Laurie J. Shrage (born December 4, 1953) is an American political and moral philosopher whose analysis of the agendas for social change advanced by gender and sexual dissidents has been influential.
Education and career
Shrage has taught at
Howard University
Howard University is a private, historically black, federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C., United States. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" and accredited by the Mid ...
,
Lake Forest College
Lake Forest College is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Lake Forest, Illinois. Founded in 1857 as Lind University by a group of Presbyterian ministers, the college has been coeducatio ...
,
Scripps College
Scripps College is a private liberal arts women's college in Claremont, California. It was founded as a member of the Claremont Colleges in 1926, a year after the consortium's formation. Journalist and philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps pr ...
,
California State Polytechnic University, and now teaches at
Florida International University
Florida International University (FIU) is a public research university with its main campus in Westchester, Florida, United States. Founded in 1965 by the Florida Legislature, the school opened to students in 1972. FIU is the third-largest univ ...
.
She earned her B.A. (1975) from the
University of California, Davis
The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University ...
and her M.A. (1979) and Ph.D (1983) from the
University of California, San Diego, Philosophy.
[
In her first book, ''Moral Dilemmas of Feminism: Prostitution, Adultery, and Abortion'' (1994), Shrage argued for empirically informed philosophical analyses of moral problems. She argued against the possibility of offering a universal social ethics and, as an alternative, she developed an interpretive approach to moral problems, based in part on the work of Charles Taylor.]
Her second book, ''Abortion and Social Responsibility: Depolarizing the Debate'' (2003), argues for reconsidering the American Law Institute
The American Law Institute (ALI) is a research and advocacy group of judges, lawyers, and legal scholars limited to 3,000 elected members and established in 1923 to promote the clarification and simplification of United States common law and i ...
's model abortion law developed prior to Roe v. Wade
''Roe v. Wade'', 410 U.S. 113 (1973),. was a List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protected the right to have an ...
. Shrage explores abortion policies around the world, the history of reform and repeal movements in the U.S., moral and legal debates, and ethnographies of pro-life and pro-choice groups, and then recommends restricting elective abortions to roughly the end of the first trimester, in order to balance competing rights and values.
Shrage was a Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellow at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University (2011–12) and a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center (1998–99).[ She was a co-editor of the journal Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy from 1998-2003.][ She has served as the American Philosophical Association's Ombuds for Non-Discrimination, 2008–11, and as the Program Chair for the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division meeting in 2001. She was Director of Women's Studies at FIU (2008–11).][
]
Research areas
Shrage's work evaluates public policies on markets in sexual services and expressive materials, reproductive health care, legal gender identity, and marriage.[ She is more interested in the active application of philosophical theory to inform public debate - in what she terms "empirically informed philosophy" - than she is in focusing her work on a particular school of philosophical thought.][ She suggests that moral and political philosophers should pay more attention to historical and scientific accounts of political and moral problems than they currently do.][
]
Selected bibliography
Books
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Journal articles
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References
External links
Laurie Shrage's Academia.edu listing
Laurie Shrage's articles on ''The New York Times'' Opinionator blog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shrage, Laurie
1953 births
Living people
American women philosophers
American political philosophers
20th-century American philosophers
21st-century American philosophers
American academics of women's studies
Florida International University faculty
University of California, Davis alumni
University of California, San Diego alumni
20th-century American women
21st-century American women