Professor Stella Sandford

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Stella Sandford
About
Teaching and learning
Research

About

I am Professor of Modern European Philosophy in the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy. I have recently completed a period as a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow (2018-2021) awarded for the project 'Sex Difference in Natural History'. The main outcome of this research is my forthcoming book, Vegetal Sex: Philosophy of Plants, to be publised by Bloomsbury in autumn 2022: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/vegetal-sex-9781350274921/.

I have published widely in the Philosophy of Sex and Gender, including my books Plato and Sex (2010), How to Read Beauvoir (2006), and The Metaphysics of Love: Gender and Transcendece in Levinas (2010). I am co-editor, with Mandy Merck, of Further Adventures of the Dialectice of Sex: Critical Essays on Shulamith Firestone (2010) and, with Peter Osborne, Philosophies of Race and Ethnicity (2002). I have also published in critical philosophy of race, especially in relation to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and on philosophy and psychoanalysis. I teach on all of the postgraduate courses in philosophy and supervise MA and MPhilStud dissertations, as well as  PhD supervision. I also teach on the BA English Literature course and the Humanities Foundation course. I welcome enquiries from potential research students in plant philosophy, philosophy of natural history, critical philosophy of race, philosophies of sex and gender and philosophy and psychoanalysis especially, but supervise in many areas in Modern European Philosophy. In both my teaching and my research I adopt a strongly interdisciplinary approach and encourage the same in students. I am currently working on the logic of systems of classification in Lévy-Strauss and Aristotle and their relation to transcendental philosophy and on a philosophy book for young people.

I am a member of the Executive Committee of the British Philosophical Association. Outside of academic life I am the Chair of the Board Governors of a local primary school.

Academic responsibilities

Professor of Modern European Philosophy

Qualifications

  • BA Philosophy and History of Ideas
  • MA Continental Philosophy
  • PhD in Philosophy

Teaching and learning

I teach on all the postgraduate courses in Philosophy and on some undergraduate and foundation courses in Humanities. In 2022–23 my postgraduate teaching duties will include the modules Kant and His Legacy (Kant's first Critique and his philosophy of race), Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, and Modes of Subjection.

I am the Course Leader for the MPhilStud (Master of Philosophical Studies) in Philosophy.

Postgraduate courses taught

Research

Current projects:

Vegetal Sex: Philosophy of Plants, Bloomsbury, 2022: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/vegetal-sex-9781350274921/

In recent years philosophers, botanists and mycologists have drawn our attention to the complexities of plant and fungal life. They have taught us why plants are better thought as colonies than individuals and how animal-centred ways of thinking fail to capture what is peculiar and perhaps admirable in vegetal life. They have taught us to appreciate the temporality and intricacy of vegetal existence and suggested how relations between plants might provide us with non-individualistic models of coexistence. But they have not, as yet, taught us much – if anything – about vegetal sex.

This book introduces the reader to the exciting new field of plant philosophy and takes it in a new direction to ask: what does it mean to say that plants are sexed? Do ‘male' and ‘female' really mean the same when applied to humans, trees, fungi and algae? Are the zoological categories of sex really adequate for understanding the – uniquely ‘dibiontic' – life cycle of plants?

Vegetal Sex addresses these questions through a detailed analysis of major moments in the history of plant sex, from Aristotle to the modern day. Tracing the transformations in the analogy between animals and plants that characterise this history, it shows how the analogy still functions in contemporary botany and asks: what would a non-zoocentric, plant-centred philosophy of vegetal sex be like?

By showing how philosophy and botany have been and still are inextricably entwined Vegetal Sex allows us to think vegetal being and, perhaps, to recognise the vegetal in us all.

This research was funded by the Leverhulme Trust (Major Research Fellowship, 2018–2021).

https://soundcloud.com/user-811300711/sets/stella-sandford

Areas of specialism

  • Philosophy of sex and gender
  • Plant philosophy
  • Critical philosophy of race
  • Immanuel Kant
  • Philosophy and Psychoanalysis

Scholarly affiliations

  • Fellow of the Linnean Society
  • British Philosophical Association
  • Society for European Philosophy
  • British Society for the History of Philosophy

Research student supervision

Main supervision

Other supervision

Publications

Jump to: Article | Book | Book Section | Conference or Workshop Item
Number of items: 72.

