Chloe Taylor, PhD (Philