Pragmatist feminism is a field of philosophy that emerged in the 1990sas a new approach to feminist philosophy. It utilizes and integratescore concepts of pragmatism, including its emphasis on pluralism,lived experience and public philosophy, with feminist theory andpractice and a focus on social change. Pragmatist feministphilosophers have been addressing several different projects over thepast decades, including a) the recovery of women who were influentialin the development of American pragmatism but whose work subsequentlyall but disappeared in the history of philosophy, b) a rereading andexpanding of “canonical” pragmatist texts, includinganalyzing traditional pragmatist texts from feminist perspectives, andc) the utilization of pragmatist philosophies as a resource forcontemporary feminist philosophy and activism. The late20^th century saw a resurgence of interest in Americanpragmatist philosophy, and part of the energy of that resurgence wasdue to feminist interest in pragmatism. Twenty-first-century feministphilosophers are incorporating a wider vision of American and globalactivism into the pragmatist-feminist dialogue.

What is now called “classical” American pragmatism is agrouping of philosophies that developed between the late nineteenthand the early twentieth century and were largely influential from theProgressive Era (1890–1915) up until the Second World War.Pragmatists, such as John Dewey, William James, and Jane Addams, wereinterested in the intersection of theory and practice, bringingphilosophical thinking into relationship with the social and politicalenvironment. For these thinkers, philosophizing was an active process,both as a way to change social realities and to use experience tomodify the philosophies themselves. Early pragmatists were oftenhumanists; they saw the social environment as malleable, capable ofimprovement through human action and philosophic thought. Because ofthis, many of the classical pragmatists were engaged in social action,often participating in experiments in education and working foregalitarian social reforms. Both early and contemporary pragmatistsreject the idea of a certain Truth that can be discovered throughlogical analysis or revelation and are more interested in knowledgegained through a wide range of experiences while emphasizing thesocial context of all epistemological claims. Pluralism is a centralvalue for pragmatists, who understand that knowledge is shaped bymultiple experiential viewpoints. As such, women’s experiencesare an essential part of pragmatist philosophy.

Feminism, as used here, broadly describes thinkers and activists whoare committed to the rights of women and non-binary people. Feministsoften begin with an awareness of one’s physical and socialsituatedness. Feminists reject body/mind dualism, understanding thatembodiment is a part of the epistemological process. Feminist writingsand movements tend to include an analysis of inequities around gender,race, class, and ethnicity and seek to address systems of oppression.

The weaving together of feminism and pragmatism situates social andpolitical issues in historical, geographic, and relational contextsand particularly addresses systems of oppression that havemarginalized the voices of women and people of color. Biographical andtheoretical approaches illuminate the connections between feminism andpragmatism as activist-oriented philosophies. These efforts areconsistent with feminist methodology; they utilize personalexperiences as well as theoretical work that focuses on embodiedliving in a social organism to address contemporary feminist socialand political concerns.

Both feminism and pragmatism are fields that extend beyond theboundaries of traditional philosophy. Looking beyond academicphilosophy to find the women who were influential social theorists andactivists has expanded traditional philosophical methodology and hasopened a new space for thinking in philosophy. Understanding thesereformers as philosophers helps us see how those outside ofprofessional academic settings developed, expressed, and enactedgroundbreaking theories and can illuminate how philosophers todaymight span the boundaries between scholarship and activism, betweenphilosophy and other disciplines, and between the academy and thecommunity. As an expanding field, feminist pragmatism has become asignificant resource for theorists and activists working in the fieldsof education, the environment, social science research, design theory,community/urban planning, democratic social movements, legal theory,food studies, and more.

Although many of the historical women discussed here did not callthemselves pragmatists, contemporary scholars and activists rely ontheir philosophies with a renewed emphasis on public and engagedphilosophy in the pragmatist tradition (Lake 2014; Hamington &Bardwell-Jones 2012; Varner 2021; Yun Lee 2011). This entry will firstconsider the influence of particular women in the classical pragmatistera, then highlight feminist rereadings of classical pragmatist work,describing how contemporary pragmatist feminist philosophers aredrawing upon the work of early pragmatist feminist writers in order topursue projects within epistemology, education, social action, anddemocratic pluralism. Finally, this entry will briefly consideremerging contemporary scholarship from global pragmatistfeminists.

• 1. Early Feminist Contributions to American Pragmatism
• 2. Feminist Re-reading and Expansion of Classical Pragmatism
• 3. Pragmatist Feminist Philosophical Themes
  • 3.1 Valuing Experience
  • 3.2 Epistemology
  • 3.3 Education
  • 3.4 Social Action
  • 3.5 Democratic Pluralism
• 4. Global Pragmatist Feminism
• 5. Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Early Feminist Contributions to American Pragmatism

Women were significant partners in the development and articulation ofclassical American pragmatism. Historical analyses bring into view thelives of philosophers and activists such as Jane Addams, Mary ParkerFollett, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Emily Greene Balch, Lucy SpragueMitchell, Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Whiton Calkins, and Ella FlaggYoung. These women bring added dimensions to pragmatism; they remindus of the issues that were subsequently left behind as Americanphilosophy became more exclusively technical and academic. For most ofthese women, pragmatism was a philosophic practice used to accommodatetheir new academic and political engagement with the world, as well asa method of reforming politics and culture. The pragmatist approach tophilosophy that brought theory and practice together helped thesewomen trust in and learn from experience and intellectually engage ina host of social reform movements.

The historical recovery of female voices in the history of philosophyin the last few decades is an ongoing project; it both helps us becomeaware of women’s influence on the history of philosophy andshines a light on the processes that lead to the marginalization ofwomen’s voices (see the entryfeminist history of philosophy). Recovering these women thinkers also allows us to hear new orexcluded voices in the philosophic conversation, in some casesresulting in opening up the definition of philosophy itself.Recognizing “philosophical techniques are means, notends”, these women rejected “philosophizing as anintellectual game that takes purely logical analysis as its specialtask…” (Seigfried 1996: 37). Because of the gender-baseddiscrimination against women as rational thinkers and their exclusionfrom the academy, history has rarely carried the names and texts ofthese women into our philosophy textbooks (see for example EileenO’Neill’s 1998 essay “Disappearing Ink”).Thus, it should not be surprising that many of the women whose workhas been brought into the feminist-pragmatist discussion werecollege-educatedactivists rather than professional academicphilosophers; nevertheless, scholarship has shown that theirwork had an enormous impact on the development of pragmatist thought.A historical look at how these women affected what became known aspragmatism demonstrates the interactive and relational nature ofphilosophizing.

