The Department of Gender Studies
2013-2014 Public Lecture Series
presents
Ann Garry
Intersectionality 13.0
5:30 p.m., Thursday, 28 November 2013, Popper Room
Intersectional analyses, widely used in the social sciences, humanities, and law, hold that oppression and privilege by gender, nationality, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, and so on, do not act independently of each other in our lives or in our social structures; instead, each is shaped by and works through the others. The most recent literature on intersectionality shows that persistent disagreements remain concerning the best ways (i) to focus intersectional work and (ii) to think about the categories we use in doing it. I will discuss two examples published in 2013 -- a special issue of Signs on intersectionality and Maria Carbin and Sara Edenheim’s essay in the European Journal of Women’s Studies. In the course of the discussion I will question the relative importance of continental, disciplinary, and methodological differences among intersectional theorists and activists.
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Ann Garry is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at California State University, Los Angeles, where she has taught philosophy and gender studies for decades and was founding director of the Center for the Study of Genders and Sexualities. She has also held visiting appointments including the University of Tokyo, the University of Waterloo, UCLA, and USC, and is teaching this fall in ELTE's Ethnic and Minority Studies Program on a Fulbright grant. Since the 1970’s she has been active in writing feminist philosophy and in founding the institutions of feminist philosophy in the United States, including the journal, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. She co-edited Women, Knowledge and Reality and a special issue of Hypatia on Transfeminism, She is now is working on a new volume, The Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy. Her articles range from feminist issues in bioethics, pornography, and philosophy of law to intersectionality, analytic feminist epistemology, and philosophical method.