Mary Jo MacDonald

This will be excellent — “Partisan Virtue” by Geertje Bol @whpt.bsky.social 👇 global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Harriet Jacobs Cambridge Core - History of Philosophy - Harriet Jacobs

New Cambridge Element on Harriet Jacobs, author of 'Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl' - free to download for the next two weeks

Lost grave of daughter of Black abolitionist Olaudah Equiano found by A-level student Fitzwilliam Museum has uncovered student’s work from 1977 that revealed Cambridgeshire location of child’s burial place An A-level pupil found the lost grave of the Black abolitionist Olaudah Equiano’s daughter, revealing a story of love and solidarity in 18th-century rural England. Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797), also known as Gustavus Vassa, escaped enslavement to become a celebrated author and campaigner in Georgian England. His memoir, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, was a bestseller. Continue reading...

Lost grave of daughter of Black abolitionist Olaudah Equiano found by A-level student

I also managed to smuggle in some hot gossip about seventeenth-century affairs and revenge porn. Something for everyone in this one, really.

Excited to share my new article! I argue that Judith Drake’s (1696) case for women’s inclusion rests less on claims about the "unsexed mind" and more on her keen insight into the sociopolitical transformations of her time.

@polityalsberuf.bsky.social

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

The erasure of women philosophers Eileen O’Neill’s foundational article “Disappearing Ink: Early modern women philosophers and their fate in history” (1998) was revelatory for me as a

Geertje Bol on canon construction and history of women philosophers! www.the-tls.com/philosophy/c...

18th century wooden church. A wood carved chandelier in the foreground, and in the background is a wood pulpit with many figures adorning it.

Most depictions of St. Christopher show him holding a child, but in a wooden church in Finland I saw him with an entire pulpit on his head. Patron saint of carrying things, I guess.

I was just developing a reading list on women and utopia. I will upload when done!

Teaching utopia? I’ve started a public Zotero group for sharing syllabi, reading lists, & teaching materials on utopia: www.zotero.org/groups/60695.... Whether you’ve taught More or Morris, Bloch or Bogdanov, Le Guin or Lewinsky—your contributions are welcome! #utopia #teachingresources

Bar chart showing traffic counts on Bloor Street West in Toronto during the afternoon rush on Wednesday, June 11, 2025. For each hour from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., the number of bikes and motor vehicles (cars, trucks, motorcycles) was recorded. At 4–5 p.m., there were 643 bikes and 849 motor vehicles. At 5–6 p.m., 930 bikes and 832 motor vehicles. At 6–7 p.m., 919 bikes and 909 motor vehicles. At 7–8 p.m., 726 bikes and 935 motor vehicles. Bike counts exceeded car counts from 5 to 7 p.m. The chart was created by Matt Elliott for City Hall Watcher using data from the Toronto Community Bikeways Coalition.

Cool study from @bikewaysto.bsky.social detailing a traffic count on Bloor Street taken on June 11 with a camera at 412 Bloor West. During the peak of the afternoon rush, bikes outnumbered cars.

I repeat: bikes outnumbered cars.

drive.google.com/file/d/1ctd4...

Congratulations!!!

Workshops Organized by Marguerite Deslauriers Registration is required. Places are limited. To register, please contact louis.doulas@mcgill.ca All talks and lunch will take place at: McGill University 527...

The complete (bilingual) program for our upcoming workshop at McGill University is available here:

www.newnarrativesinphilosophy.net/workshops.html

Join us in Montreal, Canada, from June 6 to June 8! (registration required)

#philsky #womeninphilosophy #africanaphilosophy #historyofphilosophy

Such an encouraging and constructive few days. And how fun to be in a monastery during the election of a new pope!

What a wonderful start to the WHPT conference this morning in Ghent, with panels on Jewish political thought and women and gender in celestial worlds. Excited for what's to come!

Very excited to share the program of the upcoming WHPT conference! It promises to be a wonderful couple of days, and we cannot wait!

@maryjomacdonald.bsky.social @sophiecardin.bsky.social @abbsleblanc.bsky.social @rosscarroll.bsky.social @tmbejan.bsky.social

New from Mary Jo MacDonald: "Acknowledging Sexual Equality: Hobbes's and Cavendish's Amazons" in Hobbes Studies

brill.com/view/journal...

Anne Carson · Beware the man whose handwriting sways like a reed in the wind This​ is an essay about hands and handwriting. I think of handwriting as a way to organise thought into shapes. I like...

