Calendar

All events will take place from 6:30-8:30 at the Graduate Center, CUNY.

October 9th with Alyssa Adamson (Stony Brook University) (Rm 5409)

FEMINIST & QUEER CRITIQUES OF RAWLS: ELIZABETH BRAKE AND CARE

November 13th with Shiloh Whitney (Fordham University) (Rm 7113)

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AFFECTS: GENDER AND BODY IMAGE IN AFFECTIVE LABOR AND AFFECT TRANSMISSION

December 4th with Robin Dembroff (Princeton University) (Rm 5409)

WHAT IS SEXUAL ORIENTATION?

All events will take place from 6:30-8:30 at the Graduate Center, CUNY.

October 9th with Alyssa Adamson (Stony Brook University) (Rm 5409)

FEMINIST & QUEER CRITIQUES OF RAWLS: ELIZABETH BRAKE AND CARE

November 13th with Shiloh Whitney (Fordham University) (Rm 7113)

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AFFECTS: GENDER AND BODY IMAGE IN AFFECTIVE LABOR AND AFFECT TRANSMISSION

December 4th with Robin Dembroff (Princeton University) (Rm 5409)

WHAT IS SEXUAL ORIENTATION?

All events will take place from 6:30-8:30 at the Graduate Center, CUNY.

October 9th with Alyssa Adamson (Stony Brook University) (Rm 5409)

FEMINIST & QUEER CRITIQUES OF RAWLS: ELIZABETH BRAKE AND CARE

November 13th with Shiloh Whitney (Fordham University) (Rm 7113)

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AFFECTS: GENDER AND BODY IMAGE IN AFFECTIVE LABOR AND AFFECT TRANSMISSION

December 4th with Robin Dembroff (Princeton University) (Rm 5409)

WHAT IS SEXUAL ORIENTATION?

At long last, Brooklyn Public Philosophers is back for 2015! Coming up on 2/23 at 7:00 P.M., Geoff Holtzman (NYU Polytechnic Institute) will share his work on why philosophy is so male-dominated, and why it’s important that that changes. Here’s a bit more about the talk, in Geoff’s own words:

Rejecting Beliefs, or Rejecting Believers?

The Troublesome Causes and Effects of Excluding Women in the Philosophy Classroom

Why do so few women major in philosophy, and why are there so few female philosophy professors? Some authors have suggested that the dearth of women in philosophy can be attributed to gender differences in philosophical belief. On this view, college-aged women persistently find their intuitions to be at odds with those of their male classmates and their mostly-male professors, and this leads women to feel out of place and to leave philosophy. I think this suggestion is both false and pernicious, and my first aim in this talk will be to debunk this suggestion with data I have been collecting for the past five years. While there may be gender differences in philosophical belief, the evidence of these differences does not explain the paucity of women in professional philosophy.

I will suggest that, in fact, the nature of philosophical debate enables pre-existing gender biases—similar to those that exist in other fields—to take foot in ways they cannot take foot in many other fields in which women have traditionally been underrepresented. This consideration will segue into the second part of the talk, which will concern the social nature of philosophy. Are philosophical claims only about the ways we see the world, or are they sometimes responses to the ways other people see the world and, as such, partly claims about the ways we see those other people?

As usual, we meet in the Info Commons Lab at the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library (10 Grand Army Plaza). Events are all 100% free and open to the public, and aimed at a general audience.

See you there, I hope!

Mara Marin (Go-In Post-doctoral Fellow in the Exzellenzcluster Normative Orders at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt) will give a lecture entitled “Connected by Commitment: Rethinking Relations of Oppression and Our Responsibility To Undermine Them”.

The lecture will advocate for a novel model of thinking of our responsibility to dismantle structures of racial and gender oppression.

From the abstract: I start from the observation that racial and gender oppression in its current form in North American and Western European societies endures in spite of the fact that there are no sexists or racists, which raises a puzzle: How can we explain the endurance of racism and sexism given that, as belief systems, they have been publicly and, to some extent, personally disavowed? What makes structures of oppression enduring, and how do individuals contribute to their endurance? I call this “the endurance question.” I argue that our actions perpetuate oppressive structures regardless of our intentions and beliefs, but rather in virtue of their cumulative effects. While other theorists emphasize the negative aspects of the unwitting support we give to unjust structures, I emphasize its transformative potential: if currently our actions support these structures, we have the ability to transform these structures by acting repeatedly in ways that fail to conform to their norms.

To make sense of this relation between individual actions and larger social structures I propose a new notion I call “commitment.” Drawing on intuitive understandings of friendships and long-term intimate partnerships, I define a commitment as a relationship of obligations developed over time through the accumulated effect of open-ended actions and responses. In commitments agents incur obligations via their voluntary actions but without knowing in advance the precise content of their obligations. I argue that the notion of commitment is necessary to help us address not only the endurance question, but also the related question of our responsibility for transforming oppressive structures.

Mara Marin is a political theorist with interests in feminist theory, the regulation of sexuality, the social contract tradition, theories of oppression, domination, justice, political obligation and authority. She is the author of “Marriage as Commitment: A Revisionary Argument” (published in American Multicultural Studies, ed. Sherrow O. Pinder) and “Care, Oppression and Marriage” (published in Hypatia). She received her PhD in political science from the University of Chicago.

Thursday 3/26: Eunah Lee (Marquette) “Integrity of Memory: Comfort Women in Focus”

Thursday 4/30: Jennifer Ware (CUNY GC) “A Moral Evaluation of Humor: The Insufficiency of Good Intentions”

All events will take place from 6:30-8:30 at the Graduate Center, CUNY.

SWIPshop is a workshop where philosophers present papers on any topic in the philosophy of gender, sex, and sexuality, feminist philosophy, feminist theory, feminism, and related topics.  SWIPshop follows the successful models of WOGAP (Workshop on Gender and Philosophy) at MIT, and BayFAP (Bay Area Feminism and Philosophy Workshop).

SWIPshop is a place for philosophers of all genders, all philosophical traditions, and all professional levels (graduate students, junior faculty, senior faculty) to meet as equals and discuss their work in a supportive environment.

​Cinzia Arruzza, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, will give a talk entitled “Spirit in Plato’s Republic and the Tyrant’s Psychopathology”

Abstract

The nature and function of spirit is one of the mysteries of Plato’s Republic. Throughout the dialogue, spirit is said to be responsible for propensity to anger, savagery, violence, harshness, and perpetual war, desire for victory and power, arrogance and stubbornness, but also courage, desire for honor, sensitivity to what appears just, rebellion against a perceived injustice, and alliance with reason in the conflict with the appetitive part. What is the unity at the basis of these various manifestations of spirit? In the first part of this paper I would like to try to answer the question concerning both the nature of spirit and its relation to the other two parts of the soul. In the second part of the paper, I will briefly discuss the tyrant’s case, in order to show how spirit may work and play a role within what should be considered as a special case of psychopathology.

This event is sponsored by The New School for Social Research.

Nickolas Pappas, Professor,The Graduate Center, CUNY, will give a talk entitled: “A Little Move toward Greek Philosophy: Reassessing the Statesman Myth”

Abstract:

The myth told in Plato’s Statesman separates the present from an “age of Cronus,” sometimes thought of as a golden age in which political order as we know it was unnecessary. And yet this golden age may not have been a time of happiness, if its inhabitants did not practice philosophy. The subtle, even evanescent difference between our time and that time re-imagines the founding of philosophical institutions, which turn out to be almost indistinguishable from political ones.

This event is sponsored by The New School for Social Research.