SM

Marguerite Deslauriers

Academic title(s): 

Professor

Marguerite Deslauriers
Contact Information
Address: 

855 Sherbrooke St. W.
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 2T7

Email address: 
marguerite.deslauriers [at] mcgill.ca
Office: 
Leacock 943
Office hours: 

Fall 2024: Monday, 11:00 - 13:00

Research areas: 
Feminist Philosophy
Ancient Philosophy
Biography: 

Marguerite Deslauriers is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at SM. Her research is in ancient philosophy and the history of feminist philosophy, with a focus on Aristotle and on Renaissance feminism. In 2024 she was a Visiting Research Professor at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. In 2017 she was Robert Lehman Visiting Professor at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. She founded SM's Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (IGSF) in 2009, and was its first Director. Her most recent works are , in the series Cambridge Elements: Women in the History of Philosophy (CUP 2024) and(OUP 2022). Her other books are ,in the series Philosophia Antiqua (Brill 2007), and, co-edited with Pierre Destrée, (CUP 2013).

Personal website:

Current research: 

Areas of interest: Aristotle (metaphysics, biology, and political and moral philosophy), the history of philosophical conceptions of sexual difference, and Renaissance and early modern feminist treatises, especially the work of Lucrezia Marinella and Marie de Gournay.

Her most recent monographs are: Aristotle on Sexual Difference: Metaphysics, Biology, Politics (OUP 2022) and Lucrezia Marinella, in the series Cambridge Elements: Women in the History of Philosophy (CUP 2024). Her primary research project currently is an edited volume of translations of early feminist works (with Lara Harwood-Ventura): Equality and Superiority: Texts from Renaissance and Early Modern Europe (under contract with Oxford University Press).

She is a co-investigator in three collaborative research projects:

Extending New Narratives in the History of Philosophy (PI Lisa Shapiro), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Grant, 2020-27.

The philosophical foundations of women’s rights: a new history, 1600-1750 (with Jacqueline Broad, PI, Monash University and Deborah Brown), funded by the Australian Research Council, 2019-22 (extended).

Gender in Renaissance and Early Modern Philosophy (co-applicant, with Martina Reuter, PI,University of Jyväskylä) funded by the Academy of Finland, Academy Project, 2022-2026.

She wasthe Principal Investigator for aprojectfunded by SSHRC:, Insight Grant 2014-19. One of the results ofthis research isa website on which searchable transcriptions of the texts, and information aboutthe authors and their contexts, can be found:.

Selected publications: 

Books

, in the series Cambridge Elements: Women in the History of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 2024.

Book cover: Aristotle on Sexual Difference: Metaphysics, Biology, Politics, Oxford University Press, 2022.

Book cover: The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle's Politics

, co-editor with P. Destrée, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.


Book cover: Aristotle on Definition

in the seriesPhilosophia Antiqua, Leiden: Brill, 2007.

Articles

"La Querelle des Femmes et l’histoire de la philosophie féministe," XVIIe Siècle 2022/3, no. 296, numéro thématique, Historiographies des corpus modernes: évolutions et méthodes, ed. Marie-Frédérique Pellegrin. 451-468.

“Aristotle’s Human Beings,” co-author with E. Zoli Filotas, in Human Beings, ed. Karolina Hübner, in the series Oxford Philosophical Concepts, New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. 39-66.

"The Superiority of Seventeenth Century Women," Journal of the American Philosophical Association, July 2021, 1-19. Doi: 10.1017/apa.2019.242021.

“The Conceptualization of Masculine Authority as Unjust: Tyranny in 17th Century Venice,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 27:4 Special Issue: Women in the History of Philosophy, eds. Sarah Hutton and Ruth Hagengruber, July 2019, 718-37. PDF:

"Marie de Gournay and Aristotle,"inFeminist History of Philosophy: The Recovery and Evaluation of Women's Philosophical Thought (Feminist Philosophy Collection), eds. Eileen O'Neill and Marcy P. Lascano. Dordrecht: Springer, 2019, 281-99.

“Sur le plaisir et le temps dans le livre X de l'Éthique à Nicomaque,” dans le numéro spécial de la revue Chora REAM 17, edd. C. Cerami, M. Crubellier, A. Jaulin, May 2019, 105-126.

","Philosophical Studies1:13, DOI 10.1007/s11098-016-0730-3.

"Agency and Material Causation: Bartolomeo Goggio and Lodovico Domenichi on the Female in Aristotle's Generation of Animals," in Rinascimento Veneto e Rinascimento Europeo -- European and Venetian Renaissance,a cura di R. Bassi, Pisa: ETS, 2019.

"Thumos in Aristotle's Politics VII.7," Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought 36:1 (2019), 57-76.

“Political Rule over Women inPoliticsI,"inAristotle'sPolitics:A Critical Guide, eds. T. Lockwood and T. Samaras, Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 55-75.

"Political Unity and Inequality" inThe Cambridge Companion to Aristotle'sPolitics, eds. M. Deslauriers and P. Destrée. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 117-143.

"",The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(Winter 2012 Edition - updated 2018), Edward N. Zalta(ed.)

"Women, Education and Philosophy," in ACompanion to Women in the Ancient World, eds. Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, pp. 343-353.

“Sexual Difference in Aristotle’sPoliticsand his Biology,” inClassical World: (Special Issue) Bodies, Households and Landscapes: Sexuality and Gender in Graeco-Roman Antiquity, 102: 3, 2009, pp. 215-30.

