Kristin Anne Rodier

Feminist resistance to gender oppression, while surely a collective political project, has an important individual dimension. Individual resistance most often takes the shape of self-transformation where one works on the self to change desires, attitudes, and practices. I argue that paradigms of self-transformation that rely on willpower or increased self-knowledge for change can responsibilize oppressed persons when changing proves difficult, which frustrates feminist ends. Because of this I argue that habit deserves increased attention from feminists working on personal resistance to gender oppression. I analyse a range of contexts in which habit appears and I underscore its temporal character in order to render intelligible problems in feminist theories of resistance. I work from the assumption that habits have both a negative and a positive quality—they can keep us stuck, but they also provide the ground from which we can change. While habits have been theorized as the reason for a lack of social change, I argue that habit reveals to us that much of how we are constituted is actually our personal control. I argue that paying closer attention to habitual constitution reveals that there are both multiple kinds of habits and also multiple strategies that can change them. At the same time as I argue for increased attention to habit, I build a relationship between lived experiences of temporality and how social forces produce meaningful temporal narratives. In this sense, I engage with our habits of time. I situate this project in contemporary feminist theories and draw on the phenomenological and existential traditions drawing primarily on the works of Simone de Beauvoir, Edmund Husserl, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. My overarching concern is not to say what habit is or what habits we should have, but rather to see what habit does.

While fat studies has substantial writing on sexuality, romance, and dating, there remains little written on how sexual violence against fat women is demonstrated through cultural forms such as television. Fat women’s sexual agency is negatively stereotyped at the same time as sexual violence done to them is symbolically annihilated. This chapter discerns a representations system, through a range of television and movie stereotypes, that contributes to sexual violence against fat women by erasing fat sexuality and foreclosing possibilities for fat women’s sexual agency. The author draws on a broad range of television and some movies to isolate themes that develop the centrality of fatphobic stereotypes to fat women’s experiences of sexual violence and abuse. The four dominant themes are (1) fat women are sluts or “easy lays,” (2) they are not sexual (desexualized), (3) if they get sexual attention it is a “favor” to them, and (4) fat women are big enough to “take care of themselves.”

In early 2020, there was a faculty development workshop at MacEwan University on how to design philosophy writing assignments with fewer barriers commonly experienced by students with disabilities. This chapter streamlines the workshop and surveys barriers common to philosophy assignment guidelines: length, jargon, single-format, and a “don'ts” section. The authors contextualize these characteristics within the values, norms, and practices of academic philosophy. They present a case study of transforming Rodier's introductory philosophy guidelines before and after a UDL consult with Fidelak. They demonstrate the reasoning behind the transformation, including specific UDL applications and incorporating techniques from academic strategy instruction that address the hidden curriculum. In addition, they outline changes to in-class teaching that support students in completing assignments.

Using the example of the very public discussion of violence in the wake of Chris Brown’s abuse of Rihanna, we argue that the widespread success of feminist efforts to combat gender-based violence in domestic settings have been undermined by parallel demands to uphold a neoliberal, post-feminist and post-racial subject who is called upon to create a future free of violence and abuse. Focusing on the media response to Brown’s violence, we examine how many accounts of gender-based violence rely on temporal imperatives (i.e.‘give it time’ , ‘move forward’) that are intended to bolster women’s agency. Through an analysis of the media response (especially Diane Sawyer and Oprah Winfrey), we argue that the otherwise sympathetic discourse around the incident deploys self-improvement imperatives underwritten by victim blaming. We read Rihanna’s response to the violence done to her through the controlling images of black women including the‘strongblack- woman’ and the‘island woman’. We challenge the responsibilization of victims of violence and we imagine a solidarity that enables victims of violence to do more than simply imagine a future where one‘moves on’ and‘gets past’. We propose thinking of agency as between a past and a future where we negotiate new futures over time.

Open Education Text: Print, Epub, PDF, and read online. Thinking critically is a complicated but important endeavour that involves learning how to think clearly, acquiring problem-solving skills, and applying these skills in real life contexts. This text offers students an introduction to critical thinking methods, principles, and applied examples. It engages the reader to question their attitude and approach to critical thinking and provides a detailed introduction to the role of belief in critical thinking. It outlines the use of argument forms for validity, definitions and classification, syllogistic reasoning, categorical logic, and the method of informal fallacy identification. With up-to-date examples, current issues, links to videos, exercises and answer keys, a glossary, quick charts, and key takeaways, this resource is engaging and designed for students’ success.

