Tag Archives: phd

Thoughts on Identity

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I am neck deep in writing the dissertation, and the issue of identity has emerged:  who am I?  I was talking with a colleague friend the other day and I exclaimed:  ”I think I’m a Philosophical Theologian who does and thinks about Ethics.”  She agreed.  This propelled me to continue my thinking around identity, and specifically who really am I as a scholar.  My degrees have all come from Schools of Theology and I have been taught to think theologically and philosophically about all things.  Now, as I move to finish my Ph.D. I wonder what this all means, and how my identity continues to become.

As I ponder this, I think about the tradition of European Continental Philosophy and my own exposure to the tradition of Social Ethics.  I’ve been inclined to identify with European Continental Philosophy and various Latin American Thinkers–both seem to want to challenge existing ideologies and offer ‘new’ ways of thinking.  So, who does this make me?  A child who was born in the State of Texas in the United States who grew into an adult in West Texas at a Baptist University, then flourished in a seminary in Chicago, now completing a dissertation in the West, Colorado.  My physical and intellectual nomadism–that particular type of movement between places–has birthed an identity.  I call it:  Philosopher-Theologian-Ethicist.  I write philosophy, some say.  I do Ethics, others claim.  I think theologically on most days, and find a particular rhythm that is almost liturgical in my thinking.

Identity is challenging.  There is no clear-cut stable identity that emerges.  It is always a negotiated identity, an unstable identity–an identity that irrupts in the borderlands and becomes in between points of contact.  It is a nomadic identity  whose subjectivity carefully unfolds while moving in between certain points along the way.

I do not seek to categorize this identity as a ‘something,’ but rather allow it to unfold and become whatever it may.

Latina Feminist Intercultural Epistemologies

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I’ll be traveling to Harvard Divinity school this fall for the ‘Ways of Knowing’ Conference.  The following panel was accepted for inclusion at the conference, a panel that two other Latina colleagues and I created.  I wanted to share it with you.

Panel Title: Latina Feminist Intercultural Epistemologies

Panel Description: The landmark First Inter-American Symposium on Feminist Intercultural Theology gathered together scholars from across the Americas in Mexico City during the summer of 2004 to re-envision knowledge production as a liberatory, inclusive, pluralistic, and transcultural praxis. Their experience of crossing language, borders, class divisions, race, ethnicity, and position within the academy resulted in a clarion call to reclaim excluded sources of wisdom, embracing multifaceted understandings of truth. Our panel responds to their call for a contemporary intercultural dialogue that undermines hegemonic theoethical constructions by proposing a range of Latina Feminist Intercultural Epistemologies. We seek to re-imagine wisdom through embodiment, Diaspora, and the queer(y)ing of spiritual practices.  With this in mind, this panel seeks to engage in the intersections of interculturality and epistemology.  We believe that space is a feature to understanding interculturality, and that the ways in which we produce knowledge and come to know are often dictated by the spaces in which we engage.

 

This panel creates an opening for adding voices to the existing work in Latina Feminism’s Interculturality.  The first paper seeks to theorize mestizaje as both body and place, and identifies it as the ‘cusp’ of interculturality.  The second paper looks at epistemological approaches, which include the composition of the “hard nucleus” of the Mesoamerican cosmovision, allowing for the unfolding of multivalent meanings of gender. The third paper situates the intersections of Womanist and Latina Feminist particularist approaches to theoethical epistemology in Diaspora, reclaiming AfroLatina identities as the space where our MotherWit and Sabiduría (wisdom) are united. These three papers position themselves in the company of “Latina explorations for a just world.”

Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy “Interstices: Women of Color Feminist Philosophy”

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Title: Interstices: Women of Color Feminist Philosophy

Journal Special Issue: Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy

Editors: Kristie Dotson, PhD & Donna-Dale Marcano, PhD

Publication Volume: Volume 29, Winter 2014

 

Hypatia Special Issue:

Interstices: Women of Color Feminist Philosophy

Call for Papers

Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy seeks papers for a special issue on women of color feminist philosophy.  We welcome feminist philosophical scholarship with the aim of interrogating and/or demonstrating work created within the terrain of these three terms- women of color, feminist, philosophy.  As the profession of philosophy has witnessed a small emergence of women of color who are pursuing academic degrees in philosophy as well as those who find philosophy useful in the service of other types of research and activism, women of color feminist philosophers still struggle to negotiate political and/or academic spaces often acknowledged as “interstitial” or “liminal.”  And, yet, when one considers that within the past decade that younger (i.e. newer) feminist scholars now have access to successful and now classic works of a handful of senior feminist philosophers of color, one can instantly recognize that we are at a threshold of expanding the purview of what it means to philosophize as a woman of color feminist philosopher.   This latter circumstance points to a significant transformation.  We are at a juncture that deserves celebration as well as serious contemplation on the presence or lack thereof women of color feminist philosophical work.   To this end, we encourage new essays that explore the promises of scholarship as well as problems of objectives and/or methodologies pertaining to women of color feminist philosophy.

By women of color feminist philosophy, we mean intellectual work done by feminists who take women of color as their primary philosophical touchstones and/or scholarly focus.  As such, we invite papers on a wide range of topics.  We look forward to new insights concerning the identity and/or existence of “women of color” feminist philosophical scholarship as well as whether and what philosophy and philosophical tools aid or prohibit pursuing and addressing women of color feminist work.  We also encourage essays on the process of including women of color’s voices into one’s own academic work.   In particular, we hope that this issue will stimulate articulation of the diverse truths inherent to the diversity of women included in the moniker women of color, as it is understood within and against the American context or post-racial, post-feminist sensibilities.  To this end, we encourage contributors to explore integrating resources from their particular racial, ethnic, and/or cultural background with an attention to the hazards or victories of such an exploration.   We welcome essays ranging from ethical and social political explorations to metaphysical and epistemological concerns.  We invite discussion of ways in which the label “women of color” translates and/or does not translate in contexts outside the US as well as whether and how it can be re-appropriated and transformed within international arenas.  We also encourage explorations of the relationship and distinctions between women of color feminist philosophy and critical race feminism or transnational feminism including articulations of what makes a work philosophical and how it becomes so.

Deadline for submission: August 15, 2012

Papers should be no more than 8000 words, inclusive of notes and bibliography, prepared for anonymous review, and accompanied by an abstract of no more than 200 words.  In addition to articles, we invite submissions for our Musings section. These should not exceed 3,000 words, including footnotes and references, and unless they are invited contributions, they will be subject to external review.  For details please see Hypatia’s submission guidelines, http://depts.washington.edu/hypatia/submission_guidelines.html

Please submit your paper to: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/hypa. When you submit, make sure to select “Interstices” as your manuscript type, and also send an email to the guest editor(s) indicating the title of the paper you have submitted:

Kristie Dotson: dotsonk@msu.edu; Donna-Dale Marcano: Donna.Marcano@trincoll.edu

PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN CONTRIBUTING!

American Academy of Religion 2011

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I’m spending my time over the next few days here in San Francisco attending the American Academy of Religion.  I’m presenting 2 papers for the Lesbian Feminist Issues in Religion Group.  They are titled:

1.  Intersectional Bodies: Disrupting Queerness in Religious Discourse, conference paper presented with Dr. Thelathia N. Young and Sara Rosenau for the Gay Men and Religion Group & Lesbian-Feminist Issues & Religion Group on the panel themed:  “Queer Eclipses: The Future of Gendered Sexual Identities in the Study of Religion,” The American Academy of Religion, San Francisco, CA, November 2011.

 

2.  Must I be a Lesbian Feminist?: Borderlands as the Si(gh)te for a Queer Mestizo, conference Paper presented for the Lesbian-Feminist Issues & Religion Group on the panel themed “Borderlands and Lesbian Nation: Sacred Space?”  The American Academy of Religion, San Francisco, CA, November 2011.

“Who does the QueerMestiza want to read her work, and why?!”

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I’ve been sitting on this draft since early May!  I was in the throws of my dissertation proposal, and was asked the following question by Corrine:

Who does the QueerMestiza want to read her work, and why?

