Bonnie J. Mann
Education
PhD in Philosophy 2002 State University of New York at Stony Brook
- Doctoral Dissertation: Feminism and the Sublime
- Winner of the 2002 Stony Brook University President’s Distinguished Dissertation Award
- Committee: Eva Feder Kittay (Director), Edward S. Casey, Lorenzo Simpson, Geraldine Moane
BA in Philosophy (cum laude) 1983 Portland State University, Portland, Oregon
High School Diploma (Valedictorian) 1979 Powder Valley High School, North Powder, Oregon
Statement
For me, philosophy is a practice of reflection on the world that we live in and our place in it. I work primarily in feminist philosophy, because it allows me to explore questions like these: What does it mean to be woman? Who has the power or authority to decide what it means to be a woman and how did they get it? What does it mean to be a man? Why? How are those meanings worked on in our bodies, our image-world, our language and the material relations that structure our lives at every level? What is freedom and what is justice when it comes to gender and/or sexual difference? How is gender made, meaning literally, how is it produced? I am particularly concerned with how the lived experience of gender interfaces with political phenomena like nationalism, war and authoritarianism. Below I've provided links to some of my publications.
Read "Rape and Social Death" here.
Read "Femininity Shame and Redemption" here.
Read “Creepers, Flirts, Heroes and Allies: Four Theses on Men and Sexual Harassment” here.
Read “What Should Feminists Do about Nature?” here: http://konturen.uoregon.edu/vol2_Mann.html
Read “Gender Apparatus: Lessons from the War on Terror” here.
Read “Vampire Love: The Second Sex Negotiates the 21st Century” here.
Research
Broadly speaking, my research is in feminist philosophy and modern and contemporary continental philosophy. Probably because of my many years working as an activist in the women’s movement, I am concerned with how gendered power is lived socially and politically: in the body, in language, in the imaginary life of communities, and in the capitalist nation-state. My work in feminist philosophy draws on phenomenology, poststructuralism and feminist materialism, as I think a viable account of gendered experience and gendered power must address multiple structures of human existence. I consider my work to be part of the emergent field of "critical phenomenology". I teach and am especially engaged with the work of Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, and Judith Butler. Other figures, however, are also central to my research, including Merleau-Ponty, Marx, and Hegel.
Selected Publications (for a complete list see my C.V.)
Op-Eds/Popular Press
2019. “Marie Yovanovitch’s Moral Courage.” The Stone. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/19/opinion/marie-yovanovitchs-moral-courage.html
2018. “Trump’s New Taunt, Kavanaugh’s Defense and How Misogyny Rules. The Stone. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/03/opinion/kavanaugh-misogyny-epistemic-worlds.html.
Books
2014. Sovereign Masculinity: Gender Lessons from the War on Terror. Oxford University Press.
2006. Women’s Liberation and the Sublime: Feminism, Postmodernism, Environment. Oxford University Press.
Edited Volumes
2017. Oxford University Press. “On ne naît pas femme : on le devient”: The Life of a Sentence. Co-edited with Martina Ferrari.
Academic Journal Articles
2021. “Rape and Social Death,” Feminist Theory. 0(0) 1-21. DOI: 10.1177/14647001211012940
2019. (Editorial) Mann, Bonnie, Erin McKenna, Camisha Russell, and Rocío Zambrana. “The Promise of Feminist Philosophy.” Hypatia, vol. 34, no. 3, 2019, pp. 394–400., doi:10.1111/hypa.12490.
2018. “Feminist Phenomenology and the Politics of Wonder.” AVANT: The Journal of the Philosophical Interdisciplinary Vanguard. vol. IX, No. 2, 2018. Published by the Centre for Philosophical Research, Warsaw, Poland.
2018. “The Difference of Feminist Phenomenology: The Case of Shame.” PUNCTA: Journal of Critical Phenomenology (inaugural issue). 2020. Polish Translation. Specyfika feministycznej fenomenologii. Przypadek wstydu. Avant, wol. XI, nr 3, doi: 10.26913/avant.2020.03.17.
2018. “Femininity, Shame and Redemption,” in Gender and the Politics of Shame, a special issue of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, edited by Clara Fischer. Vol. 33, No. 3.
2013. “Three White Men Walk into a Bar: Philosophy’s Pluralism,” in Radical Philosophy Review 16(3), pp.
2012. “Creepers, Flirts, Heroes and Allies: Four Theses on Men and Sexual Harassment,” in The American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy, issue on Sexual Harassment, edited by Margaret Crouch.
2011. “Gender Apparatus: Torture and National Manhood in the U.S. War on Terror,” in Radical Philosophy: A Journal of Socialist and Feminist Philosophy, v. 168, July/August 2011; translated into German by Regine Othmer as “Ein Geschlechterapparat: Folter und nationale Männlichkeit im „Krieg gegen den Terror“ der USA,” published in Feministische Studien 30. Jahrgang, Nov. 2012, No. 2.
2010. “What Should Feminists do About Nature?” in Konturen: Online German Studies Journal. http://konturen.uoregon.edu/.
2008. “Beauvoir and the Question of a Women’s Point of View.” Philosophy Today. Summer.
