Dr. Ella Whiteley and Dr. Michael Diamond-Hunter

This course is available on the MSc in Economics and Philosophy, MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy, MSc in Philosophy of Science and MSc in Philosophy of the Social Sciences. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This half-unit examines, from a philosophical perspective, the nature of gender and race and the role these categories play in shaping the social world and structuring human lives.

Topics covered will include:

Gender and Biology: How does “gender” relate to “sex”? Is our concept of biological “sex” objective, and free from gender stereotypes and norms? Is our sex fixed or changeable? 

Gender and Society: Is gender a matter of internal identity, or is it an externally-imposed social class? How does sexism intersect with other oppressions, like racism and transphobia?

Race and Society: How does the social meaning of “race” vary around the world? Should we try to reconcile “ordinary” conceptions of “race” with technical conceptions of “race”? How should we understand the directionality and limits of racial classification?

The Future of Gender and Race: Will race and gender still exist in the future? Should we try to work for a race-free and gender-free world, or should these ways of classifying people be preserved?

We will focus on approaches to these questions from “analytic” philosophy, including feminist and race-critical approaches and approaches from the philosophy of science. The aim is to confront the big questions of gender and race by analysing and constructing careful and precise philosophical arguments.

10 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the LT.

Students on this course will have a reading week in Week 6 of LT.

Students will be expected to produce 1 exercise in the LT.

Suggested introductory reading:

• Fausto-Sterling, 2000 [2020 New Edition]. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality.
• Crenshaw, K., 1989. Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.
• Bettcher, Talia, 2020. Feminist Perspectives on Trans Issues, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 2005. The Ethics of Identity.
• Lee, Sandra Soo-Jin, Koening, Barbara K., and Richardson, Sarah S., (eds.) 2011. Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age
• Glasgow, J., Haslanger, S., Jeffers, C. and Spencer, Q., 2019. What is Race?
• Zack, Naomi, 1993. Race and Mixed-Race.

Essay (45%, 1500 words) and class participation (10%) in the LT.
Essay (45%, 1500 words) in the ST.

There is no exam for this half-unit. There will be two summative essays, each worth 45% of the final mark. 10% of the final mark will be awarded for seminar participation.

Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.