Resources for discovering BIPOC writers (particularly philosophy)

[DogBarman]

I am currently undertaking the long overdue task of re-working my syllabi to include a more diverse and representative set of philosophers and theorists. The problem I am encountering, however, is that when I realize that a particular reading list is composed mostly of dead white men, I am at a loss as to who I can add to it - while I suspect that there are many great texts I could cite by people of color, I was never introduced to them in my own education, and I find them difficult to discover now.

Is anyone aware of a centralized resource for BIPOC scholarship that I could use to diversify my syllabi? I am particularly concerned with philosophy and critical theory.

And if such a thing does not currently exist: Would it be a good idea to start it?

[Parasaurolophus]

There are lots of ways of doing this!

• Look up existing syllabi, especially by younger philosophers (younger women are especially good when it comes to crafting diverse syllabi, but most younger philosophers are nowadays).
• Ask a younger philosopher (like me!).
• Consult the APA's collection of diversity and inclusiveness syllabi.
• Some philosophical associations have their own diversity and inclusivesness curricula and materials. You can find them on their association websites. Here's are the resources from the American Society for Aesthetics, for example, plus more teaching resources.
• Simon Fraser University maintains ProjectVox, a bibliographic database of works by women philosophers. SFU just won a nearly $3 million grant to extend the project and rediscover women philosophers and philosophers of colour in the history of philosophy.
• Georgetown has a diversifying philosophy thing, too.
• Here's another set of resources from the Australasian Association of Philosophy.
• Here's the Diversity Reading List
• And, as a fun (and particularly challenging) exercise, here's an all-female syllabus for the philosophy of mind, just to prove it can be done.

[Cheerful]

...composed mostly of dead white men

Why use this unfortunate, disrespectful term?  Will you be adding readings labeled as authored by "dead Black men," "dead Indigenous women," and so on?  Please think about the terminology and respect, thanks.

[mamselle]

See.. Betty Friedan, I think?

A female writer calling the canon into question isn't being deprecatory, just accurately descriptive.

I doubt if the dead ones care, at this point, and the white ones do need to grapple with the concept...

M.

[Cheerful]

See.. Betty Friedan, I think?

A female writer calling the canon into question isn't being deprecatory, just accurately descriptive.

I doubt if the dead ones care, at this point, and the white ones do need to grapple with the concept...

M.

If you loved your father very much, and your father was a White man who had passed on, and your father authored beautiful, important, respected work, would you want him always referred to as a "Dead White Man?" Say you had a Black sister, your sibling, whom you loved, who would post here, and she passed on, would you want her referred to as another "Dead Black Woman" who used to post on the fora?

[Parasaurolophus]

It's gonna be pretty hard to find the descendants of Plato or Aquinas. The locution is not typically applied to anyone who died recently. It typically denotes historical figures.

Anyway, that's entirely beside the point.

[DogBarman]

There are lots of ways of doing this!

Thank you for this great list, Parasaurolophus! I look forward to getting into it; I expect that some of these will be exactly what I am looking for.

[downer]

There are lots of ways of doing this!

• Look up existing syllabi, especially by younger philosophers (younger women are especially good when it comes to crafting diverse syllabi, but most younger philosophers are nowadays).
• Ask a younger philosopher (like me!).
• Consult the APA's collection of diversity and inclusiveness syllabi.
• Some philosophical associations have their own diversity and inclusivesness curricula and materials. You can find them on their association websites. Here's are the resources from the American Society for Aesthetics, for example, plus more teaching resources.
• Simon Fraser University maintains ProjectVox, a bibliographic database of works by women philosophers. SFU just won a nearly $3 million grant to extend the project and rediscover women philosophers and philosophers of colour in the history of philosophy.
• Georgetown has a diversifying philosophy thing, too.
• Here's another set of resources from the Australasian Association of Philosophy.
• Here's the Diversity Reading List
• And, as a fun (and particularly challenging) exercise, here's an all-female syllabus for the philosophy of mind, just to prove it can be done.

That's a useful list.

There are also quite a few publisher textbooks that explicitly aim for a more diverse approach. They are not perfect, and some people say using textbooks is bad, but they still can be worth looking into.