Article

Sandford, Stella [Reviewer] (2023) Book Review of 'Uncommon sense : Jeremy Bentham, queer aesthetics, and the politics of taste' by Carrie D. Shanafelt. Eighteenth-Century Studies, 56(3), pp. 499-500. ISSN (print) 0013-2586

Sandford, Stella (2019) From Aristotle to contemporary biological classification : what kind of category is "Sex"? Redescriptions, 22(1), pp. 4-17. ISSN (online) 2308-0914

Sandford, Stella (2019) A thousand tiny 'sexes' or none? Sluice Magazine, Au-Win, pp. 36-41. ISSN (print) 2398-8398

Sandford, Stella (2018) Kant, race, and natural history. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 44(9), pp. 950-977. ISSN (print) 0191-4537

Sandford, Stella (2018) Race and sex in Western philosophy : another answer to the question 'What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?'. Critical Philosophy of Race, 6(2), pp. 180-197. ISSN (print) 2165-8684

Sandford, Stella (2017) Freud, Bion and Kant : epistemology and anthropology in The interpretation of dreams. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 98(1), pp. 91-110. ISSN (print) 0020-7578

Sandford, Stella (2016) The dream is a fragment : Freud, transdisciplinarity and early German Romanticism. Radical Philosophy(198), pp. 25-34. ISSN (print) 0300-211X

Sandford, Stella (2015) Contradiction of terms : feminist theory, philosophy and transdisciplinarity. Theory, Culture & Society, 32(5-6), pp. 159-182. ISSN (print) 0263-2764

Sandford, Stella (2015) The Pregnant Male as Myth and Metaphor in Classical Greek Literature. Classical Review, 65(1), pp. 18-20. ISSN (print) 0009-840X

Agnew, Eadaoin, Alliez, Eric, Auerbach, Paul, Blackburn, Robert, Botting, Fred, Brady, Mary, Caygill, Howard, Chadwick, Howard, Chanter, Tina, Choat, Simon, Chu, Jonathan, Cinpoes, Radu, Coultas, Valerie, Dines, Martin, Dixon, Paul, Favretto, Ilaria, Finn, Peter, Giaxoglou, Korina, Goldsmith, Carlie, Hallward, Peter, Hawkins, Sue, Haywood, Peter, Higginbottom, Andrew, Ichijo, Atsuko, Isaac, Marina, Jensen, Meg, Kayyali, Reem, Kettyle, Ann, Lambrou, Marina, Latimer, Amanda, Linton, Marisa, Lipsedge, Karen, Malabou, Catherine, O Maoilearca, John, McQuillan, Martin, Micklethwaite, Paul, Morgan Wortham, Simon, O'Brien, Catherine, Osborne, Peter, Pinnock, Winsome, Piper, Jason, Ponto, Maria, Raphael, Sam, Reid, Trish, Roberts, Mike, Rogers, David, Sandford, Stella, Searby, Michael, Siddiki, Jalal Uddin, Smart, Jackie, Spencer, Philip, Stockhammer, Engelbert, Stuart, John, Suess, Eleanor, Swift, Allan, Upstone, Sara, Vallee-Tourangeau, Frederic, Wells, Julian and Wilson, Scott (2014) Education should be a right for all. The Guardian,

Sandford, Stella (2013) Spontaneous generation: the fantasy of the birth of concepts in Kant’s 'Critique of pure reason'. Radical philosophy(179), pp. 15-26. ISSN (print) 0300-211X

Sandford, Stella (2011) What is maternal labour? Studies in the Maternal, 3(2), ISSN (online) 1759-0434

Sandford, Stella (2011) Sex: a transdisciplinary concept. From structure to rhizome: transdisciplinarity in French thought (1). Radical philosophy(165), pp. 23-30. ISSN (print) 0300-211X

Sandford, Stella (2008) 'All human beings are pregnant': the bisexual imaginary in Plato's Symposium. Radical Philosophy(150), pp. 24-35. ISSN (print) 0300-211X

Sandford, Stella (2007) Sexmat, revisited. Radical philosophy(145), pp. 28-35. ISSN (print) 0300-211X

