Gender, Race and Philosophy: The Blog

Race Forum

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychosocial/our-research/affiliated-research-centres-1/race-forum/

The Race Forum is a public site for discussions about ‘race’ and racism, class, multiculture and postcoloniality; diaspora and global migration and ‘race’, gender, sexuality and desire. It brings together students and academics from different institutions and from across the disciplines of Sociology, Media and Cultural Studies, Law, Literary Studies, Education Studies, Psychosocial Studies, Urban Studies, History and Social Anthropology with others outside the academy.

The Race Forum opens up a space for discussions on the global geopolitics of the twenty-first century and incorporates debates on postcolonialism and empire; the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq and ‘the war on terror’; the recent civil unrest and civil disobedience in the U.K and across the globe; resurgent nationalisms and human rights. It also focuses on political cultures such as religious revivalisms, anti-globalisation, peace, anarchist, postcolonial feminist and prison abolition movements. It is a place for conversations on music and cultural politics, 'whiteness'; intersectionality; 'homonationalism'; class, 'race' and criminalisation; militarism; policing; 'urban regeneration'; addiction, illiteracy and incarceration; 'race', class and education; racial and sexual violence and institutional racism.

New Symposium on Thomas McCarthy, Race, Empire and the Idea of Human Development (2009)

 

Find the symposium here.

Gooding-Williams on Trayvon Martin and Fugitive Slave Mentality

A must-read.

 

Gooding-Williams on C-SPAN

Interview with Robert Gooding-Williams on his recent book, In the Shadow of Du Bois: Afro-Modern Political Thought in America.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/299941-4#

CFP: Gender, Sex, Race and the Family

CFP: Making Sense of Gender, Sex, Race and the Family

Humana.Mente – Journal of Philosophical Studies

Call for Papers Issue 22, July 2012

Making Sense of Gender, Sex, Race and the Family

Editors: Elena Casetta & Vera Tripodi

One of the main topics in analytic feminist philosophy is the notion of gender and it is widely held that it is a social constructed concept or category. Traditionally, the inquiry into the nature of gender has been focused on the relation between gender and sex, but recently an increasing number of analytic feminists is coming to consider the status of gender also in its correlation with the categories of race and family. Briefly, according to this approach, it would be a mistake to isolate conditions such as gender, race, class, age, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, economic position, family status: insofar as they are social constructions, all these notions differ from one society to another and women or men do not experience their membership in a gender, sex or race in the same way. But are really all these notions socially constructed? And, in case, are they constructed in the same way and to the same extent? And how can race and sex affect the way we perceive and shape our gender experience and gender expression? Are there different types of human bodies and different ways of sexually classifying them? What does make a woman (or man) a mother (or father)?; Is parenthood a biological or natural relationship? What defines a family?

This issue of Humana.Mente welcomes contributions addressing these and related questions, including the following topics:

The ontology of race and gender
Reproduction and sexuality
Non-human animals sexuality, reproduction, and “families”
Family and adoption
Reproduction, procreation and family
The science of race and sex
Gender, race, ethnicity and class
Man and masculinity
Sexuality and marriage
Identity, race and gender
Sex reassignment and personal identity
Motherhood and fatherhood
Transgender, transsexual, and queer sexualities
Gender and science
Marriage, same-sex unions and civil marriage

Furthermore, we invite to submit reviews of recent books (published after 2010), and commentaries of articles and books that could be of particular interest for the topics analyzed in this Issue.

Please send a document in an editable format suitable for blind review to:

Elena Casetta: elena.casetta AT unito.it
Vera Tripodi: vera.tripodi AT ub.edu

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION: 2012 January 1st
PEER-REVIEWING PROCESS: 2012 January 7th to March 31st
NOTIFICATION OF ACCEPTANCE: 2012 April 2nd
FINAL VERSION DUE: 2012 April 30th

Instruction for Authors:
Max. length:
- PAPERS: 20 pp. (2400 characters with spaces per page – 50.000 types, blankets, notes and references included).
Papers must include an abstract (between 600 and 700 types) and a reference list (please use the author-date reference style).
- COMMENTARIES: 7 pp.
- BOOK REVIEWS: 4 pp.
Font: Bodoni 11 – Page Dimension: 15×23 cm
Margins: Sup 3,25 Inf 2,25 Left and Right 1,8

Language: English

Conference on Bias

HUMBOLDT-UNIVERSITÄT ZU BERLIN, GERMANY INSTITUT FÜR PHILOSOPHIE
SYMPOSIUM SERIES:  FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY AND…

THE INAUGURAL EVENT ON BIAS

25 – 26th August 2011

Location: Kleiner Senatssaal (Humboldt-Universität Main Building, Unter den Linden 6, Berlin)

The concept of bias has played a key role in shaping feminist epistemology and philosophy of science. It is not, however, an uncontested concept. Feminist philosophers disagree amongst themselves on how the concept should be understood, and whether bias is inevitable. They further disagree on how feminists should respond to and deal with bias. For instance, are biases always detrimental to our knowledge seeking activities? Or, can certain explicit biases (like feminist and anti-racist ones) make our epistemic practices more robustly truth-seeking?

