Wollapalooza! III: Destabilizing the Canon with Feminism Part I

Session Submission Type: Pre-conference Short Course Half Day

Session Description

The feminist political theorist and historian of political thought Megan Gallagher, in a recent review in the journal 'Political Theory' (Summer 2019), called for the return of WOLLAPALOOZA! at APSA, after we took a one year hiatus. After two popular and productive iterations of this event—which generated the first philosophical compendium on Wollstonecraft, 'The Wollstonecraftian Mind' (Routledge, 2019)—we’re back and ready to destabilize the canon of political thought even further! 25 speakers from Europe, South America, and the United States will gather in San Francisco to engage the enduring relevance of Wollstonecraft for political science and political philosophy, especially for questions and concepts of democracy, race, gender, and feminism. Everyone attending APSA 2020 is welcome to register for this special one-day pre-conference short course sponsored by the Women, Gender, and Politics section. It will be capped at 50 participants.

Sessions 1 and 2 will take place on Tuesday and Session 3 and 4 will place on Wednesday. Session 1 of WOLLAPALOOZA! III explores the paradoxes of the American dream and American democracy with respect to Wollstonecraft, her family, and her followers’ legacies in the Americas—including new evidence of her ideas spreading to the abolition movement in Jamaica just prior to the Haitian Revolution; her philosophical impact upon her sister-in-law, Nancy Kingsbury Wollstonecraft, during her life in Cuba, New Orleans, and New England; and her reception by Brissot, the Rolands, and Wright in their plans to establish utopian communes in the United States. Session 2 assesses the need to decolonize both canonical political thought on women and feminist criticism of it, beginning with pioneering figures such as Montesquieu and Wollstonecraft, and extending to nineteenth-century African-American women’s rights advocates such as Truth and Wells.

The guiding questions of WOLLAPALOOZA! III will be: What is Wollstonecraft’s legacy for thinking about race as well as feminism, in the Americas and other regions of the world, as well as in Europe and her homeland of Britain? Was her political theory republican, liberal, or democratic? And does her categorization as one or the other matter for contemporary debates about democracy, liberalism, republicanism, and feminism? And, last but not least, we will treat perhaps the most vexed question surrounding Wollstoneraft and her work: Just what sort of a (proto-) feminist was she? And what sort of a feminist is one who studies her work and its philosophical and political legacies?

Going forward, we hope that WOLLAPALOOZA! will be an annual event. Our mission is to raise the profile of feminist political philosophy in the profession of political science, showcase new approaches to the history of feminist political thought, and provide a welcoming, international networking space for feminist scholars at all stages of the academic career.

Sub Unit

• APSA Panels and All Meetings and Receptions

Chairs

• Eileen M. Hunt University of Notre Dame

• Sandrine Berges Bilkent University

• Laura Brace University of Leicester