Other

• "Quoted at the Pulpit: Male Rhetoric and Female Authority in Fifty Years in General Conference," in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought vol 55, no. 4 (Winter 2022).

This article explores women's position in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints through quantitative and qualitative analysis of quotation practices in the Church's biannual General Conference between 1971-2021. Because quotation is a rhetorical practice that relies on a speaker’s audience finding the quotation’s source authoritative, I argue that frequency of quotation in General Conference is an indication of a source’s perceived authority in the Latter-day Saint community. Women’s representation in Conference quotation practices is extremely low among all groups of speakers. This is the case quantitatively, in terms of actual citation numbers, and qualitatively, as seen in verbal presentation of women as sources and the context in which women are quoted. This data indicates that, despite stated commitments to gender equality, Church leaders perceive women as having little authority. 

Check out this interview, this podcast, or this article to learn more about the project! ​

• "Feminist Ethics of Care as Latter-day Saint Ethics.” in The Restoration of Latter-day Saint Thought: Essays on Mormon Philosophy, Theology, and Scripture, Rosalynde Welch, Joseph Spencer & Nathan B. Oman (eds.). University of Illinois Press, forthcoming. 

This essay argues that the distinctive theological commitments of the Mormon tradition support a model of moral agency and moral obligation that resonates with the commitments of feminist ethics of care. Care ethicists have defended relational accounts of moral agency that focus on the importance of embodiment and situatedness in moral reasoning; Mormon theology presents an embodied, relational God as the moral ideal for human beings. I argue that fully committing to the care ethics framework already implicit in Mormon theology and scripture could support emancipatory approaches to the Church's teachings on gender, sexuality, and global justice. Draft available upon request.

• “‘Weaned from Milk’: Agency and Authority in Francine Bennion’s ‘A Latter-day Saint Theology of Suffering’.’” in Latter-day Eloquence: Two Centuries of Mormon Oratory, Ben Crosby and Isaac Richards (eds.). University of Illinois Press, forthcoming. ​​

• “Latter-day Moral Agency in Theory and Practice,” in Philosophy and the Latter-day Saint Tradition, Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, Taylor-Grey Miller and Katharina Paxman (eds), Routledge, forthcoming. 

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I continue work on these topics as the Theology Feature Editor for the Exponent II magazine, a feminist space for women and gender minorities across the Mormon spectrum.

Some of my most personally meaningful time in grad school was spent as a Graduate Director for Philosophy in an Inclusive Key (PIKSI)–Boston in 2021 and 2022. ​Each summer, PIKSI brings undergraduates from communities underrepresented in philosophy to MIT for a week of workshops, mentoring, and colloquia. By doing philosophy in a supportive, collaborative environment, PIKSI shows marginalized students that there is a place for them in the discipline. It also does concrete work to help them get there, combating the “pipeline problem” through professional development workshops, panels on graduate life and admissions, and long-term mentorship relationships.

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At MIT, I was heavily involved in department life as a graduate student representative and organizer for reading groups, mentorship programs, and more. In 2023, my work was recognized with MIT’s biannual Graduate Women of Excellence award, which honors leadership, service, mentorship, and drive to improve the student experience.

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In 2023, I also took on an organizing role to revive MIT’s Minorities & Philosophy (MAP) chapter. MAP is an international graduate student organization that aims to address structural injustices in academic philosophy. In my year as an organizer, we organized pedagogy workshops, a colloquium, and social events, and created a resource guide for incoming first-year graduate students.