Areas of Specialization:  Ethics; Feminist Theory

Areas of Competence:  Applied Ethics, including Bioethics; Social and Political Philosophy

I work primarily in normative ethics and analytic feminism.  I am especially interested in moral issues that arise in oppressive social conditions.  In my current project, I argue that, in addition to having an obligation to resist the oppression of others, people have an obligation to themselves to resist their own oppression.  This obligation to oneself, I argue, is grounded in a Kantian duty of self-respect.  My other philosophical interests include theories of consent, feminism in the liberal political tradition, and Kant’s ethics.  I'm also interested in metaethical topics such as moral epistemology and in various issues in applied ethics.
 

Publications

“On Whether to Ignore Them and Spin: Moral Obligations to Resist Sexual Harassment,” Hypatia, 20     (2005): 94-108.

        Abstract:  In this paper I consider the question of whether women have an obligation to confront the men who sexually harass them.              A reluctance to be guilty of blaming the victims of harassment, coupled with other normative considerations that tell in favour of the                 unfairness of this sort of obligation, might make us think that women never have an obligation to confront their harassers.  But I                     argue that women do have this obligation and that it is not overridden by many of the considerations that can override other                             obligations to confront wrongdoers.

 

Presentations

“Rationality and Oppression,” Society for Analytical Feminism conference “Analytic Feminist Contributions to Traditional Philosophy,” 2008. 

“Rationality and Oppression,” Richard R. Baker Colloquium on the topic of “Building Coalitions Across Difference,” University of Dayton, 2008.

“Comments on Mikhail Valdman’s ‘Autonomy and History’,” American Philosophical Association Central Division meeting, 2008.

“On Whether to Ignore Them and Spin: Moral Obligations to Resist Sexual Harassment,” 32nd Conference on Value Inquiry, Louisiana State University, 2005.

“Moral Obligations to Resist Sexual Harassment,” Society for Analytical Feminism conference, University of Western Ontario, 2004.

“Moral Obligations to Resist Sexual Harassment,” The Ohio State University Department of Philosophy’s graduate colloquium series, 2004.

“MacIntosh on the Structure of Morality: What to do when Rational Preferences Conflict,” Dalhousie University Department of Philosophy’s colloquium series, 2000.


Refereeing

Hypatia, 2007