Alumni Talk Series - Working at the Margins: Being a Feminist Philosopher
Thursday, April 25, 2019 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4Bard College Berlin Cafeteria, Waldstr. 70, Berlin - Pankow
A talk by Hilkje Charlotte Hänel (AY 2007)
Despite the many obstacles I encountered in German academia, I became a feminist philosopher. There were many times when I wanted to quit what I was doing and turn to something easier, a job less stressful and less competitive. But observing the many injustices in the world and in academia kept me from turning my back on feminist philosophy. As a friend once said: “You might be fine without philosophy, but philosophy is not fine without us!”
In my talk, I will tell you about my own personal experiences and the ways in which implicit bias and stereotype threat make it harder for marginalized people to succeed in academia (and the job market in general) as well as the problems that come with working on topics close to one’s heart, such as structural injustice, sexual and domestic violence, and misrecognition.
These are topics that you cannot push aside when you come home in the evening, topics that wear you down, but that also keep you doing what you’re doing despite the many hoops that you have to jump through. I will also provide some insight into how to survive academia as a PhD-student and a Postdoc. This talk is not purely academic, instead I will try to give you an image of my research area as well as my own story.
Hilkje Charlotte Hänel (Academy Year 2007) works as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin. In January 2018 she successfully finished her PhD in Philosophy at the Humboldt University. Her thesis is on the concept of rape and combines various topics including questions of conceptual analysis, family resemblance, feminist methodology, feminist epistemology, ideology, and emancipation. It is published with Transcript.
Her main research is in analytical feminist philosophy, social philosophy and applied ethics. She is particularly interested in bridging different traditions, such as analytic philosophy and critical theory—not only in regard to topics such as injustice, but also in regard to methodological questions. She contends that feminist philosophy and critical theory can fruitfully complement each other. She is currently working on epistemic injustice, misrecognition, and the method of non-ideal theory and what it can do both for projects in feminist/social philosophy and in applied ethics.
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Date & time: Thursday, April 25, 2019, from 12:30pm
Venue: Bard College Berlin Cafeteria
Waldstr. 70, Berlin - Pankow
Email: [email protected]