Gay, Lesbian, Bi, Trans and Queer Philosophy Programs

The Pluralists' Guide certainly generated a lot of heat, even before it went public. In this short post, I'm not going to address any of that heat.

Instead, I'd like to talk about one of the difficulties we faced in putting this site together, and one that I hope posting publicly will help. 

When we decided to cover under-represented areas, I felt it important, and Paul and Linda agreed, that we should cover GLBTTQ Philosophy. Since I had published in the field and had contacts with other philosophers working in the field, I thought I could make up an advisory  board, send out surveys, and see the results. 

I was wrong. Virtually nobody responded to the survey. Several people contacted me expressing their hope that we could generate such a list, but they did not feel fully qualified to fill out the survey. I had access to several reliable email lists of philosophers working in GLBTTQ Philosophy, but to no avail. In the end, the data generated for what are described on the site as "Tentative Lists" was worked out in actual conversation with the people on the advisory board and through sheer "grunt-work" -- checking on who was at which departments and what they had published, and looking through the meager survey results.

There are two obvious reasons for these difficulties: first, GLBTTQ philosophy is a fairly new field, and second, it is a fairly small field. My impression is that there are no departments that can be described as "strong in GLBTTQ Philosophy" in the same way that a department can be described as "strong in American Philosophy." That is, no department has multiple people working in that field and at the top of their game. This impression was reinforced by the difficulty of finding strong departments, and (depressingly) reinforced by the fact that the data showing which parts of the site are getting hits reveals that nobody's going to look at the GLBTTQ recommendations.

So I end this post with a plea, the same one that that appears on the site: please, if you have reliable information about strong programs in GLBTTQ Philosophy, or would be willing to serve on our advisory board, contact the site through our email: pluralistguidetophil@gmail.com

 

Comments

[Kristina Meshelski]

I am in no position to be on any advisory boards, as I have just finished my PhD. But I have a question: do we really think that GLBTTQ philosophy is a new field? I guess it all depends on what you think of as new, but it doesn't seem much newer than other recent fields like Bioethics. Of course this brings up many questions about how you characterize the field and interdisciplinary issues.
At any rate thanks for doing that "grunt work", this has potential to become a very useful listing!