Symposium: Feminist Utopias: Transforming the Present of Philosophy

Symposium at the University of Iceland Alison Jaggar, University of Colorado, Boulder "Feminist Utopias: Transforming the Methodology of Political Philosophy" Kristie Dotson, Michigan State University "On the Value of Challenging Philosophical Ortodoxy: A Tale of Two Careers" Willow Verkerk, Kingston University "Reinterpreting Philosophy: Questioning Universality with Exemplarity and Difference" Nancy Bauer, Tufts University "Philosophical Ideology and Real-World Power" Opening and closing addresses by Sigríður Þorgeirsdóttir and Eyja M. Brynjarsdóttir, University of Iceland. Some of the most ground-breaking inventions in contemporary philosophy have come from feminist philosophy. More gender-conscious conceptions of humans have modified and enriched traditional philosophical ideas about epistemic, ethical and political subjects, and our understanding of the past of philosophy has been improved by recent scholarship on women in the history of philosophy. However, the transformative potential of feminist philosophy for renewing the discipline in terms of canon, concepts, histories, institutional cultures, content, and plurality of styles has not yet been actualized. The feminist utopias envisioned by feminist philosophers across traditional philosophical divides and cultures possess the potential for invigorating philosophy and bringing it back to basic questions of philosophy born out of wonder or frustration. Such utopias are not idealistic but represent our striving for a more realistic grasp of who we are and how we experience the world. The inherent tension between the particular and the universal, the private and the public, so strongly debated within feminist philosophy is a resource for disclosing new philosophical futures. The conference is open to the public and is part of a larger symposium organized by the research group Feminist Philosophy Transforming Philosophy at the University of Iceland and The Nordic Summer University (NSU) Study Circle Feminist Philosophy: Time, History and the Transformation of Thought. The program can be found here.