This book promotes the research of present-day women working in ancient and medieval philosophy, with more than 60 women having contributed in some way to the volume in a fruitful collaboration. It contains 22 papers organized into ten distinct parts spanning the sixth century BCE to the fifteenth century CE. Each part has the same structure: it features, first, a paper which sets up the discussion, and then, one or two responses that open new perspectives and engage in further reflections. (...) Our authors’ contributions address pivotal moments and players in the history of philosophy: women philosophers in antiquity, Cleobulina of Rhodes, Plato, Lucretius, Bardaisan of Edessa, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Plotinus, Porphyry, Peter Abelard, Robert Kilwardby, William Ockham, John Buridan, and Isotta Nogarola. The result is a thought-provoking collection of papers that will be of interest to historians of philosophy from all horizons. Far from being an isolated effort, this book is a contribution to the ever-growing number of initiatives which endeavour to showcase the work of women in philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss in some detail my experience teaching women philosophers in the context of a survey course in ancient Greek philosophy at a small liberal arts college. My aim is to share the peculiar difficulties one may encounter when teaching this topic in a lower-level undergraduate course, difficulties stemming from a multiplicity of methodological hurdles that do not arise when teaching women philosophers in other periods, such as the modern era. In the first section, I briefly review (...) some of what we know about ancient Greek women philosophers, which is not only very little but frustratingly uncertain and highly debated. I devote the second section to some of the scholarly debates surrounding these philosophers’ doctrines, the details of their biographies, and their very existence. The third section is about the corresponding pedagogical challenges, and the fourth and final section describes the strategies I implemented to face those challenges. (shrink)

A discussion of the status of work on the history of women in philosophy and an introduction to the special issue of HYPATIA on the history of women in philosophy.