Professor
Ph.D., Princeton University, 1983
Appointed at UMass, 1995

Member of the UMass Advisory Board for the Center for Renaissance Studies
Member of the UMass Selection Committee for the Interdisciplinary Seminar in the Humanities and Arts (ISHA)
Advisor for the UMass Women's Studies Graduate Certificate Program

Other Teaching Appointments:

Amherst College (1999)
Harvard University (1991)
The Graduate Center, CUNY (1985-95)
Queens College, CUNY (1983-95)
Notre Dame University (1980-83)

Areas of Interest:

History of early modern philosophy, including 17th- and 18th-century women philosophers; history of feminist philosophical thought; philosophy and literature

Current Research:

I am currently completing several papers, including “Mary Astell on the Causation of Sensation,” and “Descartes and Princess Elisabeth on Freedom of the Will,” which are related to a book on which I am working. The book provides detailed studies of the philosophical methodologies of Gournay, Schurman, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Astell, Conway, Cavendish, Masham, Lambert, and Sor Juana, as well as analyses of these women’s contributions to the main metaphysical debates of the period. I also continue to work on a long-range translation project of works by women philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

 Selected Publications:

Early Modern Philosophy: Mind, Matter, and Metaphysics , ed. Christia Mercer and Eileen O'Neill (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). A collection of essays by Michael Ayers, Jonathan Bennett, Janet Broughton, Vere Chappell, Edwin Curley, Lisa Downing, Michael Friedman, Daniel Garber, Douglas Jesseph, Louis Loeb, Beatrice Longuenesse, Robert Sleigh, Catherine Wilson, and Roger Woolhouse.

"Justifying the Inclusion of Women in Our Histories of Philosophy: The Case of Marie de Gournay," in Guide to Feminist Philosophy, ed. Linda Alcoff and Eva Kittay (Oxford/Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, forthcoming).

"Women Philosophers and the History of Philosophy,” Australian Journal of French Studies XL, 3 (2003): 257-74. A special issue of the journal devoted to the work of Michèle Le Doeuff, ed. Margaret Sankey and Jean Fornasiero.

"Contributiones de Margaret Wilson a la historia de la filosofía moderna,[Margaret Wilson’s Contributions to the History of Philosophy]" in Homenaje a Margaret Wilson, ed. Laura Benítez and José A. Robles (Mexico: Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas de la UNAM, 2002), pp. 19-32.

Margaret Cavendish, Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, ed. Eileen O’Neill (Cambridge/NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

"Women Cartesians, 'Feminine Philosophy,' and Historical Exclusion," in Feminist Interpretations of Descartes, ed. Susan Bordo (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), pp. 232-257.

"Mary Astell"; "Margaret Lucas Cavendish"; "Elisabeth of Bohemia" and

"Anna Maria van Schurman," in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London/ New York: Routledge, 1998), vol. 1, pp. 527-30; vol. 2, pp. 260-64; vol. 3, pp. 267-69; and vol. 8, pp. 556-59.

Biographical and bibliographical sketches of thirteen women philosophers, in the Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, eds. Michael Ayers and Daniel Garber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), vol. II, pp. 1399; 1410-11; 1412-13; 1415; 1423-24; 1431-32; 1444-45; 1449; 1460-61; 1461-62; 1462-63; 1464; 1467.

"Disappearing Ink: Early Modern Women Philosophers and Their Fate in History," in Philosophy in a Feminist Voice, ed. Janet Kourany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 17-62.

"Marie de Gournay" and "Women in the History of Philosophy," in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Supplement (New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1996), pp. 223-25; and pp. 588-92.

"Influxus Physicus," in Causation in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), pp. 27-55.

"Mind-Body Interaction and Metaphysical Consistency: A Defense of Descartes," Journal of the History of Philosophy, XXV, 2 (April, 1987): 227-45. Reprinted in Essays on Early Modern Philosophers: René Descartes, vol. I, Part II, ed. Vere Chappell (New York: Garland Press, 1992), pp. 211-29 .