The history of pragmatism is recent enough that we can more easilyrecover and recognize the women who participated in forming thisuniquely American school of thought, formerly considered only throughthe work of such male thinkers as William James, Charles SandersPeirce, George Herbert Mead, George Santayana, and John Dewey. Thework of women who were in philosophic and activist dialogue with thesephilosophers were original philosophers in their own right and wereresponsible for many social innovations. Yet, they had mostlydisappeared from the pragmatist dialogue until the latter part of thetwentieth century. Charlene Haddock Seigfried’s work,particularly her 1996 bookPragmatism and Feminism, wascentral in the effort to bring these invisible women back into thephilosophical discussion, as well as to bring feminist perspectives tothe field of pragmatism.

In the Progressive Era, many of the college-educated social reformersin the Chicago area lived at Hull House or were associated with theUniversity of Chicago. Some of the Hull-House reformers, such asSophonisba Breckinridge and Edith and Grace Abbott, held academicpositions but did most of their academic and activist work in therealm of social reform. Some, such as Julia Lathrop and FlorenceKelly, went on to hold influential governmental positions. Otherfeminist pragmatists working on social and philosophic issues workedwith James and Royce at Harvard or were engaged with feminist reformsin other fields, such as suffrage activism or peace work.

Some of the first generation of feminist pragmatists included thefollowing women (in alphabetical order):

Jane Addams (1860–1935) was a central figure inthe development of pragmatist thought. In her lifetime Addams wasrevered as one of America’s most famous social reformers, thefounder of Hull House, and the recipient of the 1931 Nobel PeacePrize. Her pragmatist philosophies emerged from her experiencesworking in the poverty-stricken immigrant neighborhoods of Chicago,from her collaborations with the talented women who lived at HullHouse, as well from reflection on texts and direct dialogue withphilosophers of her time (including John Dewey, William James, GeorgeHerbert Mead, and W.E.B. DuBois). Addams published eleven books andhundreds of essays, writing on ethics, social philosophy, andpacifism, in addition to analyzing social issues concerning women,industrialization, immigration, urban youth, and internationalmediation.

Emily Greene Balch (1867–1961) was a member ofthe first graduating class at Bryn Mawr. She pursued graduate studiesat the University of Chicago and the Harvard Annex and taught atWellesley College for over 20 years. Along with Addams, she was afounding member of the Women’s International League for Peaceand Freedom. While trained as a sociologist and an economist, evidenceof pragmatist philosophy is abundant in her work. This is particularlytrue in her support of social democracy and in her fundamental faiththat the social environment was capable of transformation throughphilosophical reflection and action. Her commitment to pluralism andeconomic justice led her to work on suffrage activism and globalracial justice. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946.

Ella Lyman Cabot (1866–1934) struggled to be aphilosopher in the male-dominated philosophies of early20^th century. She took classes at Harvard and Radcliffewith James and Royce. She continued to be part of the Harvardphilosophical community and as such was also a formative influence onothers’ writings. She was also a longtime advocate ofwomen’s rights. She wrote seven books on ethics and education.Her work was recovered in John Kaag’s 2013 bookPragmatism,Feminism, and Idealism in the Philosophy of Ella Lyman Cabot.

Mary Whiton Calkins (1863–1930) studied underpragmatists William James and Josiah Royce at Harvard, primarilyworking in psychology, which was then a sub-field of philosophy. In1905, Calkins became the first woman president of the AmericanPsychological Association and in 1918 became the first woman presidentof the American Philosophical Association. She was an advocate forwomen’s suffrage, claiming in 1905 that “a distinctionbased on difference of sex is artificial and illogical” (Harper(ed.) 1922: 171). While not generally categorized as a pragmatistphilosopher, her influence as a female philosopher created a pathwayfor other women philosophers.

Elsie Ripley Clapp (1882–1965) was a student ofclassical pragmatists, taking over fourteen courses from Dewey atColumbia, working as his graduate assistant, and collaborating onresearch projects with him for years (see Seigfried 2001:89–90). Clapp commented on drafts of Dewey’s work, andcontributed original ideas (Seigfried 1996: 92). Dewey publiclyacknowledged Clapp for her contributions toDemocracy andEducation, but only in the introduction, not attributing to herany particular ideas in the body of the text. At his retirement in1927, Dewey suggested that Clapp should be appointed to teach hiscourses at the Teachers College, but she was not offered the positionby the college. She went on to collaborate with Eleanor Roosevelt onsignificant rural education projects of her time.

Anna Julia Cooper (1858–1954) was aneducational reformer, particularly focused on the education ofAfrican-American women. She received her BA and MA at Oberlin Collegeand earned her Ph.D. at the Sorbonne at the age of 66. Her writingsabout the dual oppressions of race and gender are considered one ofthe foundations of contemporary feminist theories ofintersectionality. She is best known for her 1892 book,A Voicefrom the South by a Black Woman of the South.

Alice Chipman Dewey (1858–1927) is generallycredited with bringing Dewey’s philosophic Hegelian thinkinginto contact with real social issues. She was raised in Michigan byher pioneering grandfather and attended a Baptist seminary after highschool. Her lifelong interest in education led her to be a schoolteacher. This work, along with her commitment to the women’srights movement, led her to study at the University of Michigan whereshe met John Dewey. Their daughter Jane described Alice’sinfluence on John by saying that “things which previously hadbeen matters of theory acquired through his contact with her a vitaland direct human significance” (Rockefeller 1991: 150). AliceDewey continued her interest in education as principal of theUniversity of Chicago Lab School where she worked with Dewey onexperimental and experiential education reform.

Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) studied withRoyce, James, and Hart at Radcliffe/Harvard. Her academic training wasprimarily in political theory and philosophy. Like Addams and many ofthe feminist pragmatists of her era, her philosophy was developed outof her deep engagement with social issues in her Boston community, andfrom observing how people interact in public life. Follett thoughtthat the simple act of voting would never change society and thusnever directly advocated for women’s suffrage. Like mostpragmatists, Follett critiqued the dualism of individualism, claiming“(t)he group and the individual come into existencesimultaneously” (1918: 127). Follett’s advocacy of“power-with” rather than “power-over” inpolitical as well as organizational work is considered a precursor tocontemporary feminist analyses of power (see Pratt 2011; Kaag 2011;Whipps 2014b). Follett published three books and many essays andspeeches. During her lifetime, she was well-known as a managementconsultant and her work has recently gained new significance incontemporary management theory as well as modern leadershipstudies.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) was alifelong friend of both John Dewey and Jane Addams. Gilman stayed atHull House for about a month in 1895 where she lectured and exploredthe settlement culture. Gilman, not formally trained in philosophy,was interested in the philosophy of “find(ing) out what ailedsociety and how most easily to improve it” (Upin 1993: 42).Gilman was particularly concerned with the industrial and economicconditions of women, both in the home and in the workplace. She soughtto use philosophy in order to address the social and politicalproblems of her time and place, particularly related to women’sissues. She is the author of nine novels, including the feministutopian novelHerland, and ten works of nonfiction, includingWomen and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation Between Menand Women as a Factor in Social Evolution. Gilman’s shortstory “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a classic in feministliterature.

