GENDER & SEXUALITY STUDIES PROGRAM

José Medina is Walter Dill Scott Professor of Philosophy with affiliations in the Department of African American Studies and the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. His work focuses on the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality and his primary fields of expertise are critical race theory, gender/queer theory, Black and Latinx feminisms, communication theory, applied philosophy of language, social epistemology, and political philosophy. His books include The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations (Oxford University Press; recipient of the 2013 North-American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award), and Speaking from Elsewhere (SUNY Press, 2006). His most recent co-edited volume is Theories of the Flesh: Latinx and Latin-American Feminisms, Transformation, and Resistance (2020). His current projects focus on how social perception and the social imagination contribute to the formation of vulnerabilities to different kinds of violence and oppression. These projects also explore the social movements and kinds of activism (including what he terms “epistemic activism”) that can be mobilized to resist racist and heterosexist violence and oppression. Representative examples of his recent scholarship can be found in the following publications:

Selected Recent Articles

• “Protest and the Politics of Confrontation,” Nomos 62 (2020), 122-160.
• “Complex communication and Decolonial Struggles: The Forging of Deep Coalitions through Emotional Echoing and Resistant Imaginations,” Critical Philosophy of Race 8 (1-2) (2020): 212-236.
• “The Other Within: Agency and Resistance under Conditions of Exclusion,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 46 (1) (2020): 18-24.
• “Racial Violence, Emotional Friction, and Epistemic Activism,” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 24 (4) (2019): 22-37.
• “Resisting Racist Propaganda: Distorted Visual Communication and Epistemic Activism,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 56 (2018): 50-75.

Books

Theories of the Flesh: Latin-American and US Latina Feminist Theories (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Co-edited with Andrea Pitts and Mariana Ortega

The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations (Oxford University Press, 2013)