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Dissertation
Yet to be titled, my dissertation is all about how philosophy as a discipline (at least mainstream, analytic, Eurocentric philosophy) can and should be open, accessible, and truly inclusive of all. I'm applying my material and process-based approach to philosophy--detailed below--to the ideas and critiques advanced by philosophers such as Kristie Dotson, Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks, George Yancy, Charles W. Mills, and others.
My aim is to amplify their ideas and advance their projects of a more inclusive, equitable, and just discipline by using my approach--illustrated by narratives of my own experience and explored through a metaphor of quiltmaking--to highlight important threads in these works.
Woven together (pun intended), these key threads will help us expand the traditional canon of philosophy--that is, the texts and authors we cite and teach, and the methods we use to do philosophy--to become a place where everyone can find connection, community, and belonging in pursuit of understanding and wisdom.

Key Ideas

Core Areas
Key Figures
Kristie Dotson
Dotson's article, "Concrete Flowers: Contemplating the Profession of Philosophy," is a critique of mainstream Western philosophy's norms that serves as a guiding framework for my project.
bell hooks
hooks' text, Teaching to Transgress, is a touchstone of my inclusive pedagogical praxis, and her accessible academic writing through personal narrative influences my own writing style.
Patricia Hill Collins
Collins' seminal work, Black Feminist Thought, provides key theoretical tools that help bridge quilting to philosophy, and from critiquing the mainstream philosophical canon to transforming it.

Form and Method
My dissertation is intended to model my argument for how a material-based approach to philosophy, using non-traditional sources, methods, and communication styles, can do important philosophical work that is accessible and inclusive without having to adhere to the norms of traditional mainstream Western professional philosophy.
Inspired by the arguments and style of scholars including bell hooks, Tressie McMillan Cottom, and George Yancy, I am writing in a conversational tone using personal narrative and drawing from lived experience and community-based knowledge in connection with influential ideas from scholars from marginalized and historical excluded groups, particularly Black women writers.
I have also conceived of my project through spatial connections rather than linear argumentation, represented metaphorically and visually through a material object--a symbolic art quilt I am making in conjunction with the dissertation--and intend to write and publish the project (pending approval from my department and graduate college) as a digital humanities object. This will allow me to weave visual and written information together seamlessly, give readers multiple pathways through the project, and provide an innovative means for feminist citational practice that will amplify the work of marginalized and underrepresented scholars.