This paper surveys women's and gender studies textbook inclusions on fatness. It highlights the framing, focus areas, and content to develop a discussion of the scholarly and po- litical tensions between fat activists and fat studies scholars, and feminist politics and scholarship. Specifically, the article critiques the subsumption of fat within critiques of beauty culture, the use of extractive narratives, and healthism. The article suggests ways of including critical fat scholarship and activist writing that is intersectional.

Abstract This paper has two goals: to show why Clare Hemmings’ work, Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory (2011), which focuses on the types and consequences of feminist “stories,” should be applied to Simone de Beauvoir; and to argue that Beauvoir’s place in the history of feminist thinking should be revisited. I propose to use some of the critical tools gleaned from Hemmings’ text to think through the place of Simone de Beauvoir in feminist theoretical storytelling. Résumé Cet article a un objectif double : démontrer pourquoi le travail de Clare Hemmings, Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory (2011), qui met l’accent sur les types et les conséquences des « récits » féministes, doit s’appliquer à Simone de Beauvoir, et faire valoir que la place de Beauvoir dans l’histoire de la pensée féministe doit être réexaminée. Je propose d’uti- liser certains des outils critiques du texte de Hemmings pour réfléchir à la place de Simone de Beauvoir dans la narration théorique féministe.

Under the radar Lifetime dramedy Drop Dead Diva (2009–2014) demonstrates a conflicting message that both feminism (understood as careerism) and femininity (beauty-obsessed ‘diva’) hold women back. The ‘living fat suit’/body switch between a model (Deb) and an unfeminine plus-sized lawyer (Jane) attempts to resolve these tensions by teaching the model about fat loathing while feminizing an overly careerist feminist. The show departs from previous body-swapping comedies; the ‘swap’ is permanent, the new Deb/Jane retains legal knowledge and abilities from the body of Jane, and the remaining body (Deb) and soul (Jane) both die for good. The show is interesting not because it has a size 16 lead but because of how a size 16 lead can be incorporated into an already rigid gender and sexual bodily normativity by disciplining an unruly fat woman’s ‘lesser’ desires, and slenderizing her appearance, bringing her into a white heterosexual visual gender economy. Drawing on my failure to be moved in the right way by the ‘humourous’ premise, I outline how on the surface the show rehearses feminist arguments for bodily acceptance but ultimately promotes an aversion to feminism, trivializes femininity and straightens queerness, collapsing any fat politics into an individualized and apolitical ‘anti-looksist’ message.

Fat is at once a political category, a form of embodiment, and a community-based resistance politics. Central to the areas of scholarly interest produced in fat studies, arising in conjunction with a fat activist politics, is the claim that fat is a neutral descriptor of bodily variation and that fat lives are worthy of protection and social value. This contrasts with systemic fat oppression, fatphobia, and size discrimination that act within regimes of bodily normalization to produce practices and institutions upholding thin bodies as good and healthy. Fatphobia names a range of beliefs and practices that construct fat as dangerous, immoral, and unhealthy, which is evidenced by a range of media representations, medical practices, and capitalist industry, chief among them is the diet and weight-loss industry. Medical and weight-loss industries have been in lockstep in their support of the body mass index (BMI), which creates a statistical measurement of body size used to administer life in population health. These all fuel the obesity epidemic, which marks fat bodies for eradication, blaming them for the loss of the American competitive edge and failing militarism. Consequences of this obesity panic are especially prominent in the fight against obesity in children, which aims to prevent disability as well as any drains on parental energy, which should otherwise be aimed at the nation’s progress. This is all held together by xenophobic, white supremacist systems that aim to purify bodies and bolster racial progress through weaponizing racialized fatness as to blame for society’s ills. Disability is present everywhere in these concepts because of the focus on health, normal bodies, and blame for holding back society. While uses of “health” for political recognition in liberal rights frameworks are uneasy in areas of fat and feminist politics, critical disability politics are closely aligned with a critical fat perspective in centering concepts such as bodily instability, vulnerability, and community care.

This chapter draws on authors’ experiences as fat-bodied white women philosophers, empirical research about fat discrimination, and common teaching topics and practices to reflect on fat stigma in dominant forms of teaching philosophy. We situate our critique in fat studies literature, locating the “normal professor body” within eugenic social and political movements, and the transatlantic slave trade. We outline how fat stigma specifically applies to historical and contemporary forms of Western canonical teaching practices and materials. Many of the topics philosophers teach on practical rationality evoke stereotypes about fat-bodied people as bad eaters, and activate stereotype threat for fat philosophers, thus affecting performance and credibility. We offer the case of “fat man” hypotheticals in contemporary analytic ethics as cases of perpetuating stigma, thereby undermining their pedagogical efficacy. We conclude by offering recommendations for teaching in ways that mitigate the influence of fat stigmatizing stereotypes and stereotype threat for fat philosophers.