Florence Kelley (1859–1932) was an earlyresident of Hull House and a lifelong friend of Addams. She dedicatedher life to the fight for legal social rights, working to eliminatechild labor and brutally long working hours with degrading low pay.She was trained in social science, studied Marxism, and was awardedher law degree from Northwestern University. She claimed thatindividual rights were insufficient for a democracy; laws thatprotected the social and economic well-being of all citizens were alsoessential. As the general secretary of the National Consumers Leagueand a founding member of the NAACP, she brought feminist pragmatism tonational politics. She published three books and numerous articles,mostly on industrial and social reform. She mentored many youngerfeminist pragmatists like Grace Abbott and Frances Perkins.

Julia Lathrop​(1858–1932)​​​​​​ moved intoHull House in its second year, and she remained a member of thecommunity throughout her life. She was admitted to the Illinois BarAssociation, and she worked with the Chicago Women’s Club andthGeration after Jane Addams and was a student of the classicalpragmatists. As a feminist educator she both defined and reflected theprogressive era philosophies of reform and social change througheducational progress. In 1903, Mitchell became the first dean of womenat the University of California at Berkeley, where she encountered thesexism that was pervasive in the academy in that era. After movingback to New York, she began a 60-year career in child-centerededucation, combining educational scholarship in both research andpractice while founding and administrating innovative programs. In herlifetime, she was also seen as an example for other women who wereinterested in professional lives while marrying and raising children,something that was rarely available to the women of her generation.Mitchell’s Bank Street School demonstrated the effectiveness ofpragmatist child-centered education and continues to influencechildhood development specialists and educators.

Mary Church Terrell(1863–1954) was a writer,activist, suffrage worker, and civil rights leader who spent most ofher life engaged in work to improve the lives of African Americans.She received her BA and MA at Oberlin College, attending in the sameyears as Anna J. Cooper. She was the first African-American womanappointed to the Washington D.C. school board. Terrell was a leader inthe African American women’s club movement, as a founder andthen president of the National Association of Colored Women. Herwriting and activism were consistent with feminist pragmatism withoutdirectly mirroring that of white feminist pragmatists. As she said,African American women faced two barriers to public life: her sex andher race. Terrell was a friend of Addams and later a member of theboard of the WILPF. She mentored Mary McLeod Bethune, who wasinfluential in Roosevelt’s New Deal programs for social reform.

Ella Flagg Young (1845–1918) was a lifelongeducator and then administrator in the school system in Chicago, andlater was a professor of education at the University of Chicago. Shewas elected the first woman president of the National EducationAssociation and worked for women’s suffrage. According toSeigfried, Dewey was specific about how Young’s “originalinterpretations and applications of his theories went beyond his ownunderstanding” (Seigfried 1996: 80). According to Joan K. Smith(1977), Young began taking classes from John Dewey at the Universityof Chicago in the fall of 1895; at that point she had over 30 years ofexperience in teaching and administration. She published three bookson education.

The feminist pragmatists of the next generation were often mentored bythe women above. Lucy Sprague Mitchell (1878–1967) grew up inChicago and was a friend of Addams and Dewey before moving toRadcliffe where she studied with Royce and James. Mitchell became apioneer in children’s education. Grace Abbott, who lived at HullHouse and worked closely with Addams, was the first director of theImmigrants’ Protective League and then became a powerful forcein Washington politics as the head of the Children’s Bureau inthe 1920s and 30s. Frances Perkins, the first female Secretary ofLabor, had been a part-time resident of Hull House. Earlier in hercareer, as head of the New York Consumer’s League, she wasmentored by Kelley. Perkins was responsible for many social andeconomic innovations in FDR’s New Deal, such as Social Securityand the Fair Labor Standards Act. Mary McLeod Bethune was mentored byMary Church Terrell in her work as president of the NationalAssociation of Colored Women in the 1920s. Bethune was the Director ofthe federal Division of Negro Affairs of the National YouthAdministration and a close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt. She became themost powerful African American woman in FDR’s administration inthe 1930s. (See Whipps 2024.)

2. Feminist Re-reading and Expansion of Classical Pragmatism

In the late twentieth century, feminist philosophers beganre-examining philosophic texts through the lens of gender, analyzinghow particular thinkers’ philosophies often incorporate thesubjugation of women; for example, Rousseau’s idealized“Emile” is only possible through the supporting role ofthe idea of “Sophie.” Likewise, feminist pragmatists haveexamined the role of women and gender in the canon of pragmatistphilosophy, particularly looking at the work of John Dewey, CharlesSanders Peirce, William James, and George Herbert Mead. Pragmatismoriginated in a time when our culture was in the midst of enormouschange in women’s roles, yet early male pragmatists were oftenunaware of how gender biases affected knowledge and culture as well astheir own ideas. Like many figures in the philosophical canon, attimes they universalize the male perspective. Yet, as we will see,pragmatism and feminism overlap in significant ways, and even in theircritiques, feminists find value in these thinkers’ works.

Books such asFeminist Interpretations of John Dewey(Seigfried 2001) andFeminist Interpretations of WilliamJames (Tarver and Sullivan 2015) have made these influencesclear. In this latter volume, Erin McKenna’s essay, “Womenand William James” points out James’ expectation that thewomen in his life (particularly his wife, mother, and sister) playtraditional roles of self-sacrifice. The concept of “freewill” is central to James’ work, yet, as McKenna reveals,he didn’t grasp how his gender, class, and race provided himthis freedom.

The opportunity to exercise “free will” was not sharedequally, and he did not see now his freedom intersected with theoppression of others. (McKenna 2015: 83)

Other pragmatist feminists have also examined the gendered receptionof philosophers’ writings. For example, Marilyn Fischer rereadJames’s acclaimed “The Moral Equivalent of War” inthe context of its time, demonstrating that James drew on“common conceptions shared by militarists, misogynists, andimperialists of the day” (2018).

Dewey’s thinking was also shaped by the gendered expectations ofhis time and place, even though women played more equal roles in hislife. As Seigfried noted (1998), Dewey was a supporter of manyfeminist causes. Yet, as she also pointed out later, “thepitfalls of a view of women seen solely from a male perspective, eventhat of a sympathetic male,” still affect Dewey’s writing(2001: 10). Why does this matter? As Nancy Tuana has said,

Paying attention to the workings of gender within the texts ofphilosophy will make visible the complexities of the inscription ofgender ideologies. (Tarver and Sullivan 2015: ix)

These feminist re-readings and analyses have provided a view of thecultural context of pragmatist writings; it helps us understand howand why women were marginalized in the intellectual history ofpragmatism. As we will see, these important critiques have notdeterred feminist pragmatists from seeing the value in and buildingupon the work of these classical pragmatist thinkers. As Patricia HillCollins has noted, “much of this work on individual womenphilosophers aims to revise the narrative to correct for existingbias” and thus yield “new insights about the substance ofpragmatism itself” (Collins 2019: 177).

3. Pragmatist Feminist Philosophical Themes

Contemporary feminist pragmatists also implement and extend pragmatistphilosophies as a foundation for feminist theory. Working in thepragmatist tradition, they point out that pragmatism offers avaluable, although often unrecognized, resource for feminist thinkers.For example, contemporary feminists point out how traditionalphilosophy’s emphasis on rational, logical absolutes devaluesthe ambiguities of the experience of an embodied life. For feministpragmatists, pluralistic communities have epistemological value andprovide the base for an inclusive problem-solving approach to socialissues. The pragmatist understanding of education as a social andpolitical force, as a major aspect of how society and individuals areshaped, has been echoed by contemporary feminists who analyze oureducational curriculum and methods of teaching. Both pragmatism andfeminism are more likely to bring social context to the forefront ofphilosophy, opening space for realities in flux, for emergentsituations to be shaped and reconstructed by their context.Pragmatists emphasize that we must include particular and individualexperiences in a pluralistic discussion of multiple realities, andthat all parties involved in an issue also be involved in theproblem-solving process.^[1] More recent efforts have also pressed for a relational understandingof existence that includes the non-human.

3.1 Valuing Experience

A historical examination of pragmatism shows a reverse ordering of thetheory-action method sometimes assumed in philosophical thought, andoften critiqued by feminist thinkers. In its privileging of theory,some philosophical texts leave us with the impression that ideasnormally originate from ideal and often solitary theoretical thinkingthat is then diffused into the general culture. However, in the caseof many women activists, like Jane Addams, it is evident that publicand political activism shaped the character of the philosophy. Indeed,she advised leaders to “move with the people”, aiming tofirst “discover what people really want” so that they cantogether uncover a way forward that neither could alone “seevery clearly till they come to it” (1902 [2002]: 69). Such amethod is consistent with pragmatism; as 20^th centurypragmatist Sidney Hook said, “social action is the mother ofinspiration and not, as is usually imagined, its offspring”(1940 [1991]: 3). Feminist theory has also grown out of the activismof the women’s movement; it incorporates the understandings thathave resulted from social activism. Pragmatist philosophers often madethese same points in their critiques of positivism. Both pragmatistsand feminists advocate for the practical use of philosophy in therealm of personal and public experience; pragmatism and feminismgenerally also share a social and/or political focus and advocatespecific cultural changes.

The pragmatist commitment to situated knowledge, rather than abstractor idealized knowing, has been influential in some fields of feministethics, particularly in care ethics. Maurice Hamington draws onAddams’s ethics to articulate “a proactive embodiedcare” based on “ habits of interaction” (2004: 104).George Herbert Mead’s philosophy of the self has also played aprominent role in care ethics for both Hamington and Heather Keith. AsKeith said of Mead’s concept: “ the self is whollyintegrated into an ecology of both physical and social relationshipsfacilitates a conception of selfhood valuable to the sort of personaland moral liberation called for by feminism” (1999: 330).

Contemporary feminists and pragmatists share an effort to radicallychange oppressive political and social structures, an effort thatfinds resonance with the early feminist pragmatists. Jane Addams andother feminist reformers like Kelley, Lathrop, and Terrell werecontinuously involved in fighting oppression, especially of women,children, and minorities. Pragmatism’s continued insistence thatphilosophy should address the problems of the current social situationsupports critiques of gender, race, and class oppression, even thoughthe majority of pragmatism’s male founders were often relativelyinattentive to cultural gender-related oppression.

3.2 Epistemology

Feminists and pragmatists share an interest in the situatedness of theknower within their social environment. They are both committed to anepistemology that is based in experience and relationality. Feministpragmatists point out that the search for universalized idealsbankrupts ordinary experience and robs from philosophic thought thecreativity of thinking with and through complex networks of experienceand interaction. InPragmatism and Feminism, Seigfriedhighlights aspects of pragmatism that make it useful to feministepistemology, noting both fields share a critique of dualism.Seigfried reminds her reader of four dualistic aspects ofrationalistic philosophy critiqued by Dewey and some feminists for itsoppressive support of invidious social/economic hierarchies. The fourdimensions of this rationalist approach include:

1. The depreciation of doing and making and the over-evaluation ofpure thinking and reflection;
2. the contempt for bodies and matter and simultaneous praise ofspirit and immateriality,
3. the sharp division of practice and theory, and
4. the inferiority of change and superiority of a fixed reality.(Seigfried 1996: 113)

Jane Duran, in “The Intersection of Pragmatism andFeminism” (1993), points out that feminist theorists critiquethis preoccupation with universals, writing that it seems “topervade much of analytic philosophy (indeed philosophy as awhole)”. This desire for universals, she says, leads all the wayback to Plato. Plato’s idealism carries with it a devaluation ofthe changing realm of the physical world. Duran points out thatfeminists, as well as pragmatists, are often less interested inuniversal generalities and notes that an emphasis on particulars aswell as “relations and connections become almost more importantthan particulars themselves” (1993: 166). This pluralistic senseof refusing to constrict reality to that which is defined by logic orlanguage helps feminists as philosophers propose an alternative visionof philosophy.

Susan Dielman points to the importance of discourse and languageanalysis in addressing hegemonic epistemic exclusions; she bringsneopragmatist theory, specifically that of Richard Rorty, into thefeminist pragmatist dialogue in order to understand “theinterconnectedness of power and discourse” (2012: 99).

Feminist pragmatists have also built on John Dewey’s concept ofexperience as philosophical support for a position that holds togetherthe subject and object in a nondualistic epistemology. Yet, aspostcolonial feminists have pointed out, experience in itself isconditioned by one’s cultural background. Ofelia Schutte (2000)notes that “the nature of knowledge is not culture-free but isdetermined by the methodologies and data legitimated by dominantcultures” (2000: 40). Feminist-pragmatist Celia T.Bardwell-Jones (2008) draws on Josiah Royce’s theory ofinterpretation to address the problem of translation “at theborders of conflicting experience…where differences aretranslated instead of assimilated” (2008: 22). Suchepistemological translation work is essential for feminists andpragmatists, given that in both fields theory is inherently aboutchanging the world Jane Addams embodied this intersection ofpragmatism and feminism in her efforts to interpret across class andcultural boundaries; through this interpretative and activist work shesought to reconstruct the social order and increase justice for womenand the underprivileged. Addams’ understanding of therelationship between action and truth contributed to her choice of acareer in the public world. For her, a motivation to address thesuffering in the world motivated reflection and engagement. As apublic philosopher, reformer, and activist embedded in her community,Addams was called to act under inherently messy, dynamic, andambiguous situations (see Fischer 2005, 2011, 2013 and Lake 2014,2015). This interpretive activism opened opportunities forreconstruction, redefining relations between the public and theexpert, students and the instructor, the governed and thegovernors.

