Joyce Mullan

My research interests have been in Ancient and Enlightenment Ethical and Political Theory with an emphasis on Feminist, Comparative and non-violent approaches. I am also interested in Environmental Ethics, Animal Rights, and Ecofeminism.

Recent Research:
1st: Gender and Ancient Political Theory
"Their (men’s) socially designed biographies define workplace expectations and successful career patterns, their perspectives and concerns define quality in scholarship, their experiences and obsessions define merit, their objectification of life defines art, their military service defines citizenship, their presence defines family, their inability to get along with each other - their wars and rulerships - defines history…"
(Catherine MacKinnon, Difference and Dominance: On Sex Discrimination, 1984, 36).

I feel like I have noticed a curious thing about women who write about women in Ancient Greek Political Philosophy. Namely, they seem to either vindicate ancient male philosophers’ views of women, particularly the part about women not being competent to act in the public sphere without disaster following or they explain it away. In few cases do they defend their behavior as legitimate or at least perfectly comprehensible given the standards and values of those ancient martial cultures, much less heroic. There are no Joan of Arc’s here. It is also surprising, because in the literature written by men, some of them, including Sophocle’s Antigone, Euripides’ Hecuba, Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, they are presented and understood to be heroines by the audiences.

2nd: Social Inequality: Passive and Epistemic Injustice in Simone Weil, (Hannah Arendt), and Judith Shklar
Judith Shklar made important contributions to the study of politics in her work on Injustice and her analysis of why so many political thinkers who wrote articulately enough about justice, failed to take into account Injustice. Simone Weil, based on her own experiences with the ‘Wretched of the Earth’ in her factory work and attempted solidarity with the Spanish rebels of the Civil War was also at odds with many of her contemporaries' focus on rights and revolution. Both Weil and Shklar, though well educated at the most elite institutions often identified more with those who were the sufferers of history rather than the perpetrators of it. They form an ironic contrast with Hannah Arendt, who wrote very eloquently of the dehumanization of Totalitarianism, the importance of thinking for yourself, and the glory of participatory democracy, yet had a horror of the idea of victims or victimhood, of pity or compassion, and also defended social inequality and discrimination. In this paper, I hope to put these three seminal thinkers into respectful and critical dialogue with each other. For I think they have important things to say about those who have been misrepresented, discredited, misheard, left out, silenced and often gravely harmed.

I have taught introductory and advanced courses in Philosophy, Political Science, Intellectual History, and Humanities at NJIT, Adelphi, Rutgers, and St. John’s University in the New York/New Jersey area, as well as at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of Chicago’s Graham School.

I have taught the History of Political Theory, History of Ethics, Contemporary Moral Issues, Environmental Ethics, Philosophy of Law, Existentialism, Women and Philosophy, Science Fiction and Philosophy, Non-Violence and Philosophy, and Violence, Terrorism and War among other philosophy and humanities classes. I have also taught Introduction to Politics, American Government, The European Union, America and the World in Political Science Departments.

Faculty ​Co-ordinator of the Stevens Law Society

Prelaw Advisor, 2014-2025
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Dean's list of outstanding students 3 years at my Alma Mater (SF state).

PUBLICATIONS:
Words and Deeds in the fateful loss of democracy in the Peloponnesian War, (with thanks to Hannah Arendt) currently under review at Rowman & Littlefield
“The Double Meaning of Strife in Hesiod,” Politeia: Essays in Honor of Anthony Preus. SUNY Press (forthcoming) (Festschrift in honor of Anthony Preus, Director of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy)
“To Whom do we owe the Truth in Fanon and Gandhi,” Review Journal of Philosophy and Social Science, (Volume XXXIV, No.1, 2) 2009
“Humanity and Humanitas in Rousseau and Kant,” Conference Proceedings, Misery and Dignity of Humanity, Seneca Institute, University of Madrid, July 2006
Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds, by Teresa Morgan (Ancient Philosophy) Book Review, Winter, 2000


