Questions surrounding sex and gender, and sexual equality and freedom, are especially fraught these days, both personally and politically. By exploring the metaphysical and philosophical roots of these questions in the Western tradition, we will seek to get behind the polemics to understand better the questions themselves.  Led by Erika Bachioch JD, and Angela Franks Ph.D.

We will read and/or discuss:

• Plato and Aristotle

• Hildegard of Bingen and Thomas Aquinas

• Christine de Pizan, John Locke, Rene Descartes, and Mary Astell

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, Abigail Adams, and Alexis de Tocqueville

• John Stuart Mill, Francis Willard, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Sarah Grimke, Jane Addams, and Florence Kelley

• Dorothy Sayers and Margaret Sanger

• Betty Friedan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Catherine MacKinnon, and Judith Butler

• Jean Bethke Elshtain, Mary Ann Glendon, Prudence Allen, and others