Vanished Voices
New Lecture Series Launch by the Department
The Department of Philosophy has launched an exciting new lecture series this academic year: 
Vanished Voices. The inspiration for this new series is described by Dr. Deborah Boyle, a trailblazer in the field of women and philosophy, “I want students to know that if you look beyond the traditional philosophical genres and include novels, plays and poetry, you’ll see that there were many more people doing philosophy than the men that are usually taught about. And many of them were innovative women who were making history in philosophy in their time.”
Dr. Boyle’s professional work has sought to illuminate the marginalized voices in the field of philosophy. From her 2018 book The Well-Ordered Universe: The Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish to her recently released Mary Shepherd: A Guide, Dr. Boyle has been recontextualizing philosophical history that has often silenced important thinkers.
This academic year, the Vanished Voices Lecture Series held two talks. The first took place in the fall, entitled “‘The Complicate Being Self’: Mary Shepherd and the Difference Between Self and Mind,” and was presented by the department’s visiting assistant professor, Dr. Manuel Fasko, . Reflecting on his guest lecture and the importance of this series, he says, “It was a pleasure and honor to open the ‘Vanished Voices Lecture Series’ at College of Charleston, which was well attended by faculty and students alike. It is great to see that College of Charleston is participating and promoting the effort to right this wrong. Female thinkers have been part of philosophy since its inception. Their contributions were systematically neglected and ignored from the 19th century onwards, when philosophy became the university subject it is today. It has only been relatively recently that scholars have started to recover these vanished voices and incorporate them in their research and teaching. This is an effort that is ongoing. Thus, it is an excellent initiative by the College of Charleston to support and engage in this cutting-edge endeavor of correcting how we look at the past – and, in doing so, ultimately contribute to a more equitable future.”
The second guest lecture, “Demons, Doubts, and the Struggles of Knowing,” was presented by Dr. Christia Mercer, Gustave M. Berne Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. Professor Mercer suggested that, while the contributions of early modern women philosophers to the development of modern thought is now widely acknowledged, late medieval women’s influence has yet to be reckoned with. In a wide ranging, and art-filled (!) talk, Professor Mercer showed how Teresa of Ávila’s arguments about achieving clear and distinct ideas influence Descartes and how philosophers need to be more sensitive to a variety of ways philosophy has been done throughout history.
Planning has already begun on the next Vanished Voices Lecture that will be held in Fall 2023 at the college. The focus will be on the African philosopher Anton Wilhelm Amo who was active in northern Europe in the 18th Century. Amo taught at the University of Halle, then at the University of Jena before an increasinlgly racist culture forced him to leave. In that time he wrote two philosophical books whose significance has only recently been re-recognized. Berlin initiated a decolonization campaign and in 2020 renamed the street, Mohrenstraße, to Anton-Wilhelm-Amo-Straße in Amo’s honor. This guest lecture will be a collaborative event with the Department of German at the College.
In addition to the lecture series, Dr. Boyle crafted a special topics course with visiting professor, Dr. Manuel Fasko, this spring – Recovering Vanished Voices: Women Philosophers of the 17th-19th Centuries. The course confronts the established androcentric narrative of the history of philosophy and draws from works by women philosophers such as Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673), Anne Conway (1631-1679), Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648–95), Mary Astell (1666–1731), Emilie du Châtelet (1706–1749), Mary Shepherd (1777–1847), Sojourner Truth (c.1797–1883), or Constance Naden (1858-1889). Studying these thinkers will lead to discussions on their contributions to well-known philosophical problems such as the mind-body-problem or raise new questions, such as the role of women in philosophy or society more generally. The course aims for students to become a part of the effort to let these previously vanished voices be heard, thereby changing the way we look at the past, and, in doing so, ultimately shaping the future.
We look forward to sharing this valuable and ongoing work in the history of philosophy!