Similarly contemporary feminist thinkers have changed the academy andthe larger culture by re-analyzing and reconstructing the ways that wethink, the hierarchies of knowing, as well as the social conventionsthat have defined gender. Erin McKenna inThe Task of Utopia:Pragmatist and Feminist Perspective (2001) uses thisprocess-orientation to create a social/political philosophy that isalways open to change, rather than one with finished“ends” in view. With both feminism and pragmatism we canconsider philosophizing contextually as a creative force, reacting toas well as reconstructing our multiple environments.

Feminist social analysis often produces the conditions for philosophicreflection, creating what Addams called “perplexities”that are the starting points for philosophical and political change(1902 [2002]: 77). In “Feminist-Pragmatist Revisioning ofReason, Knowledge, and Philosophy” (1993), Phyllis Rooney notesthat the classical pragmatists would have welcomed the challenges thatcontemporary feminisms have brought to philosophy. She compares theserifts to what Peirce called the “irritations of doubt”(Peirce 1877, quoted in Rooney 1993: 21) which open the door toinquiry and signal possibilities for recreation and rediscovery. Deweycalled this irritation “an unsettlement” that “aimsat overcoming a disturbance” or the “uncertainties oflife” (1916 [1985]: 336–337), which he says, are themotivations for beginning to do philosophy. InDemocracy andSocial Ethics, Addams references moments of“perplexities” as openings to begin rethinking socialvalues and epistemological claims. Pragmatism and feminism then sharea movement toward active philosophizing about those“irritations”, “uncertainties”, and“perplexities”.

Feminist epistemologists such as Susan Bordo and Alison Jaggar pointout how traditional philosophy’s emphasis on rational, logicalabsolutes has devalued the ambiguities of changing embodiedexperience. Feminists and pragmatists have both rejected body/minddualisms. For instance, Clara Fischer, who also writes on Irishfeminism, turns to John Dewey to address body/mind and emotion/reasondualisms, demonstrating that feminists could draw on the pragmatisttradition to address philosophies of embodiment (2018). ShannonSullivan inLiving Across and Through Skins (2001) brings thepragmatist tradition of transactional knowing through embodied andrelational lived experience to the feminist epistemology of standpointtheory, describing what she calls a “pragmatist-feministstandpoint theory”. This pragmatist-feminist perspectivesuggests knowing unfolds in relationships enacted through our physicalembodiment and the social environment; knowing should thus incorporate“multiple marginalized perspectives”. Using Dewey’sstandard of truth as that which results in “transactionalflourishing,” Sullivan considers “questions about whichstandpoints can help promote flourishing transactions” (2001:146–47). In doing so, she corrects the privileging ofwomen’s experiences that is found in Sandra Harding’sfeminist standpoint theory and locates knowing as transactions amongdiverse others, possibly even non-humans. Sullivan’s work isparticularly significant in the ways she investigates feminist issuesof embodiment, drawing on both Continental and American Pragmatistperspectives.

Wicked problem scholars and systemic design practitioners DanielleLake, Josina Vink, Valerie Brown, and Judith Lambert also employ afeminist pragmatist epistemology in their work. Brown andLambert’s 2013Collective Learning for TransformationalChange: A Guide to Collaborative Action. Brown and Lambert, forinstance, argue that sustainable and just transformational change onour collective social problems requires we begin by first sharing ourvalues. Since our core values tend to shape our perspective and ouractions, recognizing the range of values involved explicates thecomplexities. Their model also emphasizes individual narratives andlegitimizes a range of knowledge, including individual, community,specialized, organizational, holistic, and collective knowledgecultures (2013: 22).^[2] Lake et al.’s place-based counter storytelling collaborativeworks to shift how knowledge is constructed and shared, attempting toprompt more participatory and emergent place-making projects (2023).Similarly, Vink’s systemic design efforts in the public servicesector begin with relational connections and tensions and pursuechange through incremental and emergent actions with diversestakeholders. These ways of framing and activating epistemology havehad—and continue to have—a significant influence oneducational practices.

3.3 Education

The experimental and relational approaches of feminism and pragmatismhave reshaped education theory and practices in pedagogy, researchmethods, and curriculum. Historically and today, pragmatist feministsare innovators of new pedagogical methods, focusing on engaged,place-based learning. Many pragmatist feminists analyze the waysknowledge is produced, searching to understand the situatedness of theresearcher and the ways that politics and values affect the productionof knowledge. Others have uncovered the often-gendered biases thathave shaped prescribed curriculums.

Progressive Era pragmatist feminists had an enormous influence onchildhood and adult education. Many of these early feministpragmatists had a direct and sustained influence on Dewey’seducational philosophy, from Jane Addams and Alice Chipman Dewey, toElla Flagg Young, Elsie Ripley Clapp, and Lucy Sprague Mitchell.Indeed, Dewey had not published or worked in the philosophy ofeducation before he came to Chicago, where he experienced JaneAddams’s Hull House and worked with individuals like Ella FlaggYoung. Young’s contributions to Dewey’s philosophyincluded: (1) “the extent to which freedom meant … arespect for the inquiring or reflective process of individuals”;(2) an understanding of “the way that the interactions ofpersons with one another influence their mental habits”; and,(3) “how all psychology that was not simply physiological wassocial” (Seigfried 1996: 80).

Early pragmatist-feminist writing consistently demonstrates a distrustof educational theories that are disconnected from experience.Addams’ educational philosophy provides a model for theinteraction between thinking and action. For Addams, as well as forother educators, education is not seen as standing apart from life butrather blending seamlessly into the fabric of experiences andproviding a meaning-making function. Addams understood that whileeducation informs experience (providing historical context as well asskills), it must also interact with and change in response to currentsocial needs. In understanding the culture that students come from aswell as the values of their lives, Addams argued for an educationalapproach that uses students’ own experiences (personal as wellas cultural) as starting points for learning.

InTwenty Years at Hull House (1910), Addams talks about howmany professors’ lack of interest in matters of the“welfare of mankind” leaves behind the messy and chaoticexperiential realm of social relationships for the theoretical realm;she argued this separation also opens students to the influence of“charlatans” (1910 [1990]: 247). Addams’ vision ofeducation, even in the early days of Hull House, fostered aninterchange between the intellectual culture of a liberal artseducation and the practical aspects of urban industrial life, bringinglife and thought together. While Dewey is often cited as the catalystfor experiential learning and civic engagement practices,Addams’s work at Hull House pioneered place-based education. Shedesigned the Hull House Labor Museum to meet the educational needs ofworking adults. Her aim was to provide an avenue where they could seethemselves “in connection and cooperation with the whole”of their lives in their communities and, more broadly, in all of humanexperience. (Addams, 1902 [2002]: 96.) Other feminist pragmatistsbrought this emphasis into their academic classes, such as EmilyGreene Balch, who pioneered academic place-based learning in hersociology and economics classes at Wellesley, bringing her students toBoston’s settlement houses to experience the issues they werestudying.

