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Philosopher
Associate Professor, University of Iowa
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I am a feminist philosopher and a social and political philosopher, and an expert in care
theory and liberal political theory. My current work evaluates how our existing and unjust
caregiving arrangements obstruct the path of autonomy for women of color. In two books
published books, Freedom to Care: Liberalism, Dependency Care, and Culture (Routledge
2020) and Caring for Liberalism (Routledge 2021), two books in progress, Being at Home:
Living Autonomously in an Unjust World (Oxford University Press) and Reproductive Justice for
a Caring Society (Agenda Press), a digital humanities video game titled Surviving the
“Indifferents” 1 , more than fifteen articles and book chapters, and over fifty lectures, I advance a
systematic theory of the just distribution of care, one that responds to marginalized social
positions. This theory of just care asserts full claimant status for the category of people implicitly
assigned to be caregivers. In the United States, this category coincides with the social group
“woman of color”. Consequently, when a woman of color seeks to make formal entitlements
effective, she elicits resistance, thereby revealing the systemic and interpersonal constraints of
the social form.
Trained as a feminist philosopher in analytic programs, my work in political philosophy,
feminist ethics, and care theory is oriented by “nonideological ideal theory”, which aims to
improve the concepts we use in political philosophy when facts of oppression serve as the point
of departure. My concept the arrow of care map (2017) enables tracking the caregiving
individuals provide and receive from one another, bracketing the cultural assumptions that often
operate to legitimate status quo arrangements. This concept then requires analyzing the
patterns embedded in caregiving arrangements as systems in the society. My first monograph,
Freedom to Care, advances a care-inclusive liberal political theory. Freedom to Care has been
the subject of two journal symposia in international philosophy journals, The Critical Review of
Social and Political Philosophy (2021), and Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review (2023),
where the abstract has been translated into French. For my established work on care, I was
selected as a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the 2022 NEH Summer Institute: Philosophical
Perspectives on Giving and Receiving Care, a speaker in the Social Human Rights and
Relationship Goods Seminar in Spring 2022, and featured in the internationally renowned book
series, Live from Prairie Lights (2021).
In my current monograph, Being at Home: Liberal Autonomy in an Unjust World, under
contract at Oxford University Press, I build upon the “critical liberalism” of Freedom to Care to
develop “intersectional liberalism”. Intersectional liberalism insists on the value of non-
interference for women of color in a sovereign domain of body, family, and dwelling. I argue that
women of color can, and do, live autonomously. However, to be at ease in the world while living
as full claimants requires a set of skills and practices that I develop within the lineage of women
of color political thought and feminist autonomy theory.
1 https://www.lib.uiowa.edu/studio/project/arrow-of-care/
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Website managed by Lulu Newhart-Roarick: [email protected]
Google Scholar
The University of Iowa
Academia
ORCiD
Or reach out to me at [email protected]
Website managed by Lulu Newhart-Roarick: [email protected]