‘I think of handwriting as a way to organise thought into shapes. I like shapes. I like organising them. But because of recent neurological changes in my brain I find shapes fall apart on me.’

Anne Carson on Parkinson’s, poetry and bad handwriting: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

"Before we heed calls for political friendship, then, we would do well to consider the critique of political friendship of an early feminist, and her bold embrace of political enmity."

Check out Geertje Bol's new paper 'Mary Astell Against Political Friendship' in History of Political Thought!

A year ago today, I moved from Canada to Finland. At the time, several of my family members expressed concern about my relocation because Finland shares a border with a country whose leader is bent on territorial expansion. Thinking about this for no particular reason today.

Attendance is free and welcome! Please email me (mary.j.macdonald@jyu.fi), or my co-organizer Elena Gordon (elena.k.gordon@jyu.fi), if you would like to attend. We will share location details for in-person attendance or a zoom link for online attendance.

The panels for Monday, March 3rd include: 10:30 am - 12:00 pm : “Silencing the female monster: Gournay on slander and public life” Anik Waldow (University of Sydney) 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm “Early Modern English Women on The Politics of Talent and Ambition” Geertje Bol (Ghent University) 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm: “Tyranny begins at home: the housewife/slave analogy put to good use” Sandrine Berges (Bilkent University/ University of York) The panels for Tuesday, March 4th Include: 10:00 am - 11:30 am :“Macaulay & Wollstonecraft: An Epistemology of Political Resistance” Elena Gordon (University of Jyväskylä) & Allauren Forbes (McMaster University) 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm :“Margaret Cavendish’s Unreal Estate: Monstrous Properties and Unreal Interiors” Torrey Shanks (University of Toronto) 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm : “Marriage as Slavery: The Influence of Oroonoko on Early English Feminism” Mary Jo MacDonald (University of Jyväskylä)

Delighted to share the programme for the upcoming "Monsters and Domesticity" workshop at the University of Jyväskylä.

One week left to apply for the 2025 Women in the History of Political Thought conference –– to take place at this lovely monastery in the middle of Ghent (as if you needed more reasons to apply!) For more info and the CfP see womeninhpt.com/call-for-pap...

Slavery and Race: Philosophical Debates in the Eighteenth Century Thanks to Julia Jorati, it is now harder to be a researcher or teacher of early modern philosophy and not know what early modern European philosophers t...

Another review of my book on slavery in eighteenth-century philosophy just came out (as far as I know, the third one). So far the reception has been encouraging, which is such a relief. It's always nerve-wracking to read reviews of one's work. #philsky #earlymodernphilosophy #slavery #academicsky

Totally! I was just reading May Hay's entry on Behn in the Female Biography and wondering whether our impressions of Behn might be partly inherited from Hays.

Early modern women writers were (and are) treated as peripheral, but that does not mean they were ever forgotten. Claiming they were works to erase the work of women like Eva. B Dykes—the 3rd Black woman to receive a PhD in the USA—who we should be working to elevate alongside them.

I came across a glaring example of this today. I was reading Eva B. Dykes' book from 1942, which features an excellent discussion Aphra Behn. Dykes is seriously under-cited in the literature on Behn. Rather, we're told that Behn was mostly forgotten until scholarship from the 70s/80s recovered her.

Sophie Smith · A Comet that Bodes Mischief: Women in Philosophy Whenever I read claims about ‘forgotten women’, I want to ask: ‘By whom?’ Feminists? Society? The ‘culture...

Reminded of Smith's LRB article today, in which she argues that we should avoid describing women philosophers as 'forgotten'. She argues that this language may "encourage us to ‘forget’ the writers, usually women themselves, who have fought to correct that record?"

Blazing-world: frontispice with Margaret Cavendish (blonde woman on left) and the Empress of the Blazing world (brown haired woman on the right), holding hands. Behind them, 3 bear man are peering to the night sky with their telescopes.

I am trying to wrap up projects and seek closure (still so surreal) and one thing I'd love to see published or taken care of for a wider audience in some shape or form are my illustrations of Margaret Cavendish's (1623-1673) Blazing-world (1666), a proto-SF novel. Here's a summary + my drawings 1/

New on here: follow @whpt.bsky.social for updates on women in the history of political thought & an upcoming conference in May 2025! Share widely and consider adding to your starter packs!