O’Connor Published by New York Times and Psychology Today Posted on September 9th, 2013 by

Peg O'Connor

Peg O’Connor

Gustavus Adolphus College Professor of Philosophy and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Peg O’Connor recently had separate pieces published online by The New York Times and Psychology Today.

O’Connor’s Sept. 6 piece on The New York Times was titled “The Double Bind” and was part of a five part series on women in philosophy. The series ran on The Stone, which is a regular Times forum that features the writing of contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.

In the piece, O’Connor writes: My heart simultaneously soars and sinks when a female undergraduate tells me that she is considering pursuing a Ph.D. in philosophy. First, I think, “You will be a great philosopher and make some important contributions to philosophy and someday I will get to be your colleague. Go for it!” My thoughts careening on a parallel track are, “Graduate school in philosophy can be treacherous and lecherous. And then if you make it through, the job market is its own special nightmare. Run away!” In that moment I feel trapped in the classic double bind of damned if I do and damned if I don’t, which many feminists would identify as the hallmark of structural sexism. I resent that trap. Bitterly.

You can read the entire article on The New York Times website.

O’Connor also has an ongoing blog on Psychology Today that is called “Philosophy Stirred, Not Shaken”. The blog currently features two pieces with more to come. The first two pieces are titled “Why Philosophy and Addiction” and “Lighting Up an Old Argument About Smoking”.

In the piece regarding smoking, O’Connor writes: For decades, those who smoked were regarded as having poor moral character or suffering from weakness of will/lack of self-control. Even with all the studies showing the addictive qualities of nicotine enhanced with additives engineered by the tobacco industry and the tobacco settlement of 1998, there is still more than a whiff of moral disapprobation if not outright condemnation directed at smokers. The whiff has become a gigantic puff with a recent study by behavioral scientists Eyal Ert and Eldad Yechiam.

You can read the entire article on the Psychology Today website.

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Media Contact: Director of Media Relations and Internal Communication Luc Hatlestad
luch@gustavus.edu
507-933-7510

 

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