If you are doing history of philosophy, then it is worth recognizing that not all of the major figures were white as conventionally defined. Notably, St Augustine was a Berber. Even calling the Ancient Greeks "white" seems simplistic. For the Middle Ages, it makes sense to include Avicenna and Averroes, especially if you plan to cover Aquinas or Descartes.

I find it trickier to include a little "Eastern" philosophy in my courses. Setting out any figure requires a great deal of stage setting, and so it is very difficult to just pop in a bit of Eastern. If you are going to do it, then you will need to devote a significant portion of your course to setting out a different tradition. That also requires a great deal of self-education.

That does lead to the question of what is the most efficient of diversifying one's syllabi. Realistically speaking, the changes are probably going to have to be incremental unless your school is going to pay you to devote significant time to curriculum change. It makes sense trying something new each semester and seeing how it works. After a few years, your syllabi may look very different.

[marshwiggle]

...composed mostly of dead white men

Why use this unfortunate, disrespectful term?  Will you be adding readings labeled as authored by "dead Black men," "dead Indigenous women," and so on?  Please think about the terminology and respect, thanks.

Wouldn't it make more sense, and avoid this kind of disrespect, to "diversify" geographically? If most currently taught philosophy might reasonably called "European" (primarily; of course, Persians, etc. who contributed don't fit that.....), but there could be philosophers from Africa, South and East Asia and so on included (and again, realizing that all of those had influences from other regions as well.....). This way the skin colour or ethnicity of the philosophers themselves is not explicitly the focus.


The point is that then the societies that developed which reflect their philosophical heritages can be looked at somewhat objectively; everything is not reduced to a "pro or con" about exclusively Western philosophy and society.

[Parasaurolophus]

I forgot to add this podcast series: History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.

Wouldn't it make more sense, and avoid this kind of disrespect, to "diversify" geographically? If most currently taught philosophy might reasonably called "European" (primarily; of course, Persians, etc. who contributed don't fit that.....), but there could be philosophers from Africa, South and East Asia and so on included (and again, realizing that all of those had influences from other regions as well.....). This way the skin colour or ethnicity of the philosophers themselves is not explicitly the focus.


The point is that then the societies that developed which reflect their philosophical heritages can be looked at somewhat objectively; everything is not reduced to a "pro or con" about exclusively Western philosophy and society.

If that's what floats your boat, fine. But there are other desiderata included in philosophical diversity. One is to ensure the adequate representation of women, and women aren't geographically-bound. Another is to ensure adequate representation of minority voices who, while "European" or "North American" or whatever, also still struggle to be heard.

Women and people of colour have contributed quite a lot to the history of philosophy and to contemporary philosophy, including very important work (e.g. Anscombe, Barcan Marcus, Millikan). Unfortunately, they have a hard time having their contributions recognized and talked about in the classroom (or, indeed, in research), absent deliberate efforts to include them. Again, this has nothing to do with the quality or importance of the contribution (see, again, scholars like Anscombe, Barcan, and Millikan); it's just that they just aren't on the radar in the same way that (less important!) white men are. Things are much better in this respect now than they were even just ten years ago, however. (For one thing, most philosophers at least know Anscombe existed now, even if Barcan Marcus and Millikan are still pretty peripheral.)

A lot of this has to do with abysmal citation practices in philosophy, and a lot has to do with the traditional career trajectories of women and people of colour in the discipline, both of which have worked to push their contributions to the margins of philosophical awareness. (Indeed, for a while there, not being affiliated with the right schools could tank your publications and citations pretty much single-handedly.) Philosophy is an incredibly elitist field of inquiry, and it's only just starting to slip free from those shackles.

[spork]

Don't know if philosophy has one of these yet, but you might be able to find something useful at:

Women Also Know Stuff

Women Also Know History

A bit farther afield -- economics of ideas -- is the Planet Money radio story of https://www.npr.org/2020/06/12/876097416/patent-racism.

spork, not-yet-dead white man

[bento]

I forgot to add this podcast series: History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.

I didn't find this series (or the books he made out of podcast scripts) to be particularly inclusive - did you?

[mamselle]

One is to ensure the adequate representation of women, and women aren't geographically-bound. Another is to ensure adequate representation of minority voices who, while "European" or "North American" or whatever, also still struggle to be heard.