More recently, political and ethical discussions have started making use of the concept of bias. Both philosophers and psychologists alike have begun examining certain sorts of widespread implicit biases about members of stigmatised social groups. The holders of these biases are generally unaware of them, and often have sincere and explicit egalitarian beliefs. On one understanding, implicit biases are unconscious prejudices that unduly affect our ways of both positively and negatively perceiving, evaluating, and interacting with others. The recognition and analysis of such biases has wide-ranging consequences for feminist philosophy and politics, as well as for every other movement seeking social justice. Implicit biases may explain why members of particular groups still find it hard to ‘make it’, despite the lack of overt obstacles to positions of power and authority.  Given its centrality to a number of feminist debates, this conference examines the notion of bias (broadly conceived).

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS:

Louise Antony (University of Massachusetts, Amherts, USA): "Different Voices or Perfect Storm? Explaining the Dearth of Women In Philosophy"

Jennifer Saul (University of Sheffield, UK): "Formal Equality of Opportunity and Affirmative Action"

Matthew Drabek (University of Iowa, US): “A Model of Feedback Bias in the Social Sciences”

Catherine Hundleby (University of Windsor, Canada): “Bias and Fallacies of Argumentation: The Case of Androcentrism”

Kristen Intemann (Montana State University, US) & Inmaculada de Melo‐Martín (Weill Cornell Medical College, US): “Bias and the Commercialization of Scientific Research: Can a Feminist Conception of
Impartiality Help?”

Peter Kirwan (University of California, Irvine, US): “Implicit Bias: Mapping the Dark Matter of Social Psychology”

Heidi Lockwood (Southern Connecticut State University, US): “Why does Diversity Matter in the Academy”

Susanne Pohlmann (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany): “Accountability and Underpinning Attitudes of Biased Beliefs”

This conference also serves as the inaugural event for the new Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Symposium Series Feminist Philosophy and…. It will be followed by further regular events on topics relevant and of interest to feminist philosophers and all philosophers working on issues to do with social justice. Planned future topics include Feminist Philosophy and: Gender, Pornography, Race, Sex work.

Attendance is free but places are limited. To register, email feminism-hu@gmx.de by 11th August 2011. For further information about the Symposium Series and the event on Bias, please contact Prof. Dr. Mari Mikkola (mari.mikkola@hu-berlin.de).

Moya on Race and Culture

The On The Human Forum has just completed an excellent discussion of race and culture, prompted by Paula Moya's essay "A Story in Two Parts, With an Ending Yet To Be Written."  Find it here:

http://onthehuman.org/2011/05/story-in-two-parts/

Enjoy!

Conference: Is There Space for Race in Evolutionary Biology?

Dear colleague,

Past attempts to define 'race' using traits or genes have failed.  However, biologists have had great success in defining stubborn biological terms, such as 'species', using evolutionary theory.  Can it be that 'race' is definable evolutionarily?  You are cordially invited to attend a special Spring Conference, co-sponsored by the Bay Area Biosystematists (BABS) and USF's Department of Philosophy , entitled, Is There Space for Race in Evolutionary Biology? 

The conference will be held on May 14, 2011 at USF's McLaren 250.  The event is from 12:45-7pm.  There will be plenty of time for audience discussion.  There will be refreshments at breaks and a reception, and the event is free and open to the public.  This conference promises to be engaging and controversial.  Hope to see you there!  Please visit our conference website, below, for more details, and feel free to circulate the attached flyer to others who you think may be interested in attending.

https://sites.google.com/site/babsspringconference2011/

Sincerely,

Quayshawn Spencer, conference co-organizer

Charles Mills in On the Human Forum

See Charles Mills' essay "The Political Economy of Personhood" in the Forum at On the Human:  http://onthehuman.org/

or directly:  http://onthehuman.org/2011/04/political-economy-of-personhood/

Please join the discussion using "comments" and spread the word!

Article on "Biological Racial Realism"

Quayshawn Spencer (forthcoming). What 'Biological Racial Realism' Should Mean. Philosophical Studies. 

A curious ambiguity has arisen in the race debate in recent years. That ambiguity is what is actually meant by ‘biological racial realism’. Some philosophers mean that ‘race is a natural kind in biology’, while others mean that ‘race is a real biological kind’. However, there is no agreement about what a natural kind or a real biological kind should be in the race debate. In this article, I will argue that the best interpretation of ‘biological racial realism’ is one (...) that interprets ‘biological racial realism’ as ‘race is a genuine kind in biology’, where a genuine kind is a valid kind in a well-ordered scientific research program. I begin by reviewing previous interpretations of ‘biological racial realism’ in the race debate. Second, I introduce the idea of a genuine kind and compare it to various notions of natural and real biological kinds used in the race debate. Third, I present and defend an argument for my view. Fourth, I provide a few interesting consequences of my view for the race debate. Last, I provide a summary of the article.