Research

Broadly speaking, my research is in feminist philosophy and modern and contemporary continental philosophy. Probably because of my many years working as an activist in the women’s movement, I am concerned with how gendered power is lived socially and politically: in the body, in language, in the imaginary life of communities, and in the capitalist nation-state. My work in feminist philosophy draws on phenomenology, poststructuralism and feminist materialism, as I think a viable account of gendered experience and gendered power must address multiple structures of human existence. I teach and am especially engaged with the work of Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, and Judith Butler. Other figures, however, are also central to my research, including Merleau-Ponty, Marx, Hegel, and Kant.

See my C.V. here.

Selected Publications

Books

Sovereign Masculinity: Gender Lessons from the War on Terror (Oxford University Press, 2014)

Women’s Liberation and the Sublime: Feminism, Postmodernism, Environment. (Oxford University Press, 2006). Winner of the 2007 Gustav O. Arlt award for outstanding scholarship in the humanities from the national Council of Graduate Schools.

Articles and Book Chapters

2014. Invited Contribution. “American Exceptionalism: The Gender Factor.” E-International Relations. http://www.e-ir.info/2014/03/23/american-exceptionalism-the-gender-factor/.

2013. “Three White Men Walk into a Bar: Philosophy’s Pluralism,” in Radical Philosophy Review 16(3), pp. 733-746.

2012. “Creepers, Flirts, Heroes and Allies: Four Theses on Men and Sexual Harassment,” in The American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy, issue on Sexual Harassment, edited by Margaret Crouch. (here)

2012. Invited Contribution. “Gender as Justification in Simone de Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe.” Sapere Aude: Journal of Philosophy, vol. 3, n. 6 (2012) Pontifíca Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Brazil.

2011. Invited Contribution. “Töten, um zu siegen” (“National Manhood in Post-9/11/2001 USA.” ) Kulturaustauch. The Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations ifa and ConBrio. Reprinted in Kramfader: Frauen Lesben Zeitschrift, 2012.

2011. “Gender Apparatus: Torture and National Manhood in the U.S. War on Terror,” in Radical Philosophy: A Journal of Socialist and Feminist Philosophy, v. 168, July/August 2011; translated into German by Regine Othmer as “Ein Geschlechterapparat: Folter und nationale Männlichkeit im „Krieg gegen den Terror“ der USA,” published in Feministische Studien 30. Jahrgang, Nov. 2012, No. 2.

2010. “What Should Feminists do About Nature?” in Konturen: Online German Studies Journal. http://konturen.uoregon.edu/.

2009. “Vampire Love: The Second Sex Negotiates the 21st Century,” in Twilight and Philosophy: Vampires, Vegetarians, and the Pursuit of Immortality, edited by Rebecca Housel and JeremyWisnewski. Blackwell Press. Philosophy and Popular Culture Series. Excerpted in The Philosopher’s Magazine, Issue 47, 4th Quarter, 2009. Reprinted in Introducing Philosophy through Popular Culture, ed. by William Irwin and David Kyle Johnson, Wiley-Blackwell 2010. (here)

2009. “Iris Marion Young: Between Phenomenology and Structural Injustice,” for Dancing with Iris: Festschrift, edited by Ann Ferguson and Mecke Nagel. Oxford University Press.

2008. “Beauvoir and the Question of a Women’s Point of View.” Philosophy Today. Summer.

2007. “The Lesbian June Cleaver: Heterosexism and Lesbian Mothering,” in Against Heterosexualism: Overcoming Heterosexual Normativity and Defeating Heterosexist Bigotry, a special issue of Hypatia, edited by Joan Callahan, Sara Ruddick and Bonnie Mann. Volume 22, number 1 (Winter 2007).