Fall 2022, Thursdays, 1:00-4:00PM; Meets at MIT
This course will interrogate the ways in which intimacy is entwined with our conduct towards others. As human beings, we are involved in sexual, romantic, and ethical relations with one another and such relations can be pleasurable, ambiguous, or oftentimes violent. This course will examine discourses about rape and intimate partner violence, practices that seek to eliminate these acts, and philosophies that seek to understand what it means to be ethical in our intimate relations. Our guiding questions include: What are the roles of gender, sexuality, and race in shaping understandings of rape and sexual violability? Why are conversations around sexual violence often muted even though the phenomenon is ubiquitous across college campuses and societies across the world? What would it mean to exist in a world without rape or sexual violence? What changes would this require to society, our relationships, and ourselves?
Faculty
Dr. Eleanor Craig is Lecturer and Program Director for Ethnicity, Migration, Rights at Harvard University. They research critical theories of race and religion and have worked locally with queer survivors of partner abuse. Eleanor is co-editor with An Yountae of Beyond Man: Race, Coloniality, and Philosophy of Religion and a facilitator and board member for the Asian American Resource Workshop.
Dr. Dana Francisco Miranda is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Faculty Fellow for the Applied Ethics Center at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His research is in political philosophy, Africana philosophy, phenomenology, and psychosocial studies. He also currently serves as the Secretary of Digital Outreach & Chair of Architectonics for the Caribbean Philosophical Association.