Feminist Philosophy Commons^™

"But Oh, What Harm Those Basics Would Cause": How Journalists Can Better Interview Vulnerable Sources Utilizing An Ethic Of Care, Noah Carandanis

University Honors Theses

Traditional journalistic ethics have emphasized detachment from sources and objectivity guiding journalists' practices. In this thesis, I explore the contribution of care ethics to the field of journalistic ethics, emphasizing care in relation to interviewing vulnerable sources. I claim that the traditional objective, detached ethical status quo in journalism is insufficient in the context of reporting on mass shootings. This thesis argues that caring journalistic practices should be utilized when interviewing traumatized, vulnerable sources. In the first part, I present the issue of traditional journalistic practices through my personal experiences. I also discuss the philosophical underpinnings to journalist's objectivity criterion. …

Imagination And The Self: A Cross-Cultural And Cross-Disciplinary Study, Qianyi Qin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary investigation of the imagination and the self that engages with cognitive science, philosophy of mind, Buddhism, ethical theories, and a variety of perspectives from Asian and Western philosophy. I address the following questions in three interrelated chapters. First, what does it mean for the self to appear in imagination? In Chapter 1, against certain narrow understandings of the self in philosophy of language, I build a multidimensional model of the self in imaginative experiences to capture the rich phenomenology, drawing on empirical findings on memory and imagination. Second, can the self be removed from imagination? …

“My Voice Is Trauma, My Voice Is Healing:” A Feminist, Trauma-Informed Embodied Study On The Impact Of Gender-Based Violence In Classical Music Communities, Sarah Pearson

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This Social Work doctoral dissertation explores the impact of gender-based violence (GBV) in classical music communities on survivor-artists. This is an intersectional feminist, trauma-informed, embodied study that draws on these three theoretical concepts to conceive of classical music as an institution of both colonial patriarchal power and a site of spirituality and meaning-making. The issue of systemic GBV in the performing arts has been a focus of headline news and sensational celebrity stories in the last decade following the MeToo hashtag and is slowly gaining some attention in academic research.

For this qualitative study, the sample consisted of 14 participants …

Simone De Beauvoir’S Influence On “The Handmaid’S Tale”, Hailee Jones

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

Using the theories that Simone de Beauvoir presents in The Second Sex, this paper will analyze Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Discussing how Gilead reflects the oppression women face, and the idea of women as “other,” and Beauvoir describes. She spends much time discussing the Hegelian master-slave dialectic, which is seen in The Handmaid’s Tale through Gilead’s laws. Forcing the Handmaids to not only be an incubator for the commander, but also forcing them to do the shopping for the household, and not allowing them basic human rights such as reading. Mussett analyzes this and gives further analysis on women …

Love Amid The Rage: Feminist Affect In Women's Life-Writing, Genesis Siverio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aim of this thesis is to show the ways women’s emotions or affect, particularly rage and love, are described by women writers in their most intimate stories. I discuss the way emotion has been demeaned, and how feminist scholars have instead viewed the body as a place of insight, reclaiming a knowledge from the senses. In the midst of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy, women give voice to their affectual experiences and cultivate the feelings they have so often been denied. Focusing on the particular ways women’s anger manifests in their lives and in their bodies, I zoom in on …

The Dialectic Of Airless Space, Ophelia Arc

Masters Theses

The Dialectic of Airless Space is a cumulative, cross-disciplinary research project that explores ‘airless space’ as a somatic and psychological condition shaped by institutional environments. Unfolding over time through five interrelated books, the project weaves together writing, ephemera, textile sculpture, and drawing to archive the invisible architectures of bodily and mental experience.

A Reconstruction Of Gender: Implications Of Social Construct And Gender Structure Theories, Bethany Rozario Steinhagen

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

The relationship between gender and social construction has long been discussed in feminist and gender studies scholarship. However, the current discussion on gender has run up against a blockage of misapplication of social construct theory. To untangle this blockage, my analysis applies the philosophy of social construction as explained by Ian Hacking in his 1999 book The Social Construction of What? and the framework of gender as a social structure as put forth by feminist sociologist Barbara Risman since the early 2000s. I apply these frameworks to elucidate better the logical implications that follow from a social construct thesis about …

Avant Et Après : Examen Du Proto-Féminisme À Travers La Résistance Littéraire En France Au Xve Siècle Et Au Mexique Au Xviie Siècle, Madison Coleman