Sandford, Stella (2006) Book Review of: Simone de Beauvoir: philosophe, by Michel Kail. Radical Philosophy(140), pp. 51-53. ISSN (print) 0300-211X

Sandford, Stella (2006) Sexually ambiguous: Eros and sexuality in Plato and Freud. Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, 11(3), pp. 43-59. ISSN (print) 0969-725X

Sandford, Stella (2005) Thinking sex politically: rethinking 'Sex' in Plato's Republic. South Atlantic Quarterly, 104(4), pp. 613-630. ISSN (print) 0038-2876

Sandford, Stella (2005) Book Review of: Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Margaret A Simons with Marybeth Timmerman and Mary Beth Mader. Radical Philosophy(133), pp. 52-55. ISSN (print) 0300-211X

Sandford, Stella (2004) Book Review of: Abstract sex: philosophy, bio-technology and the mutations of desire by Luciana Parisi, and The sex appeal of the inorganic, by Mario Perniola. Radical Philosophy(127), pp. 35-40. ISSN (print) 0300-211X

Sandford, Stella (2003) Going back: Heidegger, East Asia and "The West". Radical Philosophy(120), pp. 11-22. ISSN (print) 0300-211X

Sandford, Stella (2003) Book Review of: Beyond sex and gender by Wendy Cealey Harrison and John Hood-Williams. Radical Philosophy(118), pp. 36-38. ISSN (print) 0300-211X

Sandford, Stella (2002) Book Review of: Truth and singularity: taking Foucault into phenomenology by Rudi Visker. Radical Philosophy(113), pp. 43-45. ISSN (print) 0300-211X

Sandford, Stella (2002) Book Review of: An introduction to feminist episteologies by Alessandra Tanesini, and Illusions of paradox: a feminist epistemology naturalized by Richmond Campbell. Mind, 111(442), pp. 491-499. ISSN (print) 0026-4423

Sandford, Stella (2001) Feminism against 'the feminine'. Radical Philosophy(105), pp. 6-14. ISSN (print) 0300-211X

Sandford, Stella (2000) Book Review of: The Edinburgh encyclopedia of continental philosophy by Simon Glendinning (ed.). Radical Philosophy(102), pp. 42-45. ISSN (print) 0300-211X

Sandford, Stella (1999) Contingent ontologies: sex, gender and 'woman' in Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler. Radical Philosophy, 97, pp. 18-29. ISSN (print) 0300-211X

Sandford, Stella (1999) 50 years of 'The second sex'. The Philosopher's Magazine, 7, pp. 43-45. ISSN (print) 1354-814X

Sandford, Stella (1999) Book Review of: African-American philosophers: 17 conversations by George Yancy (ed.). Radical philosophy(95), pp. 55-57. ISSN (print) 0300-211X

Sandford, Stella (1999) Book Review of: Liberation and purity: race, new religious movements and the ethics of postmodernity by Chetan Bhatt. Radical Philosophy(95), pp. 57-58. ISSN (print) 0300-211X

Sandford, Stella (1999) Plato and Levinas: the same and the other. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 30(2), pp. 131-150. ISSN (print) 0007-1773

Sandford, Stella (1999) Levinas in the realm of the senses: transcendence and intelligibility. Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, 4(3), pp. 61-73. ISSN (print) 0969-725X

Sandford, Stella (1998) She loves me, she loves me not... Book Review of: 'Love between equals: a philosophical study of love and sexual relationships' by John Wilson. Times Higher Education Supplement, ISSN (print) 0049-3929

Sandford, Stella (1998) Book Review of: Levinas: an introduction by Colin Davis, and Basic philosophical writings by Emmanuel Levinas. Radical Philosophy(87), pp. 49-50. ISSN (print) 0300-211X

Sandford, Stella (1997) Book Review of: In spite of Plato: a feminist rewriting of ancient philosophy by Adriana Cavarero. Radical philosophy(81), pp. 50-51. ISSN (print) 0300-211X

Sandford, Stella (1996) Book Review of: 'Emmanuel Levinas: the genealogy of ethics' by John Llewelyn. Radical philosophy, 80, ISSN (print) 0300-211X

Book

Sandford, Stella (2022) Vegetal sex : philosophy of plants. London, U.K. : Bloomsbury Academic. 256p. ISBN 9781350274921 (In Press)

