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PHIL/WGST 275.001 – Moral and Philosophical Issues of Gender in Society

Instructor: Ripley Stroud. This course meets MTWRF 1:15 – 2:45 p.m. via remote synchronous (RS) instruction.

This course will be a multi-dimensional introduction to items in the philosophical toolkit that equip us to think about issues of gender in society. We’ll begin by thinking and talking about a variety of applied issues of gender in society. We’ll then explore some different subfields of philosophy and consider how they might help us think about the applied issues.

Some questions we’ll think about:

  • What is gender, and what relationship, if any, does it have to biological sex? Is gender natural or constructed? What sort of gender kind is “genderqueer”?
  • How has philosophy considered questions of gender historically? How has discussion of it developed over time? Is there anything fruitful to be found here, or is it simply outdated?
  • How does gender inform the kind of knowers we are (if at all)? What kind of privileged knowledge do we have on account of our gender? How might gender discrimination result in epistemic oppression?

The course will culminate in a final project which analyzes an applied issue of gender through the lens of a philosophical subfield that we’ve discussed.