CONFERENCES (partial list):
“Gender and Ancient Political Theory,” SAGP, Fall 2024
Social Inequality: Passive and Epistemic Injustice in Simone Weil, (Hannah Arendt), and Judith Shklar NPSA, Fall 2023, SPSA, Winter 2024
Xenophon’s Glaucon and Plato’s Alcibiades: a strange coincidence? Fall 2023 SAGP
“Frank Speech: From the Melian Dialogue to Socrates’ Defense.”
Fall 2022, SAGP & NPSA
“The Political Meaning of Work in Plato and Xenophon’s Socrates,” Fall 2021, SAGP & NPSA
“Changing Ideals of Arȇte in portrayals of Odysseus during the Peloponnesian War,” (updated), Conference on the Heritage of Western Greece, Summer, 2021
“Hesiod’s double tale of strife in his Works and Days,” Conference on the Heritage of Western Greece, NPSA, SAGP, 2019
“Thucydides’ Letter to the Future,” NPSA, Fall 2018
“Thinking what you are doing: Cleon’s argument in the Mytilenian debate,” SAGP & NPSA, Fall 2017
“The Women Speak up: Speaking truth to Power in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, SAGP & NPSA, Fall 2016, MPSA, Spring 2018
“Ruling and being ruled, Haemon’s Double Bind,” SAGP & NPSA, Fall 2015
“What the Athenians said about the Spartans in the Melian Dialogue,” SAGP & NPSA, Fall 2014
“Changing Ideals of Arȇte in portrayals of Odysseus during the Peloponnesian War,” SAGP & NPSA, Fall 2013
“Simone Weil on Human Rights,” NPSA, Fall 2012 and Felician Conference on Philosophy, Spring 2013
“Nature and the Natural, a genealogy,” CAL Humanities Forum, Fall 2012
“The Modernity of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Descartes," discussant, NPSA, Fall 2012
“Power and Justice in Euripides’ Hecuba,” NPSA, Fall 2011
“Rousseau and Kant on the ‘Ways of the World’,” NPSA, Fall 2010
“Piety and the Political in Ancient Greece,” SAGP and NPSA, Fall, 2009
“Callicles’ Double Standard and Athenian Foreign Policy,” NPSA, November, 2008
“From Animal Gods to Animal Sacrifice: the place of animals in Ancient Greek Cosmology,” SAGP, October 2008
“To whom do we owe the Truth in Fanon and Gandhi,” APT, October, 2007
“Subjectivity and Subjection in Rousseau,” APSA, September 2007
“The Black Rousseau (Frantz Fanon) and Rousseau,” MPSA, April 2007
“Women and Political Violence,” WPSA, March 2007
“Minding your own business in Thucydides, Socrates, and Plato,” NPSA, Fall 2006
“Meno’s Manliness and traditional Greek Arête,” MPSA, Spring 2006
“The Argument from Expediency in the Mytilinean Debates,” NPSA, Fall 2005
“Womanly Aretai and the Greek Polis,” MPSA, Spring 2005
“Humanity and Humanitas in Rousseau and Kant,” Conference on the ‘Misery and Dignity of Humanity in European Thought’, Autonomous University of Madrid, Seneca Institute, 2004
“Emigration and Patriotism in Rousseau,” MPSA, April 2004
‘Just War Tradition in Hindu, Islamic and Christian Thought’, discussant, MPSA, April 2004
“What Virtue should be taught?” International Civic Education Conference, November 2003
“Perspectives on the History of Political Thought,” Chair, APT, October, 2003
“Facets of Machiavelli,” Discussant, MPSA, Spring 2003
“Thucydides’ ‘Mytilinean Debate’ and Plato’s Gorgias,” SAGP, October, 2000
(APT – Association of Political Theory, MPSA – Midwestern Political Science Association, NPSA – Northeastern Political Science Association, SAGP – Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy, WPSA – Western Political Science Association)

INVITED PAPERS/TALKS
“From the Bride of Frankenstein to Holograms: how the advance of technology has helped and hindered our dreams and phantasms of a significant other,” Conference on Technologies of Frankenstein: 1818-2018, CAL, Stevens Institute of Technology, March 2018.
“Voting Rights: Are they protected by the Constitution?” Constitution Day, Stevens, September 2017
“Water Rights and Climate Change,” follow up to Mini-conference, Spring 2016
“Ecofeminism and Climate Change,” Mini-conference at Stevens in connection with UN Climate Change Conference, December, 2016
“The Painted Ladies of Times Square,” Constitution Day, Stevens Institute of Technology, Fall 2015
“Corporations and the Constitution, Rights & Duties,” Constitution Day, Stevens Institute of Technology, October 2014
“Does Stevens still need Feminism?” Stevens Philosophy Club, November 2014
“From Animal Gods to Animal Sacrifice…,” Adelphi University, Spring 2009
‘Women and Political Violence’, Felician College, Fall 2008

Selected list of courses taught:
Philosophy of Law
Philosophy in Film
Philosophy and Science Fiction
Global and International Ethics
Social and Political Philosophy
Science and Metaphysics
Environmental Ethics
Introduction to Political Theory
Classical Political Theory
Contemporary Political Theory
Modern Political Theory
Violence, Terrorism, and War
Philosophers of Non-Violence
Reflections on Making War
Existentialism and Contemporary Philosophy
Philosophy of Education
Women Philosophers of the Twentieth-Century
Philosophy and Feminism,
American Political Theory
International Politics
Troy and the Trojan War,
Introduction to Politics
Civilizations I & II
Cultures and Values
Making of Modern Thought
America and the World
Ethics and Values in Policy Making
Ethics
Introduction to Philosophy
Great Ideas
Logic
Critical Thinking