I have spent most of my summer thinking about this very question.  The question itself had a tremendous impact on me.  I ended the Spring quarter, traveled to Harvard Divinity School for the Seminar on the Debates over Religion & Sexuality, and sat with 11 other amazing scholars in the field of Religion & Sexuality.  I had a perfect opportunity to imagine, to consider, and to ponder the effect and affect of my work.  I mostly did this with Nina who currently teaches at the University of Cape Town in the Religious Studies department.  I also spent significant time talking w/ Kelby, the PostDoc fellow at Union Theological Seminary.  I continue to engage these folks largely because of their insight and scholarly commitment to meaning and ideas.

What I discovered during my time at Harvard is that I really do like thinking about bodies, religion, and ethics, and the overwhelming ideas concerning materiality.  I realized that actually my project and the interdisciplinary commitment I have is provocative and folks are compelled by my questions!  This experience truly allowed me to ponder the question Corrine was asking me!

Who do I want to read my work?  Alas, the night before my last quarter of classes begin, I want to try and offer up an answer…

When I think about the “who” piece of this question, I think about the relationships I have and the ways that these relationships help me consider the ways in which we ‘are’ in the world.  This is the ontological question that intrigues me so!  Its the “how are bodies significant in today’s world?” question.  Its the phenomenology question, too!  And so, as the night before my fall classes begin, I want to say that I, the QueerMestiza, *hopes* that folks who are concerned with the ways we are in the world will read my work.  I also hope that folks won’t just ‘read’ my work, but actually engage in a conversation around my work.  I hope that my work, whatever my work becomes, will become like an entry point into a conversation–that it won’t BE the conversation, per se.  I hope that we will consider the value of the material body, our own material reality, ways that the body is morally significant in today’s world, and ways that our body can act in morally significant ways–ways that we can relate in an entirely enfleshed manner that evoke ethical action.

And so, I am hopeful.  I think what I want is for people to begin talking to each other, and begin finding ways to be in community w/ one another.  I think that’s one reason why bodies matter!

I hope Corrine keeps asking questions, even if the questions take me 4 months to answer!

Epistemology Comp

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My question for the exam titled:  Feminist Epistemologies, Queer Theories, and the Thought & Theory of Gloria Anzaldúa:

  1.  Putting Gloria Anzaldúa in dialogue with conventional feminist epistemologies, please discuss the relationship between language, knowledge, community, and bodies.   Please be sure to discuss the following: What do you see as the most significant similarities and differences between Anzaldúa’s epistemology and conventional/mainstream feminist epistemologies?  In what ways, if any, could the latter be transformed through more serious engagement with Anzaldúa’s theories? In what ways, if any, can feminist epistemologies (including Anzaldúan epistemologies) intervene in traditional (disembodied) theories of knowledge?  How could these epistemologies be used to enact social-justice work?
  2. Focusing especially on epistemological issues, discuss Anzaldúa’s status within and contributions to Queer Theory.   In what ways, if any, could a more serious and substantial engagement with Anzaldúan theory transform Queer Theory?
Click here for the bibliography

Stopping @ Harvard Divinity this Summer

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The sabbatical over blogging is complete now that my summer travels are over!  Here begins a series of posts sharing with all of you what I’ve been doing this summer!

I spent 10 days in Cambridge, MA in early June for the Seminar on the Debates over Religion & Sexuality at Harvard Divinity School, facilitated by Mark D. Jordan.  Here’s an explanation of it from the HDS site:

Seminar on the Debates over Religion & Sexuality

From June 6 to 15, 2011, Harvard Divinity School will host the Seminar on Debates Over Religion and Sexuality. This seminar, for advanced doctoral students, recent recipients of the doctorate, and writers working outside the academy who are hoping to change the terms of current debates about religion and sexuality, aims to help participants write their first large project (such as a dissertation or a book) while encouraging them to collaborate with others in the field.

