The Department at Western has eight philosophers
in a variety of fields whose work can be classified in full or in part under
the rubric “Feminist Philosophy”. The Philosophical Gourmet, has listed Western as having one of only 20 philosophy graduate programs in the
English-speaking world with strength in feminist philosophy.
Gillian Barker: Barker
works in philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, and environmental
philosophy. Her research examines science as in its cultural and political
context, with attention to the implications of cognitive psychology and
embodied knowing, and to the interactions between science and values.
Much of her work focuses on the implications of our choices of particular
conceptual models. She has broad interests in feminist epistemology and
feminist approaches to philosophy of science, philosophy of biology and environmental
philosophy.
Samantha Brennan: Brennan is currently Chair of the Department of Philosophy
at The University of Western Ontario. Brennan’s work within feminist philosophy
falls primarily with the area of feminist moral philosophy. Brennan has written
about issue of justice and the family. She also has interests in philosophical
issues relating to sex and gender. She has presented work in feminist ethics at
national and international feminist philosophy conferences. Brennan is the
editor of Feminist Moral Philosophy (
Helen Fielding: Fielding’s research and publications are situated within the
areas of twentieth-century and contemporary continental philosophy;
specifically on issues of embodiment in feminist philosophy drawing upon the
phenomenological tradition. She has published feminist essays on Merleau-Ponty,
Irigaray, and Heidegger and is currently working on a book project based on
this past research. She would be willing to supervise students working on a
thesis in contemporary continental philosophy or to be on a committee for
students working in another area of feminist philosophy. Fielding holds a joint
appointment with the Department of Women’s Studies and Feminist Research.
Elisa Hurley: Hurley’s research interests lie at the intersection of value
theory and philosophy of mind, and encompass questions in meta-ethics, moral
psychology, bioethics, and feminist ethics.
Most broadly, her work explores the connections between our distinctively
human capacities to experience certain affective psychological states and the
fact that we encounter and navigate a world filled with value. She continues to develop the moral
psychological and metaethical implications of her view that solutions to
several philosophical puzzles about how feelings and conceptual content come
together to form a category of mental states called "emotions" turn
on distinctive practical contributions emotions make to
our substantive understanding of values. In recent bioethical work, Hurley asks whether the contributions
of emotions to moral understanding and agency has ethical implications for
developments in psychopharmacology. This includes a feminist analysis of the
implications of using drugs to blunt the emotional impact of traumatic memories
of sexual violence, both for individual moral agency and for our collective
responses to violence and the socio-political conditions that support it. Hurley
is an affiliate member of the Department of Women’s Studies and Feminist
Research.
Tracy Isaacs: Isaac’s work in feminist ethics focuses on issues of
responsibility. Published articles in this area include, “Cultural Context and
Moral Responsibility” (Ethics Vol.
107, No. 4, 1997), “Domestic Violence and Hate Crimes: Two Levels of
Responsibility” (Criminal Justice Ethics,
Vol. 20, No. 2, 2001), and “Feminism and Agency” (Feminist Moral Philosophy, editor Samantha Brennan, Calgary
University Press, 2003). Work-in-progress in this area includes an article on
the role of women’s experience in moral theorizing, and a larger project on the
way that oppressive social contexts can shape agency and identity. Isaacs can
supervise anything in the area of feminist ethics, including theories of
oppression, the ethics of care, responsibility and oppression, feminist moral
epistemology, feminist moral methodology, and more applied issues such as
pornography, prostitution, or abortion. Isaacs holds a joint appointment with
the Department of Women’s Studies and Feminist Research; she is currently Chair
of that department.
Carolyn McLeod: McLeod is currently Graduate Chair in the Department.
Her contribution to feminist philosophy falls within the areas of feminist
bioethics and feminist moral theory. She is concerned in particular with practical
moral dilemmas that arise in the area of reproduction and with the moral
concepts needed to understand and resolve these dilemmas. Her current research focuses on conscientious refusals by health
care professionals to provide standard services such as abortion services, on
the nature of conscience, on fertility preservation in women and on adoption,
including transracial adoption. McLeod’s supervisory capacities extend to
any issue in reproductive ethics or in bioethics more broadly, and to topics in
feminist theory having to do especially with psychological oppression,
autonomy, trust, integrity, self-regarding attitudes such as self-trust or
self-respect, objectification, race, and gender. McLeod is
the author of Self-Trust
and Reproductive Autonomy (MIT Press) and editor of Understanding and Protecting Reproductive Autonomy, Special Issue of Bioethics 32(1). She is also former Co-coordinator
of FAB (the international network on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics) and is
co-founder of FAB’s journal IJFAB (International Journal of Feminist Approaches
to Bioethics). McLeod is an affiliate member of the Department of Women’s
Studies and Feminist Research.
Karen Margrethe Nielsen: Nielsen’s research falls within the area of ancient philosophy, with special emphasis on issues in moral philosophy, psychology, and metaphysics. Articles in this area include “The Private Parts of Animals: Aristotle on the Teleology of Sexual Difference” (Phronesis no 4-5 (2008)) and “Dirtying Aristotle’s Hands? The Analysis of Mixed Acts in Nicomachean Ethics III, 1” (Phronesis no 3 (2007)). Nielsen co-organized the workshop “Bridging the Gap between Aristotle’s Science and Ethics” (UWO, March 19-21, 2009). She is interested in feminist approaches to the history of philosophy, as well as social policy. Her Scandinavian background informs her approach to gender issues.
Kathleen
Okruhlik: Okruhlik’s area of specialization is history and
philosophy of science. A significant part of her teaching and research deals
with feminist critiques of science. She is the co-editor of Women and Reason (University of Michigan
Press, 1992) and author of the “Feminist Accounts of Science” entry in Companion to the Philosophy of Science (Blackwell,
2000). Two of her better known
articles are “Gender Bias in the Biological and Social Sciences “(reprinted in Philosophy of Science. The Central Issues. W.W. Norton, 1998) and “Logical Empiricism,
Feminism, and Neurath’s Auxiliary Motive“ (Hypatia
19.1, Winter 2004). Okruhlik is presently senior co-chair of the Philosophy
of Science Association’s Women’s Caucus, and she is an affiliate member of the Department
of Women’s Studies and Feminist Research.
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