Sometimes the sources are still in dissertations and early papers:

  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1005259819396

on

   Rogers, D.G. Hegel, Women, and Hegelian Women on Matters of Public and Private. Studies in Philosophy and Education 18, 235–255 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005259819396

I don't know if she did a book to follow up, but I heard her presentation and found it impressive, especially the amount of digging necessary to locate the primary sources by 19th c. American women whose work was as often stored in a box in an attic as it was put between board covers.

M.



   

   

[bento]

I found the Early Modern Philosophy syllabus samples at the APA Diversifying website (mentioned by Parasaurolophus above) very helpful when I settled down to teach the course differently from the way I'd been taught (6 white males in a row).

I also decided to expand the scope a little, to include glimpses into arts, sciences, and culture of the time.  Since I love music, I used the first 3 minutes of class to play from YouTube some piece of music from the period, and sometimes I found either Baroque women composers, or performances by young BIPOC, or (bonanza) both.

Many non-majors take our Early Modern, since it is among the 'core' courses for all students at my university.  And the readings can be a steep climb, so I figured whatever I could do to (a) show contributions to culture from non-male non-whites, and (b) enrich their experience in the classroom, and (c) give them a taste of some music they might not yet know, would be a gain.

All these can be found on YouTube in good quality short videos:

Francesca Caccini, Ciacona   (1620; listen to what happens at 4:08!)

Henry Purcell, Ground in C Minor (~1680), pianist Vadim Chaimovitch, recorded live  (I used this to talk about the concept of theme and variations; a way at looking at progress in the history of philosophy)

Francesca Caccini, O Chiome Belle

Settimia Caccini, Si miei tormenti  (1600)

Caterina Assandra, O Salutaris Hostia (soprano, bass, violin) 1609

Maddalena Casulano, Morir non può il mio cuore (madrigal; ensemble of singers a capella)  1560

(Lyrics:

"My heart cannot die: I would like to kill it,

since that would please you,

but it cannot be pulled out of your breast,

where it has been dwelling for a long time;

and if I killed it, as I wish,

I know that you would die, and I would die too.")  Happy Valentine's Day!

Lucia Quinciani, Udite lagrimosi spirti (soprano & harpsichord)  1580

Claudia Sessa, Occhi io vissi di voi  (1590)

Vittoria Aleotti, Te amo mia vita  (1600)

Johann Sebastian Bach, Cello Suites No. 1, cellist: Yo-yo Ma 1717-1723

Franz Josef Haydn, String Quartet Op. 76 n.5  (1797) played by Jasper String Quartet

Claudio Monteverdi, Madrigals (~1600), various artists

Arcangelo Corelli, La Folia (1700), performed by violinist Henryk Szering  (note: this is a theme + variations)

Jean-Baptiste Lully, De Profundis (Psalm 129; ~1650), performed by numerous musicians at Fest de Namur

Francois Couperin, Les Jeunes Seigneurs (~1700), Harpsichordist Louise Acabo, live in 2018

Georg Philipp Telemann, Table Music (~1720), Croatian Baroque Ensemble

Antonio Vivaldi, Storm, from The Four Seasons, (~1700) adapted for 4 guitars, performed by 40 Fingers

Traditional Chinese song: Fisherman's Song at Dusk  played on the guzheng or Chinese zither

(not early modern, but this was a fall course and September 18th was the 49th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's death:  Hey Joe, Woodstock 1969)

Ignacio de Jerusalem, Et Resurrexit Tertia Die (1740?; Mexican Baroque vocal composition, Mass)

Franz Josef Haydn, symphony The Clock  1794  Berliner Philharmoniker, conductor Giovanni Antonini

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de St. Georges, Violin Concertos  (1760-ish)    Bologne was born a slave in Haiti and has an amazing biography

Tomaso Albinoni, Adagio in G Minor  ~1700.  Copernicus Chamber Orchestra

Johann Sebastian Bach, Goldberg Variations  (aria or main theme) 1741, pianist Beatrice Rana (here aged 24)

[mamselle]

Cool!

This is something like what I do with my art history and French classes; love the range of suggestions!

M.