The seminar understands both “religion” and “sexuality” broadly. Though its staff will have done specialized work mostly in “Western” religious traditions and expressions of sexuality, participants’ projects may cover a wide range of religions and sexual cultures. The seminar welcomes various methods in religious studies and theology, from the most focused ethnography or local history to the grandest normative proposal. It is also interested in projects about media communication, public policy, and religious advocacy. It especially seeks the participation of writers from outside the United States.

The seminar will be directed by Mark D. Jordan, Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Divinity, Harvard Divinity School. Faculty from Harvard University and other institutions or organizations will lead sessions in their areas of expertise. Large portions of the seminar’s time will be devoted to discussing participants’ writing in workshop format.

I met some of the most amazing folks while at Harvard Divinity!  I feel more than grateful to be in a community of scholars concerned with Religion & Sexuality and ways in which to envision Ethics and Social Theory that runs counter to normative horizons.

“What are you about?”

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On Thursday I finished the first draft of my dissertation proposal.  I was feeling really happy to be drawing connections to Quantum Theory, Queer Theory, and Postcolonialism for the pursuit of Ethics.  I felt good, and extremely invigorated about my work.  I even sent my proposal to a few people for an initial read before I present it on Wednesday to my Seminar class.  I wanted to make certain that the proposal, itself, is readable from a variety of disciplines within the field of Religion.  I received good and useful feedback, and my advisor signed off on the first draft, with some very helpful comments.  I was grateful and still feeling appropriately well.  Then, I had a conversation about my proposal with one of my colleagues.  It was tense, and there I heard the questions:  ”What are you about?  What’s the teleology of your project?”  Wow, I thought!  I hadn’t thought about the telos of my dissertation.  If anything, I was aiming to help make the body visible in discourse, its materiality for sure.  I was aiming to privilege the body as primary to moral decision making.  What am I about?

I heard this question not only about my work.  I heard it about my own self, my body.  And so, I’ve been thinking about this question for several days.  What.  Am.  I.  About. ?

This is the question that no one asks.  Faculty find what I’m doing creative and fascinating and praise me for pushing discourse–for being brilliantly engaged with “cutting edge” stuff.  My colleague, who asked the heart-stopping question, tells me I have cultural cache and that I know how to use terms.  I think I’m genuinely interested in bodies, my own body, and queerness–my own queerness.  I may have cultural cache, but its not just to be cool or be a lazy scholar.  I’m honestly interested in what my proposal has to say.  So:  What.  Am.  I.  About.  ?

You want to know what I’m about?  I can hear her say “Yes!” with a soft, yet urging and emphatic tone.  Well, this is what I’m about…

I’m about being different in the world.  I’m about trying to think pedagogically about my work.  I’m about asking severe questions that demand particular attention to  our bodies.  I’m about, in the spirit of Heidegger, taking long walks down country roads.  I’m about lazy Sunday mornings where I mull over why I continue to read shit that is difficult and yet tantalizing.  I’m about trying to be something and someone in the world, a model perhaps, that compels and engages the other to ask questions of themselves and respond to my questions with their actions and not empty rhetoric.  I’m about hiding behind my own rhetoric when I’m unsure of myself or where I’m headed in life and in scholarship.  I’m about the truest of love, and at the end of the day I have greater hope than I did the previous day.  I’m about fidelity in all things, especially in thinking.  I’m about engaging my being, and engaging my being different in the world.  I’m about you and your questions.  About you and your love.  I’m about so much more than my flesh and bones can handle–they rattle and hum with a deep abiding passion for the good things in this world.  What am I about?  I’m about just trying–really trying to not just do something cool, but be a bridge with otherness in order to have deep and meaningful relationships which compel me to do good and act justly.  I’m about so much more than these virtual words on this blog.  I’m about recognizing the indigenous past of my mother and grandmother and the ways that their struggle enabled my flourishing.  I’m about bodies being in this world in deeply intentional and meaningful ways.  I’m about deep relating, about meaningful relating, about listening to my body and responding appropriately.  I’m about me.  I’m about you.  I’m about so much and nothing at all.  I’m about that nepantla space where we are dismembered, where we come to know the deeper parts of ourselves, the space and place from where we act.

What are you about, my dear one?