Many early feminist pragmatists were educational administrators aswell as teachers. Anna J. Cooper was the seventh principal of M StreetHigh School in Washington, where she resisted pressure to teach a“colored curriculum.” Many of her students went on tohigher education. Mary Church Terrell was the first African Americanwoman appointed to the Washington D.C. school board. Lucy SpragueMitchell was the first dean of women at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley before starting the Bureau of Educational Experiments in NewYork, later called the Bank Street School. Addams was involved ineducational reform in the Chicago Public Schools and became a memberof the Chicago School Board. However, Addams’s philosophy ofeducation has had a more enduring impact on adult education theory andpractice, primarily as a result of her innovations at Hull House. Inworking with adults, she integrated arts, literature, and history intoindustrial life; later, she celebrated the arts and culture that werealready present in the lives of her industrial immigrant communities.In contrast, Lucy Sprague Mitchell’s Bank Street Schooldemonstrated the effectiveness of pragmatist child-centered educationand continues to influence childhood development specialists andeducators.

In the late twentieth century, feminist philosophers, such asElizabeth Minnich and Jane Roland Martin, analyzed curriculum using apragmatist feminist lens. Their critiques pointed out the ways thatthe then-traditional philosophical “canon” perpetuated thetraditional power structures by excluding the works of women andminorities. Minnich points out that the administrative structures ofcolleges and universities often place programs like women’sstudies or African-American studies on the periphery of the collegehierarchies. Minnich’s 1990 book,TransformingKnowledge, draws on both a feminist critique and pragmatistpractices to advocate for a rethinking of the patriarchal assumptionsat the base of our academic traditions. This work reconstructs what itmeans to do philosophy, opening our definitions of philosophy tovoices that may have been previously excluded or marginalized. Minnichand other feminist thinkers show us how many traditional theoristswere blinded by dominant hegemonic traditions, limiting their abilityto conceive new approaches. Minnich points out that pragmatism canshare with feminism the vitality that arises from an opening ofphilosophy to newness, to otherness, and to diversity. Likewise,Maxine Greene inspired a generation of educators to think of educationas a practice of freedom, providing spaces for new ways of thinkingand being. InThe Dialectic of Freedom (1988), Greene relieson John Dewey and Jane Addams, as well as feminist novels, to describethe ways that women have told the truths about their private andpublic lives. Greene uses these thinkers to argue for opening a spacefor diverse others to appear in the public world, to “tear asidethe conventional masks…that hide women’s being in theworld” (1988: 57).

Contemporary pragmatist feminists often draw on the reflectiveplace-based practices of early pragmatist educators in theirconceptualization of education as a political and emancipatorypractice. As Filipino feminist pragmatist philosopher Krissah Marga B.Taganas said, for both feminism and pragmatism, the “main tenetof dissolving fixed truths or dualism can be used to overthrowhegemonic structures and norms within society. Recognition of multipleviews and diversity, especially in the experiences of women and othermarginalized communities, aids the transformative process insociety” (2022: 51). Place-based learning has emerged as animportant practice for contemporary educators (See Brister, 2023,Varner, 2021b, Lake 2019, Lake et al. 2023, Whipps, 2014b.) Forexample, Danielle Lake et al.’s innovative work in the Power& Place Collaboration brings her students into dialogue with thelocal community. This counter-storytelling initiative provides a spacefor local community members to create a shared history based on theirown stories. Other educators draw on pragmatist feminism to broadeneducational practices. For example, David Kolb utilizes Dewey’sphilosophy to advocate for a move away from narrowly framed andabstract specialization towards experiential learning (2003). Kolb,like many others, emphasizes learning as a spiral cycle of reflectiveaction and engagement (Brown and Lambert 2013; Norton 2005). Taganasused the feminist pragmatist perspective to analyze online learningduring the pandemic as a method of inclusivity and socialtransformation (2022).

Recent feminist pragmatist pedagogies integrate scholarship on wickedproblems, sustainability education, outdoor education, and communityengagement (Lake 2015; Whipps 2014a; Parker 2010, Varner 2021a). Thiseducational approach extends the work of Dewey and Addams,highlighting the need for “context-sensitive, dialogue-driven,action-based” learning (Lake 2015: 252). The integration andapplication of these fields offer students opportunities to impactreal problems, develop skills, and foster virtues necessary forcollaboratively addressing public problems. Current researchhighlights how this type of education prepares students to take on therole of an integrator and “boundary spanner” (Ramaley2014: 12) in addition to fostering “change agent” skills(Svanström, Lozano-García, and Rowe 2008).

3.4 Social Action

Early feminist pragmatists often influenced the intellectual cultureof the Progressive Era and early pragmatist thought through activism.While early feminist pragmatists were influenced by Darwinian thought,they rejected the harsh position of Social Darwinism that pits humansin a competitive fight for individual survival. Instead, they used theconcepts of evolution to theorize the possibilities of socialprogress, affirming a social ethic that mandates humans have both theability and the responsibility to improve their environment. CharlottePerkins Gilman, for example, concentrated much of her writing onsocial issues of women’s environment, working towards radicalchanges in the home environment to make it more democratic andegalitarian. Gilman’s writing recommended some Hull Houseinnovations as examples of some of the social changes she recommended,such as having professional cooks making healthy family meals in apublic kitchen, instituting daycare centers, and abolishing industrialchild labor. Addams was also quite perceptive about the perplexitiesof home life for women; inDemocracy and Social Ethics, sheconsistently advocated that the private home life of women should moredirectly align with a public social good.

Addams’s life work—involving both place-based localactivism and global outreach—is a powerful illustration ofenacting experimental values under specific conditions through aniterative process of concrete experience and reflective theorizing.Rather than a philosophic retreat from the events and textures ofeveryday life, feminist pragmatists have chosen to do philosophy in aninteractive and public mode. Marilyn Fischer describes Addams’sactivism and writing as “an experiment in real time of theprocess of democratic, pragmatist political reconstruction”. Shecontinues by labeling her activism as “the sort of concreteexperience from which pragmatist theory emerges and to which it mustreturn for validation” (2013: 229). InJane Addams’sEvolutionary Theorizing: Constructing Democracy and Social Ethics(2019), Fischer shows that Addams, in analyzing the most pressingsocial issues of her day, drew on a vast array of internationalintellectual resources, most notably from theorists across thedisciplines who patterned their work on evolutionary biology. Byshowing that Addams was a more wide-ranging intellectual than has beendocumented to date, Fischer’s work also expands ourunderstanding of the roots of classical American pragmatism.