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

This essay seeks to understand the implications of a “before” distinction in the feminist canon— i.e., why is there “proto-feminism”, and not just “feminism”? This essay will explore the works of “proto-feminist” writers, Christine de Pizan and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and examine how the feminist themes and issues prevalent throughout their respective works are in response to the respective and collective inequities and injustices they experienced. Their oeuvres provide insight into what advocacy for women and other marginalized peoples looked like outside of the modern understanding of the historical “waves” of feminism. This essay seeks to examine …

Reading Nietzsche As A Tool For Feminist Politics, Juliana I. Fedorko

Honors Theses

My Honors Thesis in Political Science builds upon the scholarly tradition of reading beyond Friedrich Nietzsche’s explicit discussions of women, which are oftentimes blatantly misogynistic. As a philosopher typically included in the Western existentialist canon, Nietzsche’s ethics of self-transcendence is relevant to one of the vital feminist objectives: individual autonomy. His commentary in Beyond Good and Evil, The Gay Science, On the Genealogy of Morals, and The Use and Abuse of History for Life prescribe ways of being that disrupt traditional moral systems and their accompanying social conditioning. If we examine patriarchy as one of these value …

Praying To Tiktok, Seeking The Self: How Rhetoric Reveals And Conceals The World’S Most Powerful Guru Of The Postindustrial Age, Samantha L. Gillespie-Hoffman

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Imagine a world where the most powerful leader is a wellness guru that runs an elaborate church with millions of followers. The guru is so powerful that everyone believes they can read minds and make ordinary people rich and famous. The guru controls forms of communication, media channels, consumer tastes, and what people eat, drink, say, and even think. What if this guru was not human but actually an algorithm? Does this sound like the plot of a science fiction novel? I argue that this scenario is closer to reality than most will admit. In this project, readers encounter a …

Wuwei Praxis, Zachary L. Gelnaw-Rubin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The question of how to change the world is answered in the concept of praxis. For structural change to occur a “revolution in motivation or feeling,” - a paradigm shift - is needed. I argue that this requires the adoption of feminist liberation praxis, which involves a negativistic political stance, nonideal theorizing, and an openness to self-transformation. This entails a transformation of the concept of praxis itself within the Leftist idiom, a transformation which could be the linchpin of the needed paradigm shift in the larger culture.

The three parts of this thesis elaborate upon the different aspects of this …

Audre Lorde, Feminism, And Love, Emee Port

The Corinthian

This paper attempts to connect the topics of feminism and intersectionality in Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider to love. Feminists should look at race and class as well as gender in order to create a more accepting and inclusive movement. Lorde reasons that many women of color are wary of feminist movements because it pushes racial differences to the side only to focus on gendered oppression. It is important for feminists to recognize racial and class differences on top of gender so that more people feel welcomed to get involved. Love for one another is a driving force for inclusivity and …

Vrouwenwerk | Beyondtheglassceiling: Educate, Empower, Reimagine, Malou Lena Julia Desplenter

Master's Theses

In contemporary society, social media platforms have emerged as powerful tools for advocacy and activism. This thesis explores the potential of Instagram in raising awareness and fostering dialogue around workplace equity for women in Belgium. Inspired by influential women's advocacy accounts, I embarked on a journey to fill a noticeable gap in the digital landscape – the absence of Belgian-centric content addressing workplace empowerment for women. Grounded in the unique intersections of Belgian national policies, European Union directives, and global socio-economic dynamics, this capstone delves into the multifaceted challenges faced by Belgian women in the workplace.

Through critical historical analysis …

Feminist Environmental Ethics: A Modern, Intersectional Approach, Suzanne E. Scharff

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Mothering As Feminism, Meera Patel

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This critical essay proposes the concept of mothering-as-feminism, with the intention of interrogating American ideals of mothering and caregiving. Reforming the way we view mothering, as it relates to feminism, requires a re-evaluation of the American role of women and mothers—and how they are portrayed (and therefore seen and understood), valued, and supported. Focusing on the evolution of feminist theory throughout the past 70 years, as well as personal and secondary experiences, I demonstrate how political and social change occurs generationally and is dependent on the education of our children. Ultimately, I show the important role children’s literature plays …

