MAP (Minorities and Philosophy)

Our vision for UIC MAP is to foster a community of budding philosophers. We encourage anyone, and especially those from marginalized backgrounds, interested in thinking about philosophical issues outside of the classroom to participate in our meetings. Below you will find a calendar of planned events.

Since our chapter is brand new, we will be spending our first few meetings getting to know one another and solidifying what sort of events everyone is interested in. On the docket are things like screening philosophically interesting movies, discussing articles or books we disseminate, and hosting talks by professional philosophers who come from under-represented (at least in academia) backgrounds, as well as workshops and panels focused on aiding MAP students in their pursuit of further study and inclusion in academic philosophy.

I encourage anyone interested to come to our first meeting to get in on the ground floor! Our meetings will be in-person with an option for online attendance via zoom. Please email rmaung2@uic.edu for a link.

Our next meeting will be at the start of Spring semester. The exact date, time, and place TBA. Please come!

If you are interested in exploring some recent philosophical work by minority and marginalized philosophers dealing with topics like race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, fat studies, and feminist theory you can find an ongoing catalogue of such works here:

Race/Ethnicity: 

-The Case for Rage: Why Anger is Essential to Anti -racist Struggle, Myisha Cherry

-Visible Identities, Linda Martin Alcoff

-George, Yancy, “White Embodied Gazing, the Black Body as Disgust, and the Aesthetics of Un-Suturing.” (In: Body Aesthetics, edited by Sherri Irvin, Oxford University Press, 2016)

Identity and Epistemology:

-Kristi Dotson, ”Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing

-Miranda Fricker, “Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing”

Ethnicity: 

-Stephanie Rivera Berruz, “The Quest for Recognition: The Case of Latin American Philosophy” and “In the Flesh and Word: Latina Feminist Philosophers’ Collective Labor”

Decolonial Feminism: 

-Serene Khaer, Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic

Disability: 

-Elizabeth Barnes, Minority Body

-Joe Stramondo, “Why Bioethics Needs a Disability Moral Psychology”

Fat Studies: 

-Anne Eaton, “Taste in Bodies and Fat Oppression”

-Noortje van Amsterdam, “Big fat inequalities, thin privilege: An intersectional perspective on ‘body size’”

Gender and Sexuality: 

-Robin Dembroff and Daniel Wodak, “How Much Gender is Too Much Gender?”

-Robin Dembroff and Catharine Sait-Croix, “‘Yep, I’m Gay’: Understanding Agential Identity”

In addition, the APA has several excellent resources including:

A collection of diversity and inclusiveness syllabi

https://www.apaonline.org/members/group_content_view.asp?group=110430&id=380970)

Demographics and statistics

https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.apaonline.org/resource/resmgr/data_on_profession/minorities_in_philosophy.pdf

And valuable information and testimonials for undergraduates

https://www.apaonline.org/page/undergrad_resources

And finally, another excellent resource for underrepresented students in philosophy is to attend, either as an undergraduate participant or a graduate student mentor (for applicable programs), a summer diversity institute in philosophy. These institutes provide mentorship and practical guidance in the decision to pursue philosophy professionally, offer opportunities to network with other marginalized philosophers (starting at the peer level and going all the way up to well known and respected people working in the field), provide engaging academic seminars and workshops, and allow you to travel to new cities and campuses. They also look great on a CV. In addition to all these benefits, if accepted the institutes are free and they provide airfare, room, and board. They also often offer a modest stipend for their participants.