Women in Pragmatism Network

Women have been and continue to be underrepresented in the history of philosophy. Unfortunately, pragmatism is not an exception to this current trend. The genealogy of pragmatism pays less attention to the works of those women who contributed to the movement. Jane Addams, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Alice Hamilton, Mary Parker Follett, Anna Julia Cooper, Ella Flagg Young, Lucy Sprague Mitchell, Christine Ladd-Franklin, Mary Whiton Calkins, Florence Kelley, Victoria Welby and many others are only just resurfacing in the literature, after having been cast into oblivion for decades. For those women, to pursue an academic career or to live as public intellectuals was at best a challenge, if not an impossibility. One century later, the situation is only slowly changing. Women represent almost half of the community of professional philosophers. However, women keep being less quoted, less considered and held less creditable as subjects or objects of knowledge as their male peers.

The aim of this conference is thus to celebrate the past and current work of women researching and advancing philosophy in a pragmatist tradition and highlight their ongoing contributions to specialist academic research as well as public discourse. The conference will also promote mentoring, networking, and sharing good practice between women working on any aspect of the pragmatist tradition, broadly construed. As an output and lasting legacy of the meeting, we plan to create a virtual archive of women currently engaged in research on pragmatism, which will strengthen cooperation and facilitate communication between scholars. Lastly, the reunion of women pragmatists should lead to the adoption of some resolutions to correct gender bias in research, teaching and cooperation analogous to other associations of women philosophers.

Facultat de Filosofia, Universitat de Barcelona
January 28-30, 2020

Sponsored by

Facultat de Filosofia, Universitat de Barcelona

Departament de Filosofia, Universitat de Barcelona

Associazione Culturale Pragma, Italy

Pragmata, France