2007. “The Lesbian June Cleaver: Heterosexism and Lesbian Mothering,” in Against Heterosexualism: Overcoming Heterosexual Normativity and Defeating Heterosexist Bigotry, a special issue of Hypatia, edited by Joan Callahan, Sara Ruddick and Bonnie Mann. Volume 22, number 1 (Winter 2007).
Invited Articles, Book Chapters and Nonacademic Journals and Magazines
2017. “Beauvoir Against Objectivism: The Operation of the Norm in Beauvoir and Butler” in “On ne naît pas femme: on le devient”: The Life of a Sentence. Edited by Bonnie Mann and Martina Ferrari. New York: Oxford University Press (pp. 37-53).
2017. “Adoption, Race and Rescue: Transracial Adoption and Lesbian/Gay Ascendency to Whiteness” in special issue of Philosophy in the Contemporary World. Co-edited with Amrita Banerjee. 23:1. Spring, 2017 (pp. 56-70).
2014. “American Exceptionalism: The Gender Factor.” E-International Relations. http://www.e-ir.info/2014/03/23/american-exceptionalism-the-gender-factor/.
2009 “Vampire Love: The Second Sex Negotiates the 21st Century,” in Twilight and Philosophy: Vampires, Vegetarians, and the Pursuit of Immortality, edited by Rebecca Housel and JeremyWisnewski. Blackwell Press. Philosophy and Popular Culture Series. Excerpted in The Philosopher’s Magazine, Issue 47, 4th Quarter, 2009. Reprinted in Introducing Philosophy through Popular Culture, ed. by William Irwin and David Kyle Johnson, Wiley-Blackwell 2010.
Publications
Books
Sovereign Masculinity: Gender Lessons from the War on Terror (Oxford University Press, 2014)
Women’s Liberation and the Sublime: Feminism, Postmodernism, Environment. (Oxford University Press, 2006). Winner of the 2007 Gustav O. Arlt award for outstanding scholarship in the humanities from the national Council of Graduate Schools.
Articles and Book Chapters
2014. Invited Contribution. “American Exceptionalism: The Gender Factor.” E-International Relations. http://www.e-ir.info/2014/03/23/american-exceptionalism-the-gender-factor/.
2013. “Three White Men Walk into a Bar: Philosophy’s Pluralism,” in Radical Philosophy Review 16(3), pp.
2012. “Creepers, Flirts, Heroes and Allies: Four Theses on Men and Sexual Harassment,” in The American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy, issue on Sexual Harassment, edited by Margaret Crouch.
2012. Invited Contribution. “Gender as Justification in Simone de Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe.” Sapere Aude: Journal of Philosophy, vol. 3, n. 6 (2012) Pontifíca Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Brazil.
2011. Invited Contribution. “Töten, um zu siegen” (“National Manhood in Post-9/11/2001 USA.” ) Kulturaustauch. The Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations ifa and ConBrio. Reprinted in Kramfader: Frauen Lesben Zeitschrift, 2012.
2011. “Gender Apparatus: Torture and National Manhood in the U.S. War on Terror,” in Radical Philosophy: A Journal of Socialist and Feminist Philosophy, v. 168, July/August 2011; translated into German by Regine Othmer as “Ein Geschlechterapparat: Folter und nationale Männlichkeit im „Krieg gegen den Terror“ der USA,” published in Feministische Studien 30. Jahrgang, Nov. 2012, No. 2.
2010. “What Should Feminists do About Nature?” in Konturen: Online German Studies Journal. http://konturen.uoregon.edu/.
2009. “Vampire Love: The Second Sex Negotiates the 21st Century,” in Twilight and Philosophy: Vampires, Vegetarians, and the Pursuit of Immortality, edited by Rebecca Housel and JeremyWisnewski. Blackwell Press. Philosophy and Popular Culture Series. Excerpted in The Philosopher’s Magazine, Issue 47, 4th Quarter, 2009. Reprinted in Introducing Philosophy through Popular Culture, ed. by William Irwin and David Kyle Johnson, Wiley-Blackwell 2010.
2009. “Iris Marion Young: Between Phenomenology and Structural Injustice,” for Dancing with Iris: Festschrift, edited by Ann Ferguson and Mecke Nagel. Oxford University Press.
2008. “Beauvoir and the Question of a Women’s Point of View.” Philosophy Today. Summer.
2007. “The Lesbian June Cleaver: Heterosexism and Lesbian Mothering,” in Against Heterosexualism: Overcoming Heterosexual Normativity and Defeating Heterosexist Bigotry, a special issue of Hypatia, edited by Joan Callahan, Sara Ruddick and Bonnie Mann. Volume 22, number 1 (Winter 2007).
Teaching
I teach courses in feminist philosophy at all levels, and on figures such as Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, and Judith Butler. In 2013, I received the William’s Council Distinguished Teaching Award, largely for my work teaching 340 undergraduate students each year in my Philosophy of Love and Sex course, a very popular large lecture course which I teach each spring [link to William’s Council Award announcement and Emerald Article about Love and Sex course]. At the graduate and advanced undergraduate levels I teach a variety of courses that are designed to help students think about gender, sex and sexuality often in relation to questions of ethics, social justice, politics and power.