Outsiders Within: Reflections on Being a Low-Income and/or First-Generation Philosopher

Many philosophers have highlighted the lack of diversity amongst professional philosophers, and there are several active initiatives aimed at encouraging greater diversity, a great portion of which are aimed at supporting diverse undergraduates students on their route to graduate study. One dimension of diversity that often gets overlooked in these efforts—and which overlaps and intersects with other axes of oppression in important ways—is working-class, low-income, and first-generation status.  This session aims to provide voice to the experiences of philosophers who come from poverty, identify as low-income, or are a first-generation university student.

How do philosophers who are the first in their families to attend university learn to navigate the academic lifestyle? Does impostor syndrome ever go away, or at least get better? How do low-income and first-generation philosophers deal with the sense of double-alienation, both in academic spaces and when they return to their families or first homes? How does class intersect with other underrepresented identities to further marginalize certain philosophers in the field? Have class and socioeconomic status been adequately theorized by philosophers?   Are low-income and/or first-generation students encouraged to pursue philosophy (by their families? Mentors? Professors?) and adequately supported if they decide to do so? What unique challenges arise for graduate students from low income and/or first-generation backgrounds? 

This session seeks to explore some of these questions and others, and to provide a space for discussion and community building among those philosophers who have experienced socioeconomic disadvantage along their route to graduate study and/or professional philosophy. 

For more information about this event please contact: Arianna Falbo ([email protected]) and Heather Stewart ([email protected]) 

For more information about the Graduate Student Council of the APA please visit our webpage: https://www.apaonline.org/group/gsc

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