Cámara (National Coordination 8M, Spain)
- Luci Cavallero (Ni Una Menos, Argentina)
- Mayra Cotta De Souza (NSSR)
- Chair: Meg Beyer (IWS and NSSR)
6:00–6:15 p.m.: Break
6:15–8:00 p.m.: Feminism for the 99%. A Manifesto
Speakers:
- Cinzia Arruzza
- Tithi Bhattacharya
- Nancy Fraser
- Barbara Smith (founder of the Combahee River Collective)
- Chair: Michelle O’Brien (IWS)
Cosponsored by Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies (New School for Social Research) and International Women’s Strike
“Everyone is female”—this is the first of several “untenable claims” presented by Andrea Long Chu in her forthcoming book Females: A Concern (Verso, 2019). Drawing inspiration from Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto and her forgotten play Up Your Ass, this lecture in numbered theses whips through a variety of ugly objects (films, manifestos, performance art, psychoanalysis, porn, and the alt-right) to give a portrait of femaleness as a universal category of self-ablation against which all politics—even feminist politics—revolts.
Andrea Long Chu is a writer and critic completing her doctorate at New York University. Her writing has appeared, or will soon, in n+1, Boston Review, The New York Times, New York, Artforum, Bookforum, Chronicle of Higher Education, 4Columns, differences, Women & Performance, TSQ, and Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Her book Females: A Concern is forthcoming this year from Verso.
People in Support of Women in Philosophy is a group dedicated to the advancement of women and those who experience marginalization within the field of philosophy. Our group meets weekly to workshop papers, help members prepare for conference presentations and seminars, host guest speakers, and in general celebrate the work of our women and gender-non-conforming colleagues and mentors. Men are welcome and encouraged to take part as allies.
What does a philosopher look like? Inevitably, our mental pictures are shaped by the dominant imagery of the white male marble busts of Greco-Roman antiquity—Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca—and their modern European heirs—Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Mill. Even today Western philosophy is largely male and overwhelmingly white—about 97 percent in the U.S., close to 100 percent in Europe. Diversifying the field requires expanding our corporeal imaginary of its practitioners. This conference, timed to honor Professor Anita Allen-Castellitto (Penn), the first black female President in the 100-year-plus history of the American Philosophical Association, aims to showcase the work of a traditionally under-represented population, challenging these preconceptions. Allen and fifteen other black women will speak on their research across a wide variety of philosophical topics.
ORGANIZED BY:
Charles W. Mills & Linda Martín Alcoff
LIST OF SPEAKERS
Anita Allen-Castellitto, University of Pennsylvania
Kathryn Belle, Penn State University
Emmalon Davis, New School for Social Research
Nathifa Greene, Gettysburg College
Devonya Havis, Canisius College
Janine Jones, University of North Carolina Greensboro
Axelle Karera, Wesleyan University
Michele Moody-Adams, Columbia University
Mickaella Perina, University of Massachusetts Boston
Camisha Russell, University of Oregon
Jackie Scott, Loyola University Chicago
Kris Sealey, Fairfield University
Jameliah Shorter-Bourhanou, Georgia College, College of the Holy Cross
Anika Simpson, Morgan State University
Briana Toole, CUNY Baruch College
Yolonda Wilson, Howard University
Stay tuned for schedule details!
Hosted by: The Center for the Humanities and the PhD Program in Philosophy at the The Graduate Center, CUNY.
Co-sponsored by: The American Philosophical Association Committee on the Status of Black Philosophers, and the Advanced Research Collaborative at the Graduate Center, CUNY.
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Free and open to the public, but please register for Friday, March 15th here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/black-women-philosophers-conference-day-1-march-15th-2019-registration-56225763773
Please register for Saturday, March 16th here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/black-women-philosophers-conference-day-2-march-16th-2019-registration-56225886139
The venue is wheel-chair accessible.
To download a PDF version of the flyer, click here.
Many philosophers have suggested that the aim of imaginative philosophical inquiry is not to provide right answers, but right questions. This means demonstrating why certain questions are meaningless, based on false assumptions, or become senseless when posed in a wrong context. The question in my title appears to be a good candidate for this type of philosophical inquiry and I will try to show why. However, I will also argue that posing the question is nevertheless important, perhaps not for moral philosophy, but for feminist politics.
The argument proceeds in three stages. In the first section, I will discuss Gabrielle Meagher’s article, Jstor, Spring 2002, ‘Is it Wrong to Pay for Housework?’. I will contend that rather than posing this question as an abstract philosophical question, it is crucial to place it in the specific historical and socio-economic context in which we encounter it today. A thorough politico-economic analysis of paid housework should then open our eyes to the fact that feminists need to make demands that are not merely ameliorative but embody a radically emancipatory future for all women. In the second section, I will critically assess one such demand, the idea of universal basic income (UBI) – a monthly income paid by the government to each member of society regardless of income from other sources and with no conditions attached. My contention is that a feminist demand for UBI could contribute to the attempts to tackle the deep causes behind the growing socio-economic disparities between women, as well as improving the status of unpaid care work, but only in the context of a feminist revolution of everyday life. In the third section, I will ask what such a revolution might entail and return to the question of individual choice. While I insist that scapegoating women who pay other women for housework misses the real political problem, I will nevertheless conclude by suggesting that there are compelling political reasons for feminists to answer the question in my title with a resolute yes.