Description:

The Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs hosts running colloquia for graduate students to present their research to globally engaged faculty and fellow students. In our second graduate colloquium of the year, Comparative Literary Studies and Philosophy PhD candidate Micol Bez will present on “The Case for Epistemic Reparations for Sexual Violence.” Q&A and discussion will follow; light refreshments will be served.

In this talk, Micol aims to develop a framework for epistemic reparations — i.e. “intentionally reparative actions in the form of epistemic goods given to those epistemically wronged by parties who acknowledge these wrongs and whose reparative actions are intended to redress them” (Lackey, 2022, 70) — for sexual violence, hoping to (i) expand the limited scholarship on reparations for sexual violence; (ii) address the distinctly epistemic harms engendered by sexual violations and the possibility of repairing them; and (iii) argue that the framework of epistemic reparations (ER), and the notion of “imperfect epistemic duties” in particular, can promote “transformative reparations” (Gready 2022) that go beyond strictly individual redress, and that can address some of the systemic aspects of sexual violence. 

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