Rethinking the Secular in Feminist Marriage Debates

The religious right often aligns its patriarchal opposition to same-sex marriage with the defence of religious freedom. In this article, I identify resources for confronting such prejudicial religiosity by surveying two predominant feminist approaches to same-sex marriage that are often assumed to be at odds: discourse ethics and queer critical theory. This comparative analysis opens up to view commitments that may not be fully recognizable from within either feminist framework: commitments to ideals of selfhood, to specific conceptions of justice, and to particular definitions of secularism. I conclude by examining the "postsecular" turn in feminism, suggesting that we can see the same-sex marriage debate not in terms of an impasse between differing feminist approaches, but in terms of shared existential and ethical affinities

On Being Taught

This essay examines the definitions of the key words of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL)—scholarship, teaching, and learning—in order to identify the hopes that animate SoTL research and examine these hopes in light of recent critical thinking about the corporatization of higher education. Arguing that Biesta’s (2013b) distinction between “learning from” and “being taught by” offers an important corrective to the prevailing definitions of SoTL, the essay reflects on the tensions between scholarly teaching, as understood by SoTL, and teaching as a contingent and unpredictable event. Cet essai examine la définition des mots-clés de l’avancement des connaissances en enseignement et en apprentissage (ACEA) – avancement des connaissances, enseignement, apprentissage – afin d’identifier les espoirs qui inspirent la recherche en ACEA et d’examiner ces espoirs à la lumière des pensées critiques récentes qui portent sur la tendance de l’enseignement supérieur à fonctionner comme une entreprise. Cet essai présente l’argument selon lequel la distinction faite par Biesta (2013b) entre « apprendre de quelqu’un » et « être enseigné par quelqu’un » constitue une correction importante aux définitions actuelles de l’ACEA. L’essai propose une réflexion sur les tensions qui existent entre l’enseignement intellectuel, tel que compris par l’ACEA, et l’enseignement en tant qu’événement contingent et imprévisible

Becoming Student: Reflections on the Post-Secular Classroom

What would it mean to bring post-secular accounts of learning together with existentialist philosophy, especially in the context of Existentialism classrooms? This essay explores the convergence of the post-secular with the existential, laying out several pedagogical examples of how students might "become" existentially more engaged as students and as post-secular actors

Trafficking in Cure and Harm: Placebos, Nocebos and the Curative Imaginary

This article tracks the traffic of placebos, nocebos and the effects or meaning-responses that they solicit in order to contribute to wide-ranging critiques of the curative imaginary. Moving through three realms of biomedicine (the clinic, the lab and the market), the article explores key contradictions at play within biomedicine that become more recognizable through attentiveness to placebos and nocebos. In order to make this case, the article forges a conversation between Feminist Science Studies, Disability Studies and a counter-strand in Placebo Studies. What emerges is an understanding of placebos and nocebos that foregrounds the biosocial dynamics and always-entwined relations between cures and harm