Research

My primary research interests are at the intersection of normative ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of race, and feminist philosophy. I'm in the early stages of writing a dissertation with Susan Wolf on the interpersonal dimensions of racism and sexism using Iris Murdoch's moral philosophy and psychology. Below are abstracts of papers currently in progress.

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Beautiful Arrogance (under review)

In this paper I examine the attitude of arrogance in contexts of oppression, attempting to do three things. The first is to give an account of the moral psychology of arrogance, where arrogance is understood as believing oneself to be more important than others. The second is to utilize this account of arrogance to illuminate why people of historically oppressed groups are often called arrogant, even when they are not acting in a way that reflects the attitude of arrogance. Toward that end I present three possible explanations, two attend to the reasons why the viewers may believe these people are arrogant and one aims to understand the consequences of this practice, concluding that this practice reflects and reinforces the undervaluing of oppressed peoples. Third, I argue that in cases where oppressed people are arrogant it is not necessarily bad, but all things considered good due to its role in resisting oppression.