Towards A Feminist Theory Of Distrust, Hale Demir-Doğuoğlu, Carolyn Mcleod

Philosophy Publications

We use feminist insights about institutional distrust to critique the most general and well-developed theory of distrust in philosophy—Katherine Hawley’s commitment account—and to learn from this exercise about what a feminist theory of distrust should be like. Though not designed to explain institutional distrust as we understand it, Hawley’s theory is meant to apply to people’s relationships with institutional representatives as well as to friendships or intimate relationships whose contours are shaped by informal institutional structures. It should therefore be able to explain the institutional distrust that is prevalent among socially marginalized people. However, we argue that the account falls …

Understanding Castration Anxiety Through Contemporary Art And Feminism, Ember J. Nevins

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

A Theory Of (In)Justice: The Failure Of Tort Law To Secure Equal Respect For Women And A Feminist Contractarian Framework For Reform, Eva Augst

CMC Senior Theses

Traditional approaches to philosophical theories of tort law have systematically undermined the individual worth and security interests of women. However, torts also provide a particularly powerful avenue for reform, in that they embody the public power of private law and offer individuals the opportunity to seek recourse and accountability for wrongs. In this paper, I offer a framework for such reformist approaches to tort philosophy, predominantly inspired by Jean Hampton’s “Feminist Contractarianism,” which requires that women be recognized as individuals with intrinsic worth who are deserving of respect. To accomplish this, I first note the particular relevance of social contract …

Using An Intersectional Historical Materialist Perspective To Understand And Propose A Solution To Caste And Gender Discrimination In India, Amanda Goldman

CMC Senior Theses

Caste and gender oppression are two systems of domination that continue to affect the lives of lower-caste women living in India. Both the caste system and the patriarchy were created to rationalize a hierarchical division of labor in which lower-caste women are subordinated. The best way to understand the reasoning behind these systems of oppression, as well as the impact of them, is through an intersectional historical materialist perspective. This perspective can be utilized when analyzing the evolution of caste and women’s rights in India, specifically focusing on the changes brought on by British Imperialism. This analysis reveals that decisions …

Swerf Necropolitics: Three Sites Of Feminist Mistranslation And The Politics Of Feminist Exclusion, Aaron Hammes

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The acronym SWERF, or Sex Work(er) Exclusive Radical Feminism, and its attendant ideologies brings up a number of questions and potential schisms for the enterprise of feminist thought more broadly. This inquiry examines what it means for feminism to exclude, what the excluders believe is gained by protecting certain boundaries around which identities and practices are included, and the ideological foundations and consequences of this thinking. SWERF logics are understood as mistranslations of the radical potentialities of feminism, clustered around three sites: exclusion (against bodily autonomy) , equivocation (between sex work and labor trafficking), and misrepresentation (of the sex worker …

Seeing Beyond: A Feminist Psychoanalytic Approach To The Politics Of The Cinematic Gaze, Sofia Koukia

Masters Theses

This essay presents a feminist psychoanalytic approach to the cinematic gaze which employs late Lacanian film theory in order to construct a conception of the gaze that allows for its political significance to emerge. The gaze is hereby understood as something that the subject (the spectator) encounters in the object (the film) and, also, as what constitutes the epitome of the cinematic experience. It is regarded as being inherently political, existing within the realm of the Lacanian real in the form of an objet petit a (or object-cause of desire), and exhibiting itself in the world(s) of fantasy and/or desire. …

Decolonizing Genderqueer: An Inquiry Into The Gender Binary, Resistance, And Imperialistic Social Categories, Lauren E. Abruzzo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines core metaphysical properties of nonbinary and genderqueer categories in dominant U.S. contexts. I address a prevailing argument that these categories, by definition, resist the gender binary and are therefore radical modes of existing. In response, I put forth a view of ‘nonbinary’ and ‘genderqueer’ that I call the Diachronic Approach, which describes these categories as yet another set of tools within an imperialistic gender system, much like ‘man’ or ‘woman.’ In other words, they are what I refer to as imperialistic social categories. While nonbinary and genderqueer people do not fall perfectly within the U.S. gender …

Womanist Poetics: Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, And Audre Lorde, Aya Telmissany

Theses and Dissertations

Today, the sentimentality associated with poetry is often condescendingly dubbed in a patriarchal society as “feminine poetry.” The first women poets who dared to attempt the pen were often met with attacks on their femaleness and harsh critiques of their writing which was likened to sorcery and witchcraft. Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, and Audre Lorde are three American women poets who countered these attacks and turned them inside out in favor of their own womanist poetics. They wrote about experiencing the world as women and most importantly about experiencing poetry as women. What happens to poetry when a woman appropriates …