Merck, Mandy and Sandford, Stella, eds. (2010) Further Adventures of the Dialectic of Sex: Critical Essays on Shulamith Firestone. Basingstoke, U.K. : Palgrave Macmillan. 304p. (Breaking Feminist Waves) ISBN 9780230100299

Sandford, Stella (2010) Plato and Sex. Cambridge, U.K. : Polity Press. 224p. ISBN 9780745626406

Sandford, Stella (2006) How to read Beauvoir. London, U.K. : Granta. 128p. (How to read) ISBN 1862078742

Sandford, Stella and Osborne, Peter, eds. (2002) Philosophies of race and ethnicity. London, U.K. : Continuum. 220p. ISBN 0826459943

Sandford, Stella (2000) The metaphysics of love: gender and transcendence in Levinas. London, U.K. : Athlone Press. 179p. ISBN 0485115662

Book Section

Sandford, Stella (2023) Immanuel Kant. In: Choat, Simon and Rangotra, Manjeet, (eds.) Rethinking political thinkers. Oxford, U.K. : Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198847397 (In Press)

Sandford, Stella (2023) The taxonomy of “race” and the anthropology of sex : conceptual determination and social presumption in Kant. In: Lettow, Susannne and Pulkkinen, Tuija, (eds.) The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Feminist Philosophy. Basingstoke, U.K. : Palgrave Macmillan. (Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism) ISBN 9783031131226 (In Press)

Sandford, Stella (2021) The 'thought-work' ; or, the exuberance of thinking in Kant and Freud. In: Vassilopoulou, Panayiota and Whistler, Daniel, (eds.) Thought : a philosophical history. Abingdon, U.K. : Routledge. pp. 219-235. ISBN 9780367000103

Sandford, Stella (2020) 'Envy accompanied with antipathy' : Bentham on the psychology of sexual 'ressentiment'. In: Julius, Anthony , Quinn, Malcolm and Schofield, Philip, (eds.) Bentham and the Arts. London, U.K. : UCL Press. pp. 71-87. ISBN 9781787357389

Sandford, Stella (2019) From 'Geschlechtstrieb' to 'Sexualtrieb' : the originality of Freud's conception of sexuality. In: Gipps, Richard and Lacewing, Michael, (eds.) Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. Oxford, U.K. : Oxford University Press. pp. 83-106. (Oxford Handbooks) ISBN 9780198789703

Sandford, Stella (2018) Genos, sex, gender and genre. In: Malmkjaer, Kirsten , Serban, Adriana and Louwagie, Fransiska, (eds.) Key cultural texts in translation. Amsterdam, The Netherlands : John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 9-24. (Benjamins translation library, (140)) ISBN 9789027200402

Sandford, Stella (2017) Beauvoir's transdisciplinarity: from philosophy to gender theory. In: Hengehold, Laura and Bauer, Nancy, (eds.) A companion to Simone de Beauvoir. Hoboken, U.S. : Wiley Blackwell. pp. 15-27. (Blackwell companions to philosophy, (65)) ISBN 9781118796023

Sandford, Stella (2017) Kant's legacy. In: Morgan, Anthony, (ed.) The Kantian catastrophe? Conversations on finitude and the limits of philosophy. Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, U.K. : Bigg Books. pp. 65-80. ISBN 9781999841300

Sandford, Stella (2016) Feminist phenomenology, pregnancy, and transcendental subjectivity. In: Bornemark, Jonna and Smith, Nicholas, (eds.) Phenomenology of pregnancy. Huddinge, Sweden : Sodertorn University. pp. 51-70. (Sodertorn Philosophical Studies, (18)) ISSN (print) 1651-6834 ISBN 9789187843389

Sandford, Stella (2014) "Sex" and "sexual difference". In: Cassin, Barbara , Apter, Emily , Lezra, Jacques and Wood, Michael, (eds.) Dictionary of untranslatables: a philosophical lexicon. Princeton : Princeton University Press. pp. 972-973. ISBN 9780691138701

Sandford, Stella (2013) The incomplete Locke: Balibar, Locke and the philosophy of the subject. In: Balibar, Etienne, (ed.) Identity and difference: John Locke and the invention of consciousness. London, U.K. : Verso. pp. xi-xlvi. ISBN 9781781681343