Peace activism is a field of social activism that engaged many of thewomen of the early progressive pragmatist era. Starting with theSpanish-American War of 1899 and in the decades prior to World War I,pragmatists and feminists worked on anti-imperialist campaigns andfought militarist influences in society. After the beginning of thewar in Europe, political activism in opposition to war and working foralternatives to war became, for some women, their primary occupation.Yet, for most of these activists, “peace” was much morethat the absence of war; instead it signaled a new cooperativeapproach to social life. As noted earlier, Jane Addams and EmilyGreene Balch both received the Nobel Peace Prize (Addams in 1931,Balch in 1946). Addams and Balch were also founding members of theWomen’s International League for Peace and Freedom, anorganization that continues to be internationally influential ingender justice work.

In the early 20^th century, peace activism and women’ssuffrage movements were often linked. For these women, the movementtoward social justice, toward egalitarian economic structures, andaway from competitive hierarchies necessitated a social structurebased in cooperation and peace, not war. Such belief in thepossibility of substantially changing social and political realitiesis at the heart of both pragmatism and feminism. Contemporary scholarsof peace, such as political scientist Patricia M. Shields, draw onAddams’s philosophy of “ positive peace” whichincludes advocacy for social justice at all levels of society andgovernance (2017: 37). Barcelona philosopher Núria Sara MirasBoronat has published on Addams and pragmatist peace philosophies(2019), and also works on philosophies of play, drawing onMead’s work which was influenced by his interaction with HullHouse (2013).

Twenty-first-century feminist pragmatists also have expanded thephilosophies of early pragmatist feminists by bringing new activistvoices into the philosophic dialogue, such as Gloria Anzuldua, GraceLee Boggs, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Angela Davis (see Lake 2019,2020; McKenna and Pratt 2015; James 2009, 2013; Varner 2020.) A numberof contemporary feminist pragmatists (Heldke, Lake, McKenna, Parker)are advocating for ecological justice, food justice, and animaljustice. Others are looking to scholars of Design and Systems Thinkingexperts like Margaret Wheatley, Josina Vink, and Arturo Escobar fornew ways to address social problems.

Asian American Civil Rights activist Grace Lee Boggs (1915–2015)has received particular attention in recent years from pragmatistfeminists who have found Boggs’s emphases on lived experience,pluralism, complexity, and praxis to align with pragmatist feministtraditions (Lake 2020). Boggs’ place-based philosophicalactivism in Detroit was preceded by formal philosophical training inpragmatism. She received her 1940 Ph.D. in philosophy (see Grace ChinLee) from Bryn Mawr, where she wrote her dissertation on pragmatistGeorge Herbert Mead.

3.5 Democratic Pluralism

Democracy was a core concept for many early feminist pragmatists,especially Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett. For example, democracyas an ethic provided the theoretical framing for Addams’beginning work at Hull House as well as her later work with laborunions and feminist activism. InDemocracy and Social Ethics(1902), Addams theorized a continually evolving democracy based onsocial association, particular to each generation and locality. As anethical system, it placed on each person “a moralobligation” to choose experiences of “mixing on thethronged and common road” where we can “least see the sizeof one another’s burdens” (1902 [2002]: 8–7). Shecritiqued earlier formations of liberty and democracy thatweren’t developed out of experience and interaction and thatdidn’t embrace all classes of society. Addams took this sense ofempathic understanding to larger and larger communities as she movedfrom local to national to international work. Democracy, for Addams,is built upon dialogue, joint experiences, and social equality. Sheunderstood we must give up on the hope that we will “settle ourperplexities by mere good fighting”, suggesting this stanceemerged from a “childish conception of life” (1910 [1990]:57). Her nephew, James Weber Linn, wrote that Addams’ distrustedlegislation when it was not “preceded by full discussion andunderstanding” (155). Addams’ commitment to dialogic andrelational democracy emerged from the recognition that “genuinesocial reform” across ideological differences tends to happenthrough “slow, plodding dullness” (Fischer 2016: 5).

As a political philosopher, Mary Parker Follett wanted to move thepractice of democracy away from the mere action of voting to smallcommunity-based decision-making. She believed that problem-solving viadialogue and action in local but diverse networks and organizationswas the best basis for democracy. Rejecting compromise as a way ofdealing with difference, she instead advocated for“integration”, believing conceptual resolution ofdifferences must be worked out in everyday action together. Accordingto Follett, the process of resolution requires full honesty,self-knowledge, careful listening and understanding of what issymbolized in the others’ demands.

A pluralistic community is an important theoretical and practicalcomponent of pragmatist conceptions of democracy. The “socialethics” advocated by Dewey and Addams embraces equality andmultiplicity, narrative and perplexity, fellowship and cooperativeaction, sympathetic understanding and the expansion of our ethicalframework. Scott Pratt has noted that these pluralistic values inAmerican philosophy may have deeper roots than those of James, Dewey,and Addams. For example, inNative Pragmatism Pratt tracesthe gender and cultural pluralistic values of American philosophy tothe early 19^th century writings of Lydia Marie Child onindigenous North Americans.

In fact, Addams, Dewey, and Follett all critiqued the ideal of liberalindividualism, which positions individuals as autonomous beings incompetition with each other for their freedoms. Instead pragmatistfeminists focus on living in a reciprocal and interdependent socialenvironment, believing this holds the promise of civilization,cooperation, and coexistence; they work to build communities thatfoster these joint associations. By prioritizing community,pragmatist-feminists encourage us to rethink what it means to live ina democracy (Green 1999), to provide a feminist communitarianphilosophy (Whipps 2004), or to re-conceive alternative ways ofstructuring societies (Boggs and Kurashigo 2012). Early pragmatistwriters join with contemporary feminists in a critique of thehierarchical systems of power that limit diverse perspectives. Severalcontemporary pragmatist-feminists have built upon these foundations todevelop pragmatist-feminist political philosophies, including JudithGreene inDeep Democracy: Community, Diversity,Transformation (1990), Beth Singer inPragmatism, Rights andDemocracy (1999), and Erin McKenna inThe Task of Utopia(2001). These feminist pragmatists imagine a participatory democracyin which all members of the society are involved in creating thecommunity. Yet many contemporary feminists criticize recentcommunitarian philosophies as potentially harmful to feminist issues;they argue the call for a “return” to community valuesmeans a return to values that restrict gender roles or limitdiversity. With this critique in mind, Addams can be seen as a basisfor a feminist progressive communitarianism that critiques isolatedindividualismand understands personal identity asnecessarily embedded in the social and political community. Whilepragmatists and feminists share the concern for relational communityand pluralistic thinking, they differ in how they construct the Other.Pragmatists, Seigfried says,

are more likely to emphasize that everyone is a significantly andvaluably Other … and tend to celebrate otherness by seeking outand welcoming difference as an expression of creative subjectivity.(Seigfried 1996: 267)

As Francis Hackett, an early resident of Hull House, said aboutAddams, “One feels in her presence that to be an‘other’ is itself a title to her recognition” (1969:76). Feminists, on the other hand, having experienced the position ofmarginalized otherness as women, are more inclined to “exposethe controlling force exercised by those who have the power toconstruct the Other as a subject of domination” (Seigfried 1996:267).

