Keynote Speakers:

Dr. Kristie Dotson and a Special Guest!

Kristie Dotson is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University. She is part of the coalition #WhyWeCantWait that attempts to challenge the way current visions of racial justice are constructed to outlaw open concern for women and girls of color. In her academic work, she researches at the intersections of epistemology and women of color feminism, particularly Black feminism. Dr. Dotson edited a special issue on women of color feminist philosophy for Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy entitled, "Interstices: Inheriting Women of Color Feminist Philosophy" (29:1, 2014) and has published in numerous journals including Hypatia, Comparative Philosophy, The Black Scholar, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society and Social Epistemology. Dr. Dotson is working currently on a monograph entitled, How to Do Things With Knowledge.

Dr. Talia Bettcher

Talia Bettcher is a Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Califiornia State University, Los Angelos. Her work integrates critical reflection with tangible and meaningful action in our lived world. Her work in transgender studies flows from personal experience in the trans community subcultures and grass-roots organizing in Los Angeles for the past fifteen years. Her philosophical investigations aim to capture realities that are experienced by flesh and blood people and that can have political and practical consequences (see, for example "Recommended Models and Policies for LAPD Interactions with Trans Individuals". She is a member of the founding editorial board of Transgender Studies Quarterly, the first-ever non-medical journal focusing on transgender issues. She has also served as a judge for the Lambda Literary Awards (2013). She is currently writing a monograph entitled Reality Mare: Reflections on Transphobia, Trans Feminism, and the Structures of Personhood.

Featured FEAST Session:

This year we will celebrate the work of Dr. Joan Callahan.

Intersectionality

The term intersectionality identifies a long-standing practice within Black feminist thought of attending to multiple axes of oppression simultaneously.  It is a term that has been utilized in multiple contexts and contested in others. To what extent have all feminists fully responded to the call to think and act with an awareness of how multiple axes of power intersect?  To what extent have feminists failed to do so? How have political action and thought been transformed by analyses that are intersectional? What are some of the obstacles and opportunities for collective feminist action given that feminists are differently positioned in relation to one another along various axes of oppression and privilege?  

Epistemology

Feminists have long called attention to the ways in which our political and ethical lives are intertwined with our lives as knowers.  Moreover, feminist thinkers from various disciplines and traditions of thought have analyzed myriad ways in which knowledge production itself can align with or resist oppression.  What sorts of ethical, political, and epistemic questions arise when we practice self-reflexivity, reflecting upon feminist knowledge production and distribution? How do disciplinary demarcations and boundaries direct epistemic attention in some ways and not others?  What are some examples of productive epistemic disruption, intervention, and resistance?

Grace

How we navigate and negotiate our relations with others seems to evoke questions about grace in more than one sense of the term.  As beings who live interdependently and who err, we are sometimes generous with others despite their failings and at other times we ourselves may be received with a generosity that is not deserved.  How ought we to think about this sort of grace when relations are already fraught due to axes of dominance and oppression? For example, who is afforded grace and who is not? In a different vein, as feminists we are often trying to occupy spaces in which we are not welcome and to create possibilities that current regimes relentlessly work against.  Given the awkwardness feminist projects may entail, when and how do we maintain grace under pressure, when and how do we sustain it toward those with whom we work in resistance to oppression? What does “maintaining grace” do? And when ought it to be rejected?

The FEAST program committee seeks papers that engage intersectionally-informed thinking on these and other issues including:

• Overlaps and interactions between ethics, politics, and epistemology
• The materiality of ethics and of moral knowing
• Ongoing disagreements in feminist philosophy concerning, for example:
• Intersectionality
• Calling out and calling in
• Mainstreamed "White Feminism"
• Interdisciplinarity and/or working across disciplines
• Where "early" feminist ethics has led us and where we should go from here
• Relations (ethical/political/epistemic) among differently non-dominantly situated persons
• Loving perception vs. loving ignorance
• Epistemic hurdles, but also epistemic gateways, for working intersectionally on particular problems, for example:
• Sexual Harassment and Sexual Violence
• Disability/Disabling Institutions and Practices
• Colonization, Imperialism, and Globalization
• Speaking for, about, and/or with
• Grappling with the ways in which vulnerability and privilege can intertwine

• Your paper or panel title,
• Your name,
• Your institutional affiliation,
• Your e-mail address,
• Your surface mail address, and
• Your phone number.

Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (FEAST) Conference October 3-6, 2019
at Sheraton Sand Key Resort in Clearwater, FL

(Download these guidelines: PDF or Word here.)

Transportation:

Supershuttle, a shared van service, offers round-trip rides from/to Tampa International Airport (TPA) to the conference hotel for $27.65 per person for a shared ride or $61.85 for a direct ride for up to 3 passengers (not including gratuity). Supershuttle offers round trip direct rides from the Clearwater/St. Petersburg airport (PIE) to the conference hotel for $127.40 for up to 3 passengers. It is possible to make a reservation on-line at https://booking.supershuttle.com/. Wheelchair-accessible vans are available, and there is an option to request this on-line. If you plan to have Supershuttle transport a manual wheelchair, and you do not need a wheelchair lift, I would recommend calling 1-800-BLUE-VAN to convey this information.

Lyft and Uber are both available in this area.

The estimated fare for a one-way trip via taxi from TPA to the conference hotel is approximately $70 (including 15% gratuity). The estimated fare for a 0ne-way trip from PIE to the conference hotel is $35 (not including gratuity).

Sheraton Sand Key Resort:

• Hotel rooms: There are accessible rooms with the following features: (Rooms with bathtubs and grab bars are no longer available.)
• Roll-in shower or bathtub with grab bars (Rooms with bathtubs and grab bars are no longer available.)
• Portable tub seats
• Portable communications kits containing visual alarms & notification devices
• Mobility-accessible doors with at least 32 inches of clear door width
• TTY (Text Telephone Device)
• Televisions with closed captioning