Dr. Elizabeth Anderson of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI joined as a Sophia member.

Dr. Carol Bensick, Research Associate at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women in Los Angeles, CA joined as an Axiothea member.

Dr. Laura Weed of the College of St. Rose in Albany, NY joined as a Sophia member.

Dr. Melanie Johnson-Moxley of Columbia College in Columbia MO joined as a Philosopher-Queen  member and chose for her premium the Busted!! photo album. 

The Honorable Gayle Washburn, former Mayor of Fillmore, CA, joined at the Sophia level.

Above

Christine de Pizan. Illustration from her City of Ladies.

Dr. Sandrine Berges of Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey joined as a Sophia member.

Dr. Jacqueline Broad of Monash University Melbourne, Australia joined as a  Philosopher-Queen member and chose for her premium Vol. 1 of the Busted!! DVD.

W. Michael McDavit, of Arlington, VA is the Associate Director of the US Environmental Protection Agency joined at the Philosopher-Queen level and chose for his premium the Busted!! photo album

In our Fall, 2013 Newsletter, I reported that in June, 2013 I had applied on behalf of SSWP to the APA for a grant to work on the Busted!! DVD series that Dorothy Rogers and I are collaborating on.  As you know, the DVD I presented at our meetings in 2008 had included 40 women philosophers from the Ancient period to the mid 20th-century.

For the past three years, Dorothy Rogers and I have worked to expand that original DVD from 40 to nearly two hundred women philosophers. We have written dozens of narratives, identified works and teachings, and found portraiture of these foremothers. We have found period music composed by women to provide audio background for the narratives. Dorothy has arranged for dozens of women (with appropriate accents) to record (and re-record, and re-record) our narratives, and has supervised student audio engineers who work to control volume levels, dub in narrations, and sync all to the PowerPoint visuals. I have been working on developing a Bibliography for each DVD that will be printed as a QR code inside the jewel case inserts. SSWP member's publications will be featured in it.

After promoting the DVDs and the Busted!! photo album at the APA's conference on Diversity in May 2013, I submitted an application for APA support for

the production costs (pay student recording engineers, buy DVDs, jewel cases, labels, etc.) for Volumes 2 & 3 of the series. In the application I argued that these would be instructional-level teaching tools, intended to allow young women who were taking their first philosophy course (and studying only the great white males) to see philosophy as something women also have always engaged in. Perhaps, I argued, by doing so, more women would be encouraged to enter the profession.

The APA received applications totaling more than $50,000 but had only $25,000 available and maximum allotments of $5,000. The award was made to me, but the check for $4,175 was deposited in SSWP, Inc.'s checking account. Not only was I given the full amount requested, but that award was the largest the APA made this year.

I applied to Cleveland State University for $2,625 to pay a graduate student to create the bibliography for the series. This grant will be disbursed directly to the student creating the bibliography.

Our sincerest thanks to the American Philosophical Association, and Cleveland State University. Their generous support will be acknowledged on those DVDs.  We plan to apply shortly to APA for additional funds to cover the engineering costs of preparing Volume 4.

Much work on Hull House has centered almost exclusively on Jane Addams, even though she herself often acknowledged the work of others during her lifetime, and despite the fact that we have accurate records attesting to the names of women and men who were central to the Hull House project.  

Ellen Gates Starr has often been deemed the co-founder of the enterprise; what is less well known is that she authored a number of papers on the place of art and the role of aesthetics in the settlement movement, and that in doing so she forwarded several lines of thought that might be deemed to be Deweyan.

Although Julia Lathrop wrote comparatively little, we do have written work from her, and more important, Addams herself dedicated an entire work to her with her volume My Friend, Julia Lathrop. 

Ellen Gates Starr

1859-1940

Co-founder of Hull House

Julia Lathorp

1858 - 1932

Appointed by President Taft as first director of the US Children's Bureau, the precursor to the Social Security Administration.

Starr was a firm believer in the importance of the aesthetic for all, and she went out of her way to introduce those who participated in the settlement house projects to a variety of crafts and tasks that would evoke a sense of wonder and an appreciation of beauty.  Her work On Art, Labor and Religion recapitulates pragmatist points later made explicit by Dewey in Art and Experience—bookbinding is an example of a craft that she perfected during her years in the Chicago area.  

Julia Lathrop, in her short piece “What the Settlement Stands For” reminds the reader that true democracy is found with the involvement of the greatest number, and she buttresses her celebrated capacity to interact with the community (including in midwifery) with an analysis of the meaning of engagement.    Both women promulgate notions central to John Dewey’s work, noting that learning takes place with mental effort and physical involvement.

There is no question that their work in the Hull House effort has often not received adequate attention. 

Hull House, Chicago

from a colorized postcard

Love and War is an exploration of gender as both a weapon and casualty of war.

Ideas of masculinity and femininity become sharply defined in war-reliant societies, resulting in a presumed enmity between men and women. This so-called “battle of the sexes” intensifies in tandem with dispositions to fight actual wars. These are among the discoveries shared in Love and War, which de-scribes the making and manipulation of gender in both militaristic and nonmilitaristic societies and the sweeping consequences for men and women in their personal, romantic, sexual, and professional lives.