In either embracing the diversity of the other, or critiquing a systemthat makes persons into object-others, both feminism and pragmatismprovide theoretical tools to analyze and actively fight against theunjust hierarchies created by racism, classism, and sexism. ShannonSullivan, inRevealing Whiteness (2006), notes that Addamswas “ahead of her time” in her theoretical and practicalfocus on reciprocal class and race relations (2006: 168). Sullivandraws on Dewey’s and James’ writing on habit, as well aspsychoanalytic theory, to call for responsibility for one’sunconscious attitudes. Ant-racism pluralism was a key element in manyof the early feminist-pragmatism works. Addams, Kelley, and Terrellwere founding members of the NAACP; Addams was the chair of theChicago branch, and Kelley was a board member of the national NAACP.(See Whipps, 2023b) Addams, Balch, and Terrell worked led theinternational WILPF on anti-racism efforts.

Contemporary thinkers have drawn on the feminist and pragmatisttraditions in developing “visionary Black feministpragmatism” (V. Denise James) and “radical Black feministpragmatism” (Deva Woodley, Linda C. McClain). James utilizes thework of Anna J. Cooper to develop visionary Black feminist pragmatismwhich she says encompasses “academic, cultural, and activistprojects that attempt to take a practical view of social amelioration,while positing a vision of a radically changed, more justsociety” (James 2013). Woodly’s 2021 analysis of socialmovements, using the Black Lives Matter movement as a case study,draws on principles of Deweyan democracy, including socialintelligence, pragmatic imagination, and democratic experimentation(Woodly, 51). McClain, a legal scholar, melds both of these conceptsin her re-examination of the possibilities of pragmatism to interpretthe Constitution. Although McClain does not reference back to thelegislative and legal work of earlier feminist pragmatists,interrogating and re-interpreting the Constitution was central to thework of Florence Kelley, Grace Abbott, and Frances Perkins. (SeeBatlan, 2004 and Whipps, 2024).

4. Global Pragmatist Feminisms

One of the most compelling aspects of feminist pragmatism is the needto engage along and across borders. InThe Limits ofKnowledge (2015), Nancy McHugh argues for an approach thatgenerates and sustains a situated vantage point from which to seecomplex, interconnected problems facing local and global communitiesacross social, economic, cultural, educational, and political divides.This means we begin in “the complexities of the everydayworld” and engage with those who are impacted by the results.Such an approach seeks out “ marginalized views and marginalizedknowledge,” recognizing that long-standing histories shape thepresent situation and that our location is embodied (10). PhillipDorstewitz highlights how feminist pragmatists seek to engage“at the system’s edges” (370) in order to engage inphilosophic-activist work. Such work is critical for fostering“the capacity to recognize the actual circumstances of theworld, while simultaneously seeing what lies beneath them”(Griffin, 2009:9). Such work is critical for fostering “thecapacity to recognize the actual circumstances of the world, whilesimultaneously seeing what lies beneath them” (Griffin,2009:9).

This interest in cross-boundary work is reflected in the recent surgeof interest in feminist pragmatism globally. In 2020, NúriaSara Miras Boronat, Universitat de Barcelona, organized the firstWomen in Pragmatism International Conference, held at the Universityof Barcelona, which gathered women and non-binary scholars from twelvedifferent countries. (See Boronat and Bella, 2022) The resultingnetwork of feminist pragmatists has supported an increasing number ofscholars. The Women in Pragmatism Network currently sponsors a one-dayconference prior to the European Pragmatist Conference.

There has also recently been a shift towards uncovering and exploringthe philosophic-activist work unfolding beyond the borders of theglobal north. One example is the work of Alessandri and Stehn, whohave illustrated the Mexican influences on feminist border theoryGloria Anzaldua’s writing (2020). In 2020, the Society for theAdvancement of American Philosophy held its annual conference in SanMiguel de Allende, Mexico, highlighting the scholarship of LatinAmerican philosophies. Rosalva Aida Hernandez Castillo delivered theCoss Dialogue “Against Discursive Colonialism: InterculturalDialogues as a Path to Decolonize Feminist Anthropology.”Dorothy Rogers’s presentation highlighted the work of indigenousand early Mexican feminists who rejected the assimilationist agenda ineducation (2020, Other Internet Resources). ÁngelesEraña, IIF, UNAM, Mexico, described the Mexican Chapter of theNetwork of Women Philosophers of Latin America. Siobhan Guerrero McManus, CEIICH, UNAM, Mexico, spoke on “Feminist Philosophies inMexico.”

5. Conclusion

As pragmatist feminist philosophy continues to develop, more voicesthat had been obscured, neglected, and erased within the pragmatisttradition are being uncovered, reframing the pragmatist tradition.Contemporary pragmatist feminist philosophers are utilizing thoseperspectives to address contemporary philosophical and activistconcerns. Feminist philosophers bring these recovered perspectives tocontemporary feminist projects, such as domestic violence (Banerjee2008), queer theory, sex trafficking, and community organizing (seeFischer, Jackson, Brown, and Hamington in Hamington 2010) and humanrights (Lowe 2019). The combined force of pragmatism and contemporaryfeminism is leading to a deeper understanding of contemporaryprogressive feminist goals, bringing action and theory together inegalitarian practice.

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• James, V. Denise, 2019, “Growth and Survival, but Especially Survival: Black Feminism as Pragmatism”, University of Waterloo presentation.
• Rogers, Dorothy, 2020, “Pedagogical Theory & Diversity in the U.S. and Mexico” (abstract), presentation at the47th Annual Meeting of theSociety for the Advancement of American Philosophy AnnualConference, 5–7 March 2020.
• Varner, Tess, 2020, “Transformative Hospitality: A Pragmatist-Feminist Perspective On Radical Welcome As Resistance” (abstract), presentation at the47th Annual Meeting of theSociety for the Advancement of American Philosophy AnnualConference, 5–7 March 2020.
• Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, College of Architecture and the Arts, University ofIllinois/Chicago
• Jane Addams Biography, Nobel e-Museum
• Web Companion to Pragmatism, The Pragmatism Cybrary, maintained by John Shook.
• The Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy.
• Scan ofThe History of Woman Suffrage, 1922, Ida Husted Harper (ed.).

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