Linda López McAlister

[Copyright 1998 Linda López McAlister]

I'm currently Professor of Women's Studies and Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Women's Studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa. I teach Women and Film, Feminist Ethics, Classics in Feminist Theory, Lesbian Studies and graduate courses in feminist philosophy.

I grew up in the 19940s and '50s the only child of working class Mexican-American mother and Irish-American father in South Gate, California, an industrial suburb in Southeast Los Angeles. At South Gate High I was involved in theater and went as an AFS exchange student to Duesseldorf, Germany. I attended Barnard College on a Firestone Scholarship(which I was eligible for because my mother worked at the Firestone plant just half a block from our house). There I was introduced to philosophy by Judith Jarvis Thomson, who also became my role model, friend and mentor.

After college I worked for a time as an actor/stage manager in Michigan and California. I then returned to New York and took M.A. courses at CUNY before entering the doctoral program in philosophy at Cornell. I wrote my dissertation under David Lyons, Norman Malcolm, and David Sachs (and with a great deal of help from Roderick Chisholm of Brown University) on the ethical theory of 19th C. German philosopher Franz Brentano. Brooklyn College hired me as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy in 1968 and I remained there as a faculty member and administrator for nine years.

In 1972 I participated in the first meeting of the Eastern Division of the Society for Women During 1973-74, I returned to Germany as a Sr. Fulbright Researcher at the University of Würzburg. While there, Dr. Wiebke Schrader and I called the first meeting ever of German women philosophers, out of which developed the Assoziation von Philosophinnen in Deutschland which later became the International Association of Women Philosophers.

In 1977 I was a Visiting Assoc. Prof. in the Philosophy Department at UCLA and I never went back to Brooklyn. Instead I accepted an offer to become Campus Dean of San Diego State University's Imperial Valley Campus, directly on the Mexican border. The five years I spent there allowed me to get in touch with my Chicano roots, not to mention my Chicano relatives, many of whom live in the California/Arizona border area. I remained in Calexico until 1982 when I took a job as Dean of University of South Florida's Fort Myers Campus; I stayed there for three years but was removed from my position by the USF administration and kicked upstairs to Tallahassee when it was rumored (accurately) that I am a lesbian. From 1985-87 I was Special Assistant to the Vice Chancellor for Academic Programs of the State University System of Florida.

In Fall, 1987 I joined the faculty in the Department of Women's Studies at USF while maintaining my affiliation with the Department of Philosophy. From 1990 to 1995 I was general editor of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy; from 1995 to 1998 Hypatia the editorship became a troika of myself, Joanne Waugh, and Cheryl A. Hall, all feminist philosophers at the University of South Florida.

I've always been active in feminist organizations. In addition to SWIP and IAPh, I'm a Board member of the Society for the Study of Women Philosophers, a member of the Governing Council of the National Women's Studies Association, and president-elect of the Southeastern Women's Studies Association. I'm also "listowner" of the SWIP-L, an e-mail list for feminist philosophers (listserv@cfrvm.cfr.usf.edu). I have recently been elected to a ten year term on the Steering Committee of FISP, the International Federation of Philosophical Societies, the first person to be elected running on a platform of making feminist philosophy and women's philosophcical organizations a more central part of future World Congresses of Philosophy.

My interest in drama has never died, and in 1990, disgusted with the way films by and about women were reviewed in the popular media, I started doing movie reviews on Tampa's weekly feminist radio magazine, "The Women's Show" on community radio station WMNF-FM (88.5). These movie reviews are also archived on the Internet through the WMST-L.

In my free time in Tampa I study the cello and play in the Sun Point Chamber Orchestra made up of retirees in Sun City, Florida (I'm the kid of the bunch) and I spend as much time as I can with my mother. When I get longer stretches of time I'm likely to be in Philadelphia where my partner of sixteen years teaches at University of Pennsylvania. Nearly every August you can find me in my favorite retreat from the Florida summer heat, namely in the heavenly dry mountain air of Northern New Mexico, listening to music, enjoying nature, visiting old friends.

