Eva Feder Kittay

Biographical Information

Eva Feder Kittay is Professor of Philosophy at SUNY, Stony Brook, where she has taught since 1979. She received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and her PhD from The Graduate School, CUNY. She is a mother of two, one of whom is now a disabled young woman. She has taught and written on issues pertaining to women since 1979 and since the mid 1990's has been writing on disability and feminist concerns. She writes on issues in ethics and social and political philosophy and is an expert on metaphor and the philosophy of language. In April 1995, she spearheaded The Women's Committee of One Hundred, an organization of feminist women speaking out against punitive welfare reform. She is a past Chair of the APA Committee on the Status of Women, a past honoree of Eastern's SWIP's Woman Philosopher of the Year and most recently is Chair of the Board of PIKSI (www.rockethics.psu.edu/piksi) a summer institute for undergraduates from underrepresented populations in academia.

Currently she is writing a book on philosophy and cognitive disability, which will highlight her dual role as mother of a cognitively disabled daughter and a philosopher.

Bibliography

BOOKS:

Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality and Dependency. Routledge. 1999.

Metaphor: Its Linguistic Structure and Its Cognitive Force. Oxford University Press, Clarendon Library of Logic and Philosophy, 1987.

EDITED BOOKS:

Blackwell Guide to Feminist Philosophy, (with Linda Alcoff). New York: Blackwell, 2006.

The Subject of Care: Feminist Perspectives on Dependency, (with Ellen K. Feder) Totowa, NJ, Rowman and Littlefield, 2003.

Frames, Fields and Contrasts: New Essays in Semantics and Lexical Organization, (co-edited with A. Lehrer). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1992.

Women and Moral Theory (co-edited with Diana Meyers). New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987.

SELECTED ARTICLES:

"Defining Feminist Philosophy" (with Linda Alcoff) in Linda Martin Alcoff and Eva Feder Kittay, editors, The Blackwell Guide to Feminist Philosophy, Blackwell Publishing 2007, pp. 1-16.

"Beyond Autonomy and Paternalism: The Caring Transparent Self" in T. Nys, Y. Denier & T. Vandevelde, editor Autonomy and Paternalism. Between Independence and Good Intentions, Leuven: Peeters, 2006, pp 1-29.

"The Idea of Care Ethics in Biomedicine: The Case of Disability" in Christopher Rehman-Sutter, editor, Biomedicine and Human Limits. Springer Verlag (2006).

"Thoughts on the Desire for Normality" in Erik Parens (ed.), Surgically Shaping Children: Essays on Technology, Ethics, and the Pursuit of Normality (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).

"On the Margins of Moral Personhood," Ethics, October 2006, 100-131.

"Dependency, Difference, and Global Ethic of Longterm Care" (with Bruce Jennings and Angela Wasunna) The Journal of Political Philosophy, vol 13 (2005), 443-469.

"Equality, Dignity and Disability" in Mary Ann Lyons and Fionnuala Waldron (eds.) (2005) Perspectives on Equality The Second Seamus Heaney Lectures. Dublin: The Liffey Press, pp. 95-122.

"When Care is Just and Justice is Caring: The Case of the Care for the Mentally Retarded" Public Culture, vol. 13, no. 3, Special issue "The Critical Limits of Embodiment: Reflections on Disability Criticism." September 2001, pp. 557-579.

"From Welfare to a Public Ethic of Care." In Women and Welfare: Theory and Practice in the United States and Europe. Edited by Nancy Hirschmann and Ulrike Liebert, Rutgers University Press, 2001, pp. 38-64.

"A Feminist Public Ethic of Care Meets the New Communitarian Family Policy" Ethics, vol. 111, no. 3, April 2001 pp. 523-547.

"At Home with My Daughter: Reflections on Olmstead v. L. C. and E. W." In Americans With Disabilities: Exploring Implications of the Law for Individuals and Institutions Edited by Leslie Francis and Anita Silvers, Rouledge, 2000.

"Relationality, Personhood, and Peter Singer on the Fate of Severely Impaired Infants." APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Medicine, Winter 2000.

"Welfare, Dependency and A Public Ethic of Care." In Whose Welfare? Edited by Gwendolyn Mink. Cornell University Press, 1999, pp. 189-213.

