Current teaching at Oxford
I co-teach (with Sophie Smith, Politics) a graduate seminar on ‘Feminism and the Future’. In it we think about what feminism can teach us about a number of pressing issues: capitalism, work, affective labour, technology, the state, reproduction, sex and desire, and the environment. We will next teach this in HT 2022. I also give a set of undergraduate lectures for the special subject in ‘Feminist Theory’ (Politics / Philosophy), which I run; I will next give these in Michaelmas Term 2023.
Graduate supervision
I supervise Politics MPhil and Philosophy and Politics DPhil students working on topics in epistemology, metaphilosophy, feminist history and theory, and social and political philosophy. Doctoral projects I have or am currently supervising include: moral conceivability in Kant and Foucault; the notion of the ‘human’ in Kant and post-Kantian philosophy; the ethics of opacity and disclosure; the historical Rawls; Dalit-Bahujan women’s intellectual history; and the politics of childhood.
I’m afraid that, because of my current supervisory load, I am not accepting any more DPhil students.
Seminars previously taught at Oxford
GENEALOGY OF BELIEF (Trinity 2015, Tuesdays 4-6pm, Hovenden Room, All Souls, Oxford): On the genealogical contingency of belief. We’ll discuss, among other things, Nietzsche, Foucault, Hegel, Williams, experimental philosophy, and contemporary evolutionary debunking arguments. For more information click here.
SCHMILOSOPHY (All Souls, Oxford, Trinity 2013). We discussed an eclectic selection of philosophically interesting texts from outside the analytic philosophy canon: from postcolonial theory, sociology, musicology, film theory, cultural criticism, psychoanalysis, and Continental philosophy. Open to open-minded philosophers. For information, including a syllabus, click here.
FEMINISM IN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY (Philosophy Faculty, Oxford, Michaelmas 2012). I co-convened (with Paul Lodge) a seminar on feminist analytic philosophy, focussing on the question of what a feminist perspective can contribute to first-order issues in philosophy. For more information click here.
READING RORTY (All Souls, Oxford, Trinity 2012). I ran a seminar on the metaphilosophy of Richard Rorty at Oxford in Trinity 2012. For more information, including a syllabus, please click here.
THE GENEALOGY SEMINAR (All Souls, Oxford, Trinity 2011). I co-convened (with Josh Billings) a multidisciplinary seminar on the theme of Genealogy. For more information please click here.
Courses previously taught at UCL
THE GENEALOGY OF BELIEF: A graduate seminar on the genealogical contingency of belief. We’ll discuss Plato, Nietzsche, Foucault, Williams, A.W. Moore, Rorty and Brandom, as well as contemporary epistemology and metaphilosophy.
FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY An upper-level undergraduate/graduate seminar on the relationship (fraught and friendly) between feminism and philosophy. We’ll be discussing: sex and gender, intersectionality, transfeminism, pornography, feminist critiques of liberalism and capitalism, standpoint epistemology, epistemic injustice, objectification, sex work, and whether the idea of ‘feminist philosophy’ is coherent.
KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY: an undergraduate introduction to metaphysics and epistemology, with some metaphilosophy thrown in. Topics covered include induction and grue, the nature of knowledge, scepticism, the rationality of belief in God, why the universe exists, whether we’re free, personal identity, the metaphysics of race, and what we’re doing when we do philosophy.