“One Soul in Two Bodies: Marie de Gournay and Montaigne” inAngelaki: journal of the theoretical humanities, Special Issue: Recoupling Genre and ‘Gender’, ed. Moira Gatens, 13:2, August 2008, pp. 5-15.

“Two Conceptions of Equality: MacKinnon, Wollstonecraft and Rousseau on Natural Inequality,”Canadian Journal of Political Science37:4 (December 2004), pp. 1-23; short-listed for the John McMenemy Prize for the best article in the CJPS, 2004.

“The Virtues of Women and Slaves,”Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Volume XXV, Winter, 2003, pp. 213-231.

“How To Distinguish Aristotle’s Virtues,”Phronesis, Volume XLVII, no. 2, 2002, pp. 101-126.

“Sex Difference and Essence in Aristotle’sMetaphysicsand Biology,” inRe-reading the Canon: A Series Devoted to Feminist Interpretations of Major Philosophers: Aristotle, ed. Cynthia Freeland, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998, pp. 138-67.

Selected talks and presentations: 

“Nature, Custom, and the Malleability of Gender” at Gender in Renaissance and Early Modern Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä/Academy of Finland, 7-8 March 2024.

“Ève et Aristote : les interprétations du XVIe siècle sur la création d'Ève dans la Genèse” at L'humanité genrée : les femmes entre philosophie et religion dans la première modernité, ENS de Lyon, February 2-3, 2024.

“The Renaissance Reception of Aristotle’s Biology and the Natural Character of Women,” at Conceptualizing Otherness with Aristotle in Early Modern Europe and America, University of Pennsylvania/University of Venice Ca’ Foscari, Philadelphia, December 1, 2023, and at Duke University, November 17, 2023.

“TܳDz and Sexual Difference in Aristotle’s Responses to the Socratic Proposals of Republic ,” at the International Society for the Study of Socrates Latin-America Regional Meeting, Women in the Socratic Tradition, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 26-27 October 2023, and at the Duke/UNC Workshop on Race, Sex, and Marginalization in Ancient Philosophy, November 16, 2023

“Political Questions in Popular Pro-Woman Works of the Renaissance,” at Rewriting the History of Political Thought from the Margins, Humboldt University of Berlin, June 7-9, 2023; at Women in the History of Political Thought: Labor, Property and the Family, Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto, October 5-6, 2023.

“Whose Worth? Inclusion and Exclusion in 16th C. Pro-woman Works,” at Reinventing Woman’s Nature: Early Modern Feminism and its Roots, UCLA Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, March 30-April 1, 2023.

“Aristotle on Sexual Difference,” Author meets Critics panel presentation for Aristotle on Sexual Difference: Metaphysics, Biology, Politics. APA, Eastern Division annual meeting, Montreal, January 4, 2023 and at the APA, Pacific Division annual meeting, Portland, Oregon, March 20, 2024.

“Paradox, Doubt, Skepticism: Forms of Uncertainty in Early Modern Pro-Woman Arguments,” Québec-Ontario Workshop in Early Modern Philosophy. University of Toronto, October 28-29, 2022.

"Sexual Difference and Natural Character: the Reception of Aristotle's Historia Animalium in the Renaissance" at Aristotle’s Historia Animalium, Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge (in conjunction with Department of Philosophy, Birkbeck College London), August 22-26, 2022.

“No-sexed and Two-sexed: ‘Tragainai’ and Eunuchs in Aristotle’s Biology” as part of the symposium, Representations of Women and Gender in Ancient Philosophy, APA, Central Division, February 26, 2021.

“Arguing for the Superiority of Women in the 17th Century”, keynote address, Australasian Society for Early Modern Philosophy, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, November 25-7, 2019.

"Marie de Gournay" at the New Narratives in Philosophy Graduate Student Symposium, Philosophy Department, Columbia University, NY, September 22, 2018.

"The Conceptualization of Masculine Power as Unjust: Tyranny in 17th C Venice," keynote address at the conferenceBridging the Gender Gap through Time, Faculty of Law, King's College, London, February 22-23, 2018.

“Agency and Material Causation: Bartolomeo Goggio and Lodovico Domenichi on the Female in Aristotle’sGeneration of Animals,” at the conferenceEuropean and Venetian Renaissance, University of Padua, Italy, December 12-15, 2017.

"Doubt and Scepticism in Renaissance Pro-Woman Arguments," at the conferenceWomen and Early Modern Philosophy & Science, Università del Piemonte Orientale, Vercelli (Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici) Italy, May 11-12, 2017.

"The Reception of Aristotle in Lucrezia Marinella'sLa nobiltà et l'eccellenza delle donne co'diffetti et mancamenti de gli uomini(Venice, 1601)," Thursday Seminar, Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Florence, Italy, May 4, 2017.

"L’égalité des sexes: toujours la même, toujours différente," paper presented as part of Nuit de Philosophie, UNESCO, Paris, November 18, 2016.

"Aspects of Aristotle in du Châtelet's Dissertation sur la nature et la propogation du feu," at the conferenceExploring the Philosophy of Émilie du Châtelet, Center for Science and Society, Columbia University, New York, NY, June 1-3, 2016.

"Lucrezia Marinella on Tyrannical Rule," at the conferenceWomen Philosophers on Autonomy, Yeditepe University, Istanbul, Turkey, May 5-6, 2016.

Courses: 

Courses 2023-2024

Fall term:

  • PHIL 242 Introduction to Feminist Theory
  • PHIL 197 FYS: Right and Wrong, Good and Bad

Winter term:

  • PHIL 642 Seminar in Feminist Philosophy

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