While written feedback continues to be the dominant medium for providing students with an evaluation of their work, the online learning environment complicates this process. Online feedback to students requires a unique set of skills that cannot rely on body language, vocal tone, verbal and non-verbal cues, and synchronous communication in real time. For instructors with limited teacher training who are facing increasing class sizes with online components, best practices in online feedback can address this need. We draw on established writing centre scholarship and resources to offer recommendations. Like philosophy instructors, writing coaches are often trained in the Socratic method and dialogue, and these techniques inform asynchronous writing coaching. Writing centre pedagogy positions the students and their writing process to help the student develop as academic writers. We discuss how to build a trusting relationship with students via asynchronous written feedback, increasing students’ likelihood of retention and uptake of feedback through three themed strategies from the writing centre: promoting a positive affect, approachability, and accountability. This paper provides guidelines, concrete suggestions, and a feedback template for adapting online writing centre feedback techniques for philosophers.

This introduction reflects on practices of telling stories about works by influential contemporary feminist philosophers, interrogating what is considered impactful feminist philosophy. I frame this edition through a particular kind of re-citational engagement with Heyes’s work—through her own previous writings and my first-personal experiences with the text and her role in my intellectual formation as my dissertation supervisor. I draw on Clare Hemmings’s (2011) work on the grammar of feminist intellectual storytelling, offering brush strokes through embodied and relational stories that help me make sense of Anaesthetics, in order to tell alternative stories to frame the work, specifically Heyes’s methods, impacts, and the relations amongst her previous works. In reflecting on the embodied realities and feminist intellectual networks that inform our framing practices, I consider how we are relationally and affectively invested in figures and thinkers, our schools of thought, our style of philosophy, and our forms of participation in the discipline. Through these reflections, I trace Heyes’s work as grasping life examples with rich opportunities to grapple with stubborn philosophical ambivalences in conceptualizing embodied freedom and agency, while developing adaptive methods that probe their transcendental conditions.

Academic integrity has become a significant point of concern in the post-secondary landscape, and many institutions are now exploring ways on how to implement academic integrity training for students. This paper delineates the development of an Academic Integrity E-Learning (AIE-L) tutorial at MacEwan University, Canada. In its first incarnation, the AIE-L tutorial was intended as an education tool for students who had been found to violate the University’s Academic Integrity Policy. However, in a discourse of the academic integrity process, the University reimagined it from only emphasising the increased understanding and strengthened commitment of students found to have committed academic misconduct to a proactive focus with education for all students. The purpose of the present paper is three-fold: first, describe the development of the AIE-L tutorial as an experiential case study; second, improve the content of the AIE-L tutorial through students’ quantitative and qualitative feedback; third, calibrate the pre and post-test questions for content validity for a forthcoming large-scale measurement of the AIE-L tutorial effectiveness.

This paper explores the unique phenomenology of habit and temporality put forth in Beauvoir’s La Vieillesse. I situate her understanding of temporality in relation to her early work Pyrrhus and Cinéas. I extract her notion of a boundary marked future that decreases anticipation for the future and thus rigidifies habits. In the final section I appropriate the notion of a boundary mark for a cultural phenomenology where we understand boundary marks as constituted by our understandings of ourselves in time and not through aging alone. This cultural boundary mark can be used to understand how societal prejudice operates at the level of lived temporality.

This article draws on authors’ experiences as fat-bodied white women philosophers, empirical research about fat discrimination, and common teaching topics and practices to reflect on fat stigma in dominant forms of teaching philosophy. We situate our critique in fat studies literature, locating the “normal professor body” within eugenic social and political movements, and the transatlantic slave trade. We outline how fat stigma specifically applies to historical and contemporary forms of Western canonical teaching practices and materials. Many of the topics philosophers teach on practical rationality evoke stereotypes about fat-bodied people as bad eaters, and activate stereotype threat for fat philosophers, thus affecting performance and credibility. We offer the case of “fat man” hypotheticals in contemporary analytic ethics as cases of perpetuating stigma, thereby undermining their pedagogical efficacy. We conclude by offering recommendations for teaching in ways that mitigate the influence of fat stigmatizing stereotypes and stereotype threat for fat philosophers.