Arina Pismenny, “Emotional Injustice: Emotion Policing” 

Emotion policing is a form of emotional injustice that occurs when efforts are made to distort the nature of the emotions that an individual or a social group is disposed to have, or the ways those emotions are expressed. It is often an attempt to establish or maintain an oppressive emotion norm, i.e., when specific people are expected to have specific emotions in specific circumstances. Emotion policing can take several forms, including Emotion Stereotyping, Emotion Display Suppression, and Emotion Hegemonizing. The talk will analyze these forms of emotional injustice, delineating their application to marginalized groups, as well as sketch possible paths to resisting these forms of oppression.

Laura Silva (Université Laval), "Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Emotion: Methodological Promiscuity and How to Satisfy It" 

What is a feminist philosophy of emotion? In this paper I offer one way of answering this question. I argue that the feminist philosopher of emotion is distinguished above all in their methodological commitments, specifically the commitment to what I call methodological promiscuity. My main claim is that methodological promiscuity is a key desideratum of a feminist philosophy of emotion. I will provide a working definition of methodological promiscuity as an openness to the methods and findings of various (not previously specified) disciplines. I will argue that this desideratum can be derived from three widespread tenets of broader feminist philosophy: 1. Strong Objectivity & Standpoint Epistemology. 2. Social construction over essentialism. 3. Reflexivity. I will use the case of anger to illustrate how specific disciplines and bodies of literature can be identified as relevant to one’s project, and the sorts of theories that result when the desideratum is satisfied.

Ronald de Sousa, "Emotional Gender Essentialism"

The debate between essentialist and anti-essentialist factions has been important in the history of feminism (with Janice Raymond on one side and gender abolitionists on the other). It has also figured in the philosophy of emotions (e.g., Ekman and Griffiths vs constructionists like Mesquita and Barrett). I explore the ways essentialism has been understood in both debates, and how it bears on emotional gender stereotypes still prevalent in Western culture. What is the relation between the observed fact that emotion ascriptions are affected by those stereotypes, and the aspirations of anti-essentialist feminism? By what means, and to what extent, are we able to overcome those gendered stereotypes on an individual basis, when they continue to be present in our social group? I will focus on the dialectic between social reality and the individual attitudes that both stem from that reality and endeavour to resist and reform it.