Dr. Camisha Russell to Give Guest Lecture at The Debate Intensive

This year, The Debate Intensive has invited Dr. Camisha Russell, an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon, to give a guest lecture at our program. She is a leading scholar in the critical philosophy of race, bioethics, African-American philosophy, and feminist theory, having been awarded the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, a highly prestigious award for Ph.D. candidates addressing questions of ethical and religious values, in 2013. In 2014, she was also named an Exemplary Diversity Scholar by the National Center for Institutional Diversity, an award given to candidates who have made outstanding contributions in diversity-related research, practice, and teaching.

Dr. Russell was a member of the Committee on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, facilitating the representation of African-American, Latino/a, Asian-American, and Native American philosophers, from 2014 to 2017, and in 2016, she was on the Program Committee of philoSOPHIA, a conference on continental feminist scholarship. She has been an invited panelist at several philosophy conferences, including the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, the American Philosophical Association Pacific Meeting, the Summer Institute in American Philosophy at the University of Oregon, and the Philosophy of Liberation Conference.

Dr. Russell’s lecture at this year’s Debate Intensive will cover introductory material in the relationship between bioethics and the critical philosophy of race. Her book on the topic, titled The Assisted Reproduction of Race, was published in January of this year, and was reviewed by Angela Davis as an “impressive examination of assisted reproductive technologies” that offers “crucial insights into why race and racism have proven to be so intransigent.” We hope you’ll join us this summer at the University of Oregon to hear from her!