To open the conference, this keynote panel brings together the founding editors and members of the collective that established Hypatia, as well as editors representing each editorial team that has managed the journal since its inception. We asked these panelists to consider the following questions as a point of departure: What was the impetus for publishing the three Hypatia special issues of International Women’s Studies Forum that appeared in 1983, 1984, and 1985; and what made possible the founding of Hypatia as an independent journal in 1986? How have conditions changed for doing feminist philosophy, and what role has Hypatia played in changing them? Finally, how has the heterodox vision of feminist philosophy that inspired Hypatia evolved over the years?
Chair: Alison Wylie (University of Washington) and Joan C. Callahan (University of Kentucky)
Azizah Y. al-Hibri, University of Richmond (founding Editor 1982-1984)
Ann Garry, California State University, Los Angeles (a founding Associate Editor)
Linda López McAlister, University of South Florida (Editor 1990-1995, Co-editor 1995-1998)
Laurie J. Shrage, Florida International University (Co-editor 1998-2003)
Margaret A. Simons, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (Editor 1984-1990)
This is the first of three thematic keynote panels devoted to broad areas of philosophical interest that are represented in early volumes of Hypatia and that prefigure much subsequent work in feminist philosophy. The focus here is on conceptions of rationality and epistemological issues as taken up, for example, by contributors to two special issues on Feminism and Science that appeared in 1987 and 1988. These panelists reflect on the various ways in which feminist analyses have reframed each term in the conventional formulation, “S knows that P”; they make the case for theorizing epistemic practice; and for considering questions of epistemic authority in intersectional terms on a global scale.
Chair: Lynn Hankinson Nelson (University of Washington)
Sandra Harding, University of California, Los Angeles
In this second thematic keynote panel, contributors address pivotal questions in feminist ethics and political theory rooted in discussions they helped initiate, in early issues of Hypatia, with probing critiques of colonialism and sex/gender conventions, and the exploration of distinctively feminist approaches to questions of justice, responsibility, and moral agency. They reflect on the trajectory of feminist value theory and, looking forward, consider the implications of attending to the realities of interpersonal dependency, taking structural conditions seriously in theorizing culpable wrong, articulating a racialized, as well as gendered, politics of recognition, and reframing conceptions of justice in transnational terms.
Although feminist scholarship routinely undercuts any sharp distinction between continental and analytic traditions, a special issue on French Feminism (1989) and early contributions by and on such figures as Irigaray and Beauvoir, signal the important influence of continental traditions on the formation of feminist philosophy. This third keynote panel brings together contributors whose interests cross-cut the other two thematically. They consider the changing fortunes of Beauvoir scholarship, and contemporary implications of Foucauldian analysis; they trace some surprising twists in feminist conceptions of embodiment and sexual agency, and make the case for retheorizing labor and social relations in terms that give central consideration to a sophisticated conception of love.
Chair: Gillian Harkins (University of Washington)
Christine Di Stefano, University of Washington
Kelly Oliver, Vanderbilt University
Jana Sawicki, Williams College
Margaret A. Simons, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville
In this closing keynote panel, five feminist scholars who are comparatively new to the field take stock of the conference as a whole, with the aim of identifying key priorities for future work in feminist philosophy. The lines of inquiry they identify as most engaging and most pressing for feminist philosophers include, centrally, the need to vigorously counteract the continued marginalization of “minoritized” women in philosophy, both within the networks of scholars who do feminist philosophy and in the philosophies they produce.
Chair: Sharyn Clough (Oregon State University)
Kristen Intemann, Montana State University
Emily S. Lee, California State University, Fullerton
