Emily Colwell, Contributing Writer                                  

Kristie Dotson, professor of philosophy at Michigan State University

Kristie Dotson, associate professor of philosophy at Michigan State University, will visit The College of Wooster to present “Here Be Dragons: Thinking Black Feminist Decolonial Thought,” on Wednesday, March 4, at 7:30 p.m. in Lean Lecture Hall in Wishart Hall.

Black feminism and epistemology are two of Dotson’s main areas of study. In a video interview on Michigan State’s website, she described epistemology as the study of knowledge: studying what we mean when we say we know something.

“I study the production of ignorance, so I study those things that stop us from knowing,” Dotson said.

“I think about this in terms of oppression, understanding the ways in which oppression manifests. The major source of oppression that I investigate is what’s called epistemic oppression, which is that unknowability problem around an entire population,” she said. “So for me, my work is to really shine a light on the structures of social knowing that actually obscure the need for aid for black women and girls in the United States. And even if we’re not going to talk about it in terms of the need for aid, it obscures the fact that there’s any plight at all to be addressed.”

This talk is the concluding presentation of the three-part Colloquium on Global and Postcolonial Ethics. Lee McBride, chair of the philosophy department, spoke highly of Dotson.

“Kristie Dotson is a scholar that deserves attention,” he said. “Her work focuses on the explicit and implicit (epistemological) silencing of subaltern groups, women of color feminisms and intersectionality, and the paradigms and confines of professional philosophy. Dotson’s work is analytical, thought-provoking and extremely compelling.”

Dotson received her Bachelor of Arts in African American Studies and English Literature from Coe College, her Master of Arts in Literature from the University of Illinois at Chicago and her Master of Arts and doctorate degree in philosophy from the University of Memphis.