Why Name a Journal after Hypatia? (original) (raw)
Related papers
“Hypatia: A Journal of Her Own,” APA Newsletter, Feminism and Philosophy 9.2 (Fall 2010): 20-24.
An historical retrospective, on the occasion of the publication of Volume 25, on how Hypatia, A Journal of Feminist Philosophy came to be; its mandate, policies and practices; and a reflection on its role in counteracting entrenched patterns of epistemic injustice in philosophy. While Hypatia founders and editors have been committed from the outset to fostering systematic and constructive review practices, leveling the playing field is by no means all that’s needed. Making the rules of the game explicit will certainly help, improving transparency, but all too often leaves intact the conventions that structure publishing practices in philosophy. These may themselves be unjust in subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways, incorporating various forms of evaluation bias (often unrecognized, unintended) that put women and minority scholars at a disadvantage, not least because the onus is on them to accommodate to disciplinary norms they had little part in shaping. Critical scrutiny of these norms is crucial if Hypatia is to realize its intended of fostering an intellectual and professional space in which innovative feminist work in philosophy can flourish.
This article focuses on the legacy of Hypatia as it evolves across the eighteenth century. Hypatia was killed by a mob during Lent in 415 AD, a shocking and avoidable tragedy that quickly overshadowed the great triumphs of her life—and continued to do so for more than a millennium. This paper explains why the image of Hypatia the martyr so quickly overwhelmed her legacy as a brilliant scholar and shows how, for a brief moment in the 1720s, the promise her career offered to female intellectuals almost became more resonant than her murder. It then demonstrates how this promise of a new image of Hypatia vanished as male leaders of the Enlightenment pushed Hypatia's story back to focus on confessional politics—and remained suppressed until a new version of it appeared again only in the twentieth century.
AHB - Review of Edward Watts Hypatia 2017
The OUP series Women in Antiquity, which Watts' book is a part of, aims to provide " compact and accessible introductions " to the life and times its various individul subjects. Watts has accomplished this aim well with his new book. In it, he goes beyond introduction and presents us with a bold new account of this indeed remarkable woman and her achievements. The chief claim of the book is this: we not only do Hypatia (ca. 355–415) a disservice, but more importantly we impoverish our understanding of the late antique world, if we focus on her death at the expense of her life.