Philosophy of Race and Gender

Catalog description

Race and gender, along with their interfaces and interactions with such other social identities as sexuality, (dis)ability, and class, structure our experience of almost every aspect of our social and political reality. Philosophers approach these kinds of social identities from a variety of perspectives. They ask what these kinds of social categories really are, what they mean for the ways we live our lives and the ways we perceive and understand the world, how they have (mis)informed our theoretical and practical understanding of the nature of justice and political power, and what is owed to those affected by racial and gendered injustice. This course uses these questions about race and gender to help introduce students to different areas of philosophy and the analytical tools these areas give us to help understand our world, while also using these different tools from philosophy to help us to understand what race and gender are, how they impact us as knowers, and how our identities function to structure our experience of social reality.