"Not My Way, Sesha, Your Way, Slowly: Maternal Thinking in the Raising of a Child with Profound Intellectual Disabilities," in No Easy Answers: Mothering in the US Today. (New York: Beacon Press, 1999).

"Metaphor," in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Supplement. (New York: Macmillan Press, 1998

"On Dependency and Welfare Justice: The Case for Scholarship and Activism." Feminist Studies, 1998

"Concerning Expressivity and Ethics of Selective Abortion for Disability: Conversations with My Son," (with Leo Kittay), in Norms and Values: Essays in Honor of Virginia Held. Ed. Joram Haber and Mark Halfon. (Totowa New Jersey, 1998).

"Ah! My Foolish Heart: A Commentary on Alan Soble's Philosophical Explorations of the Antioch Sexual Offense Policy." Journal of Social Philosophy 28 (Fall 1997). "Women, Welfare, And a Public Ethic of Care." The Annual Proceedings for Philosophical Exchange 27 (1996-1997).

"Social Policy and Feminist Theory," in Blackwell's Companion to Feminist Philosophy. Ed. Alison Jaggar and Iris Young. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).

"On "Men" and Metaphors: Shakespeare, Embodiment and Filing Cabinets--A Discussion of Creativity in Metaphor," in Conceptual Structures and Processes: Emergence, Discovery, and Change. Ed. T.B. Ward, S.M. Smith, and J. Vaid. (Washington, DC: APA, 1997).

"Human Dependency and Rawlsian Equality," in Rethinking the Self. Ed. D. T. Meyers. (Colorado: Westview Press, 1996).

"Taking Dependency Seriously: Social Cooperation, The Family Medical Leave Act, and Gender Equality Considered in Light of the Social Organization of Dependency Work." Hypatia 10 (Winter 1995): 8-26.

"Metaphor" (with Eric Steinhart), in The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1995).

"A Network Model for the Generation of Metaphor" (with Eric Steinhart), in Approaches to Metaphor. Ed. Hintikka and Sandu. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1994), pp. 41-94.

"Mastering Envy: Narcissistic Wound, Symbolic Wounds, and A Vision of Healing." Psychoanalytic Review (1994).

"Semantic Fields and Psychological Content," in Frames, Fields and Contrasts: New Essays in Lexical and Semantic Organization. (New Jersey: Erlbaum, 1992), pp. 229-253.

"Hypocrisy," in Encyclopedia of Ethics. (New York: Garland Press. 1992), pp. 582-587.

"In Whose Different Voice? A Commentary on Martha Minow's 'Equalities'." Journal of Philosophy (November, 1991).

"Metaphor", in International Encyclopedia of Communications. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).

"A Reply to Donald Davidson's 'What Metaphors Mean' Or Metaphors as Rearranging the Furniture of the Mind," in From a Metaphorical Point of View. Ed. Z. Radman. (New York: W. de Gruyter, 1995), pp.73-116.

"Woman as Metaphor." Hypatia (Summer 1988): 63-87.

"The Greater Danger: Pornography, Social Science and Women's Rights." Social Epistemology (1988): 117-33.

"Rereading Freud on 'Femininity'." Hypatia 1 (1984).

"The Identification of Metaphor." Synthese 58 (1984): 153-202.

"Pornography and the Erotics of Domination," in Beyond Domination: New Essays in Feminist Theory. Ed. C.C. Gould. (New Jersey: Rowman and Allanheld, 1984), pp. 145-74.

"Womb Envy as an Explanatory Concept," in Mothering: Essays in Feminist Theory. Ed. Joyce Trebilcot. (New Jersey: Rowman and Allanheld, 1984), pp. 94-128.

"The Creation of Similarity: A Discussion of Metaphor in Light of Tversky's Theory of Similarity." Philosophy of Science Association 1 (1982): 394-405.

"On Hypocrisy." Metaphilosophy (July/October 1982): pp. 277-89.

"Semantic Fields and the Structure of Metaphor." (with A. Lehrer.) Studies in Language 5 (Spring 1981): pp. 31-63.

"What's in a Name?" (with M. Askanas). Philosophia (October 1979): 689-99.

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