In 1998, however, I spent my August in Boston because I organized the 8th Symposium of the International Association of Women Philosophers held just prior to the 20th World Congres of Philosophy. The IAPh symposium was the largest one to date and the first one to be held outside Europe. It was attended by approximately 300 women philosophers from more than 30 countries.

My current projects include editing (with Eileen Kahl) the Proceedings of the Symposium (online at www.iaph.org) and two or three thematic book collections from these papers. I'm also preparing a book of my film writings called Feminist Films of the 1990s: Reviews and Essays, and editing, with Prof. Joyce Averech Berkman of the University of Massachusetts, a collection of articles about Edith Stein. Finally, I am working on a history of feminist philosophy in the United States in the last quarter of the 20th C. I will be retiring from full-time teaching/administration in 1999 to make time for this burst of writing and editing. It seems a fitting time to retire since I am being honored as Eastern SWIP's Distinguished Women Philosopher for 1998.

BOOKS

The Development of Franz Brentano's Ethics. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 1982.

EDITED AND TRANSLATED BOOKS

Hypatia's Daughters: 1500 Years of Women Philosophers. Edited by Linda Lopez McAlister. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.

Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint, by Franz Brentano. Second English edition edited by Linda L. McAlister with a new introduction by Peter Simons. Translated by D. B. Terrell, Antos C. Rancurello, and Linda L. McAlister. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Pp. xxix, 415.

Sensory and Noetic Consciousness, by Franz Brentano. English edition edited by Linda L. McAlister. Trans. Linda L. McAlister and Margarete Schättle. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: The Humanities Press, 1981.

On Colour, by Ludwig Wittgenstein. Edited by G.E.M. Anscombe. Translated by Linda L. McAlister and Margarete Schättle. Oxford: Basil Blackwell and Sons; Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977. Pp. 63; German text facing English translation.

The Philosophy of Brentano, edited by Linda L. McAlister, with translations from the French and German by Linda L. McAlister and Margarete Schättle. London: Duckworth; Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, pp. ix, 262. 1976.

Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint, by Franz Brentano. English edition edited by Linda L. McAlister. Translated by D. B. Terrell, Antos C. Rancurello, and Linda L. McAlister. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1973. Pp. xx, 415.

ARTICLES

"My Grandmother's Passing" in Collage in White: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Race and Identity. Chris J. Cuomo and Kim Hall, eds. Rowman and Littlefield, forthcoming.

"Feminist Cinematic Depictions of Violence Against Women: Three Representational Strategies." In Krieg/War. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1997.

"Feminism Meets History of Philosophy." APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy. Spring, 1996.

"Edith Stein" (coauthored with Sr. Mary Catherine Baseheart) in A History of Women Philosophers Vol. 4, ed. Mary Ellen Waithe. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995.

"Gerda Walther." In A History of Women Philosophers Vol. 4, ed. Mary Ellen Waithe. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995.

"On the Possibility of Feminist Philosophy," Hypatia 9(3):188-96. Summer, 1994.

"Edith Stein: Essential Differences," Philosophy Today 37(1):79-87; Spring, 1993.

"Gerda Walther: German Feminist Philosopher" in Against Patriarchal Thinking: Women Philosophers in Europe 1992; A Future Without Discrimination? ed. Maja Pellikaan-Engel. Amsterdam: V. U. Press, 1992.

"Some Remarks on Exploring the History of Women in Philosophy," in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 4(1):1-5, Spring, 1989.

"Oakes' Illusion," The Southern Journal of Philosophy XVI(3):275-79; Fall, 1978.

"Chisholm and Brentano on Intentionality," The Review of Metaphysics XXVIII(2):328-38, 1974.

"Franz Brentano and Intentional Inexistence," Journal of the History of Philosophy VII(4):423-30. October, 1970.

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