Sandford, Stella (2010) The dialectic of The Dialectic of Sex. In: Merck, Mandy and Sandford, Stella, (eds.) Further Adventures of the Dialectic of Sex. Basingstoke, U.K. : Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 235-253. (Breaking Feminist Waves) ISBN 9780230100299

Sandford, Stella (2007) The origins and ends of 'sex'. In: Kerslake, Christian and Brassier, Ray, (eds.) Origins and ends of the mind: philosophical essays on psychoanalysis. Leuven, Belgium : Leuven University Press. pp. 163-183. ISBN 9789058676177

Sandford, Stella (2005) Writing as a man: Levinas and the phenomenology of Eros. In: Katz, Claire and Trout, Lara, (eds.) Emmanuel Levinas: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers. London, U.K. : Routledge. pp. 369-387. IV ISBN 0415310547

Sandford, Stella and Osborne, Peter (2002) Introduction: philosophies of race and ethnicity. In: Sandford, Stella and Osborne, Peter, (eds.) Philosophies of Race and Ethnicity. London, U.K. : Continuum. pp. 1-9. ISBN 0826459943

Sandford, Stella (2002) Levinas, feminism and the feminine. In: Critchley, Simon and Bernasconi, Robert, (eds.) The Cambridge companion to Levinas. Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press. pp. 139-160. ISBN 0521662060

Sandford, Stella (2001) Masculine mothers? Maternity in Levinas and Plato. In: Chanter, Tina, (ed.) Feminist Interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas. University Park, Pennsylvania : Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 180-202. ISBN 0271021136

Sandford, Stella (1996) Feminist philosophy and the fate of Hegel's Antigone. In: Griffiths, M. and Whitford, M., (eds.) Women Review Philosophy: New Writing by Women in Philosophy. Nottingham : Nottingham University Press.

Conference or Workshop Item

Sandford, Stella (2010) Sex. In: From structure to rhizome: transdisciplinarity in French thought, 1945-the present: histories, concepts, constructions; 16 - 17 Apr 2010, London, U.K.. (Unpublished)

Sandford, Stella (2009) The politics of sex. In: Situated selves: phenomenology, law and aesthetics; 30 - 31 Oct 2009, Liverpool, U.K.. (Unpublished)

Sandford, Stella (2009) Of Gods and men: the Timaeus and the universal ontology of sex. In: Philosophy seminars; 19 Mar 2009, Hatfield, U.K.. (Unpublished)

Sandford, Stella (2008) The origin of sex. In: Literary and critical theory seminar; 03 Dec 2008, London, U.K.. (Unpublished)

Sandford, Stella (2008) Of Gods and men: the natural beginning of sex? In: Fourth Annual Joint Conference of the Society for European Philosophy and the Forum for European Philosophy; 29 - 31 Aug 2008, Dublin, Ireland. (Unpublished)

Sandford, Stella (2008) Beauvoir: the transformation of philosophy and philosophical transfiguration. In: The legacies of Simone de Beauvoir: 16th Simone de Beauvoir Society Conference; 13 - 15 Jun 2008, Newcastle, U.K.. (Unpublished)

Sandford, Stella (2008) Diotima-Plato: the bi sexual imagery. In: Embodiment and Identity; 22 - 23 May 2008, Hull, U.K.. (Unpublished)

Sandford, Stella and Hutchings, Kimberly (2008) The legacy of Simone de Beauvoir. In: Dialogues; 14 Feb 2008, London, U.K.. (Unpublished)

Sandford, Stella (2008) Sex and genos in Plato's Republic. In: 2008 Political Thought Conference (UK); 03 - 05 Jan 2008, Oxford, U.K.. (Unpublished)

Sandford, Stella (2007) Sexual materialism: Firestone revisited. In: Materials and materialisms; 12 May 2007, London, U.K.. (Unpublished)

Sandford, Stella (2004) Sex and genos in Plato's Symposium. In: The pyschoanalytical ontology of the human; 20 - 21 Jan 2004, London, U.K.. (Unpublished)

Sandford, Stella (2002) Philosophies of race and ethnicity. In: Interdisciplinary seminar series; 30 Oct 2002, Hong Kong, China. (Unpublished)

This list was generated on Wed Sep 13 06:42:25 2023 BST.