Drawing on cross-cultural com-parisons and examples from popular media, including sports culture, the rise of “gonzo” and “bangbus” pornography, and “internet trolls,” this work shows how misogyny and toughness are deployed to construct masculinity in ways that undermine relations between women and men. Employing diverse philosophical methodologies, this work identifies the cultural elements that contribute to heterosexual antagonism, such as an enduring faith in male force to solve problems, the glorification of violent men who suppress caring . 

emotions, the devaluation of men’s physical and emotional lives, an imaginary gender binary, male pri-vilege premised on the subordination of women, and the use of misogyny to encourage masculine behavior

Love and War tracks the “collateral damage” of this disabling misogyny in the lives of both men and women, but ends on a hopeful note. It ultimately finds the link between war and gender to be dissolving in many societies: war is becoming de-gendered, and gender is becoming de-militarized.

In addition to being heavily influenced by Marilyn Frye’s notion of pattern identification (as an alternative to generalization) and Sandra Bartky’s “situated pheno-menology,” two of the eight chapters engage with the work of feminist philosophers. Chapter 2, “Let’s Make a Deal: The Heterosexual Economy Falls Off a Cliff,” discusses Sandra Bartky’s “Feeding Egos and Tending Wounds: Deference and Disaffection in Women’s Emotional Labor,” from Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Op-pression (Routledge, 1990). Chapter 5, “Can Men Rescue Romantic Love? More Faith and Fantasy,” relies cru-cially on passages from Beauvoir’s chapter “The Woman in Love,” from The Second Sex.

Deshoulières’s later poetry clearly defends the naturalism she had inherited from Hesnault.  In her “Imitation of Lucretius,” she endorses the atomistic theory of the world’s construction. 

“These atoms conjoined with the light

By their extreme fluidity

Are always in society

With the regulating essence.” 

She insists that human beings are as much a product of the material cosmos as are other observable beings. 

“In a cyclone of subtle matter

Placing them everywhere in inequality

All the human race is the blessed offspring.” 

It is matter which determines human existence and action.

One of the puzzles concerning early modern women philosophers concerns their philosophical formation.  How did women acquire a philosophical culture, given their exclusion from the universities and scientific academies?  In some cases an influential tutor introduced a woman to philosophical issues.  The metaphysical poet Antoinette Ligier-de-la Garde, Madame Deshoulières (1638-1694), illustrates this influence.  During her adolescence, her tutor Jean Hesnault introduced her to the naturalism of Pierre Gassendi.  This metaphysics claims that all activity, even apparently spiritual activity, can be explained by material causation.         

Oliva Sabuco came from a woefully dysfunctional family headed by her misogynist father, Miguel Sabuco.  Miguel Sabuco has left behind a tail of legal documents that show the extent of his mistreatment of the women in his family. I argue that his mistreatment extended to misguided, but ultimately successful attempts to claim authorship of the book written by his daughter, Oliva Sabuco. He has been aided in his posthumous plagiarization of Oliva Sabuco's New Philosophy of Human Nature by a small handful of 20th century scholars who built their academic reputations on popularizing the idea that Miguel and not Oliva wrote this philosophy of medicine.

How did Miguel Sabuco mistreat women?

Various legal documents show that Miguel Sabuco was motivated by financial interests to:

• Refuse to pay Oliva's dowry until after she and her husband sued him. They settled for a reduced amount, which by today's standards is enormous.
• Collect a debt from a widow by confiscating her property and placing her in a convent as an "oba" or laborer-nun, then marrying her teen-aged daughter. 
• Comply with the law by providing his impoverished teenage second wife with a very small dowry--an amount insufficient to provide for the support of their child.
• Try (unsuccessfully) to publish Oliva's book in Portugal under his own name so that he could collect the royalties.
• Claim in his Last Will & Testament that he was the author of Oliva's book so that his son by his new wife could collect the royalties after Miguel died.

How did 20th century philosophers effect this "hysterectomy"?

1. At the turn of the 20th century Miguel Sabuco's Will was found. It was badly transliterated and published. In it he claimed authorship of New Philosophy of Human Nature and stated that he put Oliva's name on it only to give her the honor.
2. Spanish male philosophers and historians pounced on the idea that a woman could not have written such a philosophical text. They began writing their own commentaries on and analyses of the book "by" Miguel Sabuco.  In several cases, publications about this work's authorship are the only academic publications by these male philosophers and historians. They built their careers upon the "fact" that Miguel Sabuco, not Oliva Sabuco wrote the work.
3. International agreements about librarianship relegate to the National Library of the country of the author of a work, the final decision as to who is the author in a contested case. The Spanish scholars referred to in (2) above have close family and business relationships with bibilographic librarians at the Biblioteca Nacional.

As scholars and intellectuals, we often confine our sources of knowledge to the written word. We look for books by and about a woman philosopher, for articles she's written or in which her ideas receive scrutiny.  In recent years there have appeared a few supplementary sources through which women's contribution to philosophy is interpreted.  The film "Agora" about Hypatia of Alexandria, the PBS series on Hildegard von Bingen, the film on Hannah Arendt (see Fall, 2013 Newsletter for Cecile Tougas' review) and other artistic performances can not only inform our own appreciation of women philosophers' work and their impact on the profession and on society, but they also provide an excellent introduction to and overview of that work for our students.  

One of the most iconoclastic of women philosophers was Emma Goldman.

Detroit's Matrix Theatre Company stages dramatic readings from Emma Goldman's correspondence, published writings and speeches on May 16, 17 and 18.  Based on Howard Zinn's history Emma, this production brings to life the philosopher's views on the rights of immigrants, workers, women and minorities as exemplified through her imprisonments, deportation, and her vilification by the powers whose control she threatened.