I am an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and 2017-20 Rice Family Fellow in Bioethics and the Humanities at The Hastings Center. I am also currently the co-director of a 2-year NEH Public Humanities grant project: The Art of Flourishing: Conversations on Disability and Technology.
At the broadest level, my work investigates the relationship between bodies, values, and society. I am especially concerned with the meaning of disability and the issue of ableism, and how philosophical inquiry into each might improve the lives of people with disabilities and the justness of institutions ranging from medicine to politics. Towards this aim and with a strong commitment to pluralism and interdisciplinary scholarship, my research occurs at the intersection of bioethics, philosophy of disability, social epistemology, and 19th-20th c. Continental and American philosophy (esp. phenomenology and neopragmatism). Though drawing upon multiple traditions and literatures, all of my work is centrally informed by feminist philosophy (esp. care ethics).
I am the author of Ethics After Ableism: Disability, Pain, and the History of Morality, forthcoming with the University of Minnesota Press in early 2021. With Christine Wieseler, I am co-editor of The Disability Bioethics Reader, forthcoming with Routledge in late 2020. It is the first general introduction to bioethics that centers the lives of people with disabilities and is grounded in research from critical disability studies and philosophy of disability. I am also co-editor, with Erik Parens, of a special issue of The Hastings Center Report, “For All of Us? On The Weight of Genomic Knowledge,” forthcoming in January 2020.
In addition to a series of articles, my current research is building towards two book-length projects: one engaging central debates in the philosophy of disability (currently entitled The Meaning of Ability) and another using research in phenomenology, bioethics, and feminist philosophy to explore the future of medicine as a practice of care (currently entitled Medicine After Ableism: Politics, Public Health, and the Promise of Care). Other ongoing work includes studies on {a} the intertwining of racism and ableism, {b} epistemic injustice and medical error, {c} the application of hermeneutic phenomenology and narrative medicine to clinical practice, {d} the history of modern medicine and bioethics and its relationship to colonialism, {e} care ethics and the “duty to know,” and {f} disability-related ELSI research in genomics. Related to or directly on these topics, I am continuing or developing figure-based studies on Merleau-Ponty, Fanon, Foucault, Toombs, Wynter, and Levinas.
Authored or co-authored articles and commentaries of mine can be found in the American Journal of Bioethics, The Hastings Center Report, AMA Journal of Ethics, KIEJ, Hypatia, Levinas Studies, Chiasmi International, The Review of Communication, and Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine. Book chapters of mine have or will be appearing in volumes including The Oxford Handbook of Genetic Counseling, 50 Concepts for an Intersectional Phenomenology, Philosophy of Disability: New Perspectives, GASLIGHTING, Applying Nonideal Theory to Bioethics, and Disability in American Life. My public philosophy has been featured in TIME, The New York Times (this fall), AEON, Huffpost, and in a Tedx talk. I am also a regular contributor to the researcher-led news outlet The Conversation. Please see my website (https://www.joelreynolds.me) for more information.
