#MeToo and Epistemic Injustice

The CUNY Graduate Center Advanced Research Collaborative (ARC), the Center of the Humanities, and the Philosophy Program present and interdisciplinary conference on #MeToo and Epistemic Injustice. Over the past year, the #MeToo movement has forced into national consciousness what has long been an underground truth known by women: the horrifying pervasiveness of sexual harassment and assault as routine everyday occurrences, largely unpunished. How can one explain the resistance there has traditionally been, as recently brought out in one high-profile case after another, to taking women’s testimony seriously? Using Miranda Fricker’s innovative concept of “epistemic injustice” as a focus—the refusal to give members of subordinated groups a fair hearing—this 2-day interdisciplinary conference will examine the problem in its multiple dimensions. Eighteen theorists from a wide variety of subjects—philosophy, political theory, media studies, history, gender and women’s studies, LGBTQ theory, Africana and Native American studies, law, and disability theory—will look from their distinctive perspectives at women’s vulnerability to sexual harassment and assault, and the ways in which it is complicated by class, race, nationality, sexuality, and disability.

SPEAKERS:

Linda Martín Alcoff, Philosophy, Hunter College & CUNY Grad Center

Susan Brison, Philosophy, Dartmouth College

Ann Cahill, Philosophy, Elon University

Nirmala Erevelles, Disability Studies & Education, University of Alabama

Karyn Freedman, Philosophy, University of Guelph

Miranda Fricker, Philosophy, CUNY Grad Center

Mishuana Goeman, Gender Studies & American Indian Studies, UCLA

Suzanne Goldberg, Columbia Law School

Raja Halwani, Liberal Arts, Art Institute of Chicago

Alison Jaggar, Philospophy, University of Colorado Boulder

Kate Manne, Philosophy, Cornell University

Danielle McGuire, Independent Historian

Sarah Clark Miller, Philosophy, Penn State Univeristy

Rupal Oza, Women & Gender Studies, Hunter College & CUNY Grad Center

Andrea Press, Media Studies & Sociology, University of Virginia

Tricia Rose, Africana Studies, Brown University

Dina Siddiqi, Women & Gender Studies, Hunter College

Shatema Threadcraft, Government, Dartmouth College

CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS:

Linda Martín Alcoff

Charles W. Mills