Care Ethics And Paternalism: A Beauvoirian Approach, Deniz Durmus

2022 Faculty Bibliography

Feminist care ethics has become a prominent ethical theory that influenced theoretical and practical discussions in a variety of disciplines and institutions on a global scale. However, it has been criticized by transnational feminist scholars for operating with Western-centric assumptions and registers, especially by universalizing care as it is practiced in the Global North. It has also been criticized for prioritizing gender over other categories of intersectionality and hence for not being truly intersectional. Given the imperialist and colonial legacies embedded into the unequal distribution of care work across the globe, a Western-centric approach may also carry the danger of …

The Right To Reproduce, Carolyn Mcleod

Philosophy Publications

The reproductive rights of women have been a central topic in feminist bioethics. The focus has been predominantly on the right not to reproduce, and so not to be subject to pronatalist social forces that make motherhood compulsory for women. That is the case despite many women and other members of marginalized groups experiencing anti-natalism, or in other words, social pressure to avoid biological reproduction. For these groups, the right to reproduce is as important, if not more important, than the right not to reproduce. This chapter concentrates on the right to reproduce and considers what form it should take …

World Of Water: Betsy Damon’S Ties To Ecofeminism, Colleen Sullivan

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis establishes a critical examination of the evolution of Betsy Damon’s artistic practice as overtime she engages with ecofeminist thought. As a whole, this work extends contemporary scholarship on ecofeminist engaged art to include Damon’s artistic production while amplifying social and critical ecofeminism as necessary ideologies to explore when analyzing art through an ecofeminist lens. Beginning with her first environmentally focused work in the United States the organization of the following chapters reveals Damon’s deepened understanding and exploration of ecofeminist principles and their application to her artistic practice. It goes on to further explore Damon’s pursuit of environmentally sustainable …

Care Working Conditions: The Ethics And Politics Of Social Reproductive Labor From Aristotle To Marxist Feminism, Andrew R. Van't Land

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

The spectre of an inescapably divided working class has haunted every generation of marxist theorists, including the latest wave of marxist feminists engaged in the research programme known as Social Reproduction Theory (SRT). In this dissertation, I will explain how Marx’s clear theoretical debt to Aristotle extends into the marxist feminist analysis of social reproductive labor and of the exploitation, class interests, and normative demands which condition such care workers. I will demonstrate how SRT can follow Marx’s own example in reading Aristotle, critically yet charitably, in order to resolve three problems. First, Aristotle’s original concept of use value (built …

Queer Displacements: Minorities, Mobilities, And Mobilizations In French And Francophone Literature, Thomas Muzart

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Focusing on the work of Virginie Despentes, Jean Genet, Guy Hocquenghem, and Abdellah Taïa, this dissertation challenges the antisocial turn taken in queer theory, by means of a parallel study of the authors’ geographical and intellectual itineraries. While critics like Leo Bersani and Lee Edelman have suggested that the revolutionary potential in queer identity lies in its opposition to romanticized forms of community, I argue, along with José Esteban Muñoz, that their praising of singularity and negativity is similarly extreme. Alternatively, my study shows how the geographical displacements both experienced and imagined by my primary authors can illuminate the passage …

Trace., Kcj Szwedzinski

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Trace utilizes autoethnography to investigate aspects of Judaism to discover how one decides what to embrace, embody, or deny from inherited legacies. Autoethnography attempts to combine quantitative and qualitative data in order to systematically analyze and describe personal experience. The artist acting as Ba’alei Kushiah, or question bearer, uses Talmudic philosophy as a methodology and approach to art making. This research is self-referential; using Jewish thought to ask questions about Judaism. Judaism, often existing in an in between place with outward characteristics that reflect regional influences, facilitates a dialogue about whether there are relative or absolute delineations within and between …

Sex(Edness) In The City: Reimagining Our Urban Spaces With Abraham Akkerman, Duane Allyson U. Gravador-Pancho

Philosophy Department Faculty Publications

In this essay, Duane Allyson U. Gravador-Pancho foregrounds the gendered origins of the cities that we build. Taking her cue from Akkerman, Gravador-Pancho outlines the predominantly masculine characteristics of most cities, which coincides with the privileging of Western rationality that emphasizes rigidity and predictability in urban design. Such a predominantly masculine conception and design of the city comes at the cost of setting aside characteristics that are feminine, such as the elements of surprise and eroticism. But how would a city look like if we allowed the feminine to also come into play? “In the context of urban planning and …