Thanks so much, Sara. Absolutely, yes, that is all I meant by feminist philosophy seal of approval. Apologies if that sounded ridiculous. The initiatives taken by feminist and otherwise right-on graduate students in philosophy regarding issues of pluralism, diversity, and better philosophy continue to be impressive and transformative. As for the minoritizing language, I don't want to get into a big long thing, but at least "underrepresented" is preferable to "minority" because it indicates that the sources of disproportionate numbers in various professions are injustices. Also there's the fact that people of color and women are the global majority. As for the case of our own profession, the minority discourse gives life to the view that philosophy is a white man's world, and it's a lovely thing that the gates are now open for democratic participation, and the inclusion of the gals and darker groups and lower class, etc. But maybe philosophy only recently became a white man's world, and maybe justice and better philosophy are not about numbers of people in graduate school, and etc. etc etc.I'm obviously blabbing away here when I should be finishing up an essay that is due painfully soon. I do get why "MAP" is a nicer name than "UPAP" (underrepresented people in philosophy). Maybe someone among us has a perfect feminist philosophy article or reference to share that does a much better job of summing up an intersectional twenty-first century antiracist feminist view of the delimiting limits of the discourse of "minority" ?Cheers,Chris############################On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 10:53 AM, Sara Protasi <[log in to unmask]> wrote:Hi Chris and all,I am one of the co-founders of the original MAP group. It was founded at Yale, and evolved from a group called GAP, which stands for Gender and Philosophy.GAP was born in response to initiatives such as the "What It's Like To Be A Woman In Philosophy" blog. I was depressed by so many stories, and by my own personal experiences as a woman in philosophy, and wanted to do something about it, so I started the working group that became GAP. But after a while we realized that it was hypocritical to think about the underrepresentation and experience of discrimination and harassment of women, but not of non-White, disabled, or LGBTQ philosophers (and other underrepresented or at risk of discrimination groups), and so we changed it to MAP.Yena Lee, who was an undergraduate at Yale and one of the MAP members, had the idea of creating a network of chapters, and found institutional support at Princeton, where she is now a graduate student. In short, that's the story.I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about both the name and the initiative. We did not think too carefully about the name, to be honest. We liked the idea of finding a "map" to fill the "gap"...There is no relation to PIKSI, by the way, at least not a genealogical one. As I am not in the board of directors of the MAP network, I am not aware of possible current collaborations.As with regard to feminist seals of approval, we received informal approval and support from many feminists, and many of us consider ourselves as such: does that count?! :)All best,SaraP.S. Here is a longer version of the story, which we sent to "What We are Doing":Although relatively young, the Minorities and Philosophy working group (MAP for short) at Yale University has already seen three stages of development.
It was born in Fall 2010 as Women and Philosophy working group. This was a group of female graduate students interested in addressing the issue of the dearth of women in philosophy, and the related issues of sexual discrimination and sexual harassment in academia, that had been brought to the fore by your sister-blog (“What is it like to be a woman in philosophy?”). The formation of the group was supported from the very beginning by Prof. Tamar Gendler, chair of the department.
During the first meeting of Women and Philosophy, which included both undergraduate and graduate female students, the participants voted to open the working group to male participants. The decision was taken after weighing considerations for and against a co-ed group. Among the reasons against, there was the interest in creating a friendly and welcoming place for women in a mostly male environment, along the lines of similar initiatives (see for instance the Women Faculty Forum Lunches at Yale). Among the reasons for, there was the shared conviction that in order to improve such an environment it was fundamental to include men in the dialogue, and to send the message that questions of gender should be a matter of attention of a department (and a profession) as a whole.
The group therefore started its activities under the name of Gender and Philosophy in February 2011, with a talk by Ruth Barcan Marcus titled “Women in Philosophy: Past, Present and Future”. It was followed by three other talks, all well-attended by women and men alike, and by faculty, graduates and undergraduates alike.
In 2011-2012 GAP held eight meetings, four per semester, which consisted of 2 reading groups and 6 talks from internal and external speakers.
In both years of activity, we received organizational support from the Women Faculty Forum at Yale, which co-sponsored some of the events, and financial support from both the university (namely the Dean’s Fund for Research Workshops of the Graduate School) and the department.
At the end of its second year, GAP evolved into MAP, Minorities and Philosophy, after the decision to expand the scope to issues concerning any minority issues in philosophy. Starting from this school year, we plan to host talks addressing: a) the minority issues in the profession, b) theoretical issues regarding philosophy of gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, etc., and c) philosophy done from minority perspectives.
The group maintains its characteristic openness in content and format. With regard to the latter, so far we have had both informal talks with extended discussion, and reading groups, and we are looking into the possibility of a lecture series and workshops of a more practical character (for instance, workshops on communication techniques). With regard to the former, we believe that addressing the minority gap in philosophy requires a multi-focused strategy.
On the one hand, it is necessary to diagnose the nature of the problem and its causes. One way to do this is to ask questions from the internal perspective of philosophy and its specific characteristics (for instance, is there anything in philosophy that is uniquely responsible for the professional and academic disadvantage of minority groups?). Another way is to look at analogous issues in other disciplines to diagnose fundamental problems, and ideally, offer solutions.
On the other hand, it is important to show that philosophy can be done in many ways. One way to make philosophy friendlier to women and other minorities is to make philosophy more about women and other minorities – to discuss issues in feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and so forth. Additionally, it is also important to have speakers who are members of minority groups, independently of what their philosophical interests are. We want to address the minority gap by giving prominence to the minority members themselves.
Moving from GAP to MAP is not just a name change but a sign of optimism: we really hope we can contribute to finding the paths to fill the gaps in our profession.
2014-10-10 14:44 GMT+01:00 Chris J. Cuomo <[log in to unmask]>:############################Hello Feast folks,The announcement below for an interesting-looking grad student conference at USF includes the following: "We especially encourage contributions from underrepresented perspectives in philosophy for a special session sponsored by Minorities and Philosophy (MAP)."The discourse of "minorities" is so problematic.I believe this is the first I have heard about MAP, but I get my philosophy news from limited sources, and I don't read every group email that lands in my box.Given the large number of chapters of MAP in the US (and a few in the UK, see http://www.mapforthegap.com/), I'm sure there are FEAST members involved in MAP. I would like to know more about it, and perhaps others on this list would as well.Is there any sort of relationship between MAP and PIKSI? Should there be? I'd appreciate any information about MAP and whether it has any sort of feminist philosophy seal of approval ; )Thanks,Chris CuomoUniversity of Georgia
From: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, October 10, 2014 3:20:42 AM (UTC-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
To: Digest recipients
Subject: [PhilUpdates] Digest for [log in to unmask] - 1 update in 1 topic
Megan Flocken <[log in to unmask]>: Oct 07 09:34PM -0400
DELIMITING LIMITS, 8th Annual University of South Florida Graduate Student
Conference, March 13-14, 2015
Visiting Keynote: Mark Wrathall
Faculty Keynote: Lee Braver
This conference explores various ways of delimiting limits, in relation to
being and thinking, to activities which bear on and engender experience,
knowledge, and expression.
We invite interpretations of and contributions to this topic from a variety
of perspectives. Avenues of thought which may be addressed include, but are
not limited to, the following:
- a Kantian metaphysical legacy and the noumenal limit;
- post-Kantian anti-metaphysical legacies and the existential limit to
transcendental philosophy;
- a theological limit to philosophical questioning, reason, and knowledge;
- the 'unthought' and the limits of what is thinkable (and how this relates
to thinking itself);
- limits of 'the public': the individual, self, and the private speaker and
addressee;
- limits of kinship and tradition: deterritorialization, defamiliarity, and
de-family (beyond the oedipus complex);
- polyamory, polymorphous perversity, and the limit(lessness) of desire;
- bodily limits: dis/ability and crip theories;
- post-nationality, anarchy and the limits of citizenship, rights,
sovereignty;
- the margins of philosophy (the canon and its self-perpetuating limits):
critical race theory, liberation theology, MEChA, feminisms;
- the strange, uncanny, monstrous;
- the sublime in art praxis and the limit of sense and representation;
- queerness and the limits of binary;
- 'the border' qua inter/national, identity, or micro-politics;
- liminal cases in ethics, the development of ethics at the limits of
morality;
- temporal limits: death, ecstasy, the conditional tense (futurity);
- law and legal limits of acceptable and appropriate behavior, the limits
of the norm especially in relation to social justice;
- psychopathology and the limits of dis-ease: what pathologizing reveals
about the human condition;
- intuition, discovery and the limits of scientific methodology;
- animality and the limits of humanness;
- ambiguity and the limits of self-ownership, ipseity, property;
- modal possibilities at the limits of propositional logic;
- analytic-continental divide and the limit of discipline
We welcome submissions of no longer than 3,000 words from graduate students
as well as advanced undergraduates. We especially encourage contributions
from underrepresented perspectives in philosophy for a special session
sponsored by Minorities and Philosophy (MAP). Please prepare submissions
for blind review, and include name, title, and institutional affiliation on
a cover page. Submissions and inquiries should be sent to:
[log in to unmask].
Deadline for papers to be considered for the conference: January 4, 2015.
You received this digest because you're subscribed to updates for this group. You can change your settings on the group membership page.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it send an email to [log in to unmask].
To unsubscribe from the FEAST-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: https://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=FEAST-L&A=1
--
To unsubscribe from the FEAST-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: https://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=FEAST-L&A=1
