Where are all the (Pythagorean) women gone ?

Feminist History of Philosophy

     Until recently my doing ancient philosophy meant writing about Plato and Aristotle with a side helping of the Stoics. Then I decided to look into ancient women philosophers and discovered, among others, Perictione I, the author of a short text called « On the Harmony of Women ». Looking around on the internet for something to read to bolster my so far meager research on Perictione, I was delighted to come accross two brand new titles on Pythagorean women writers : Annette Bourland’s Huizanga’s Moral Education for Women in the Pastoral and Pythagorean Letters , and Sarah Pomeroy’s Pythagorean women : their History and Writings.This adds to a non-negligeable existing literature on the topic, counting the first four chapters of volume I of Waithe’s History of Women Philosophers , and Plant’s anthology Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome.

     Then…

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Race and Gender in Black Athena

This is an old documentary. But watching especially the first 15 minutes, it struck me anew how alike academics’ reactions to suggestions that they might be racist or sexist are. “Maybe we (classicists, historians, philosophers…) used to be a tad racist, a long time ago, but that’s long gone.” The implication being that if they do not accept Martin Bernal’s claim that Greek thought may have add Black Egyptian roots, it’s because those claims are intrinsically wrong! Of course!

Sandra Harding wins the 2013 John Desmond Bernal Prize

Great news!

From FEMMSS list:

On 10/19/2013 4:50 PM, Sharon Traweek wrote:

Hi
At the annual meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Sandra Harding, UCLA Departments of Gender Studies and Social Sciences & Comparative Education, received the 2013 John Desmond Bernal Prize, “awarded annually to an individual judged to have made a distinguished contribution to the field of Social Studies of Science.”

Past winners have included many of the “founders and prominent scholars who have devoted their careers to the understanding of the social dimensions of science and technology.” The first four winners were Derek de Solla Price, Thomas Kuhn, Robert Merton, and Joseph Needham. [1981-1999 the ratio was 17 men to 2 women; 2000-2013 the ratio is 6 men to 8 women.] http://www.4sonline.org/prizes/bernal

John Desmond Bernal (1901-1971) was an important molecular biologist, a prominent British intellectual, wartime science adviser to Lord Louis Mountbatten, and the author of _The Social Function of Science_ (1939), as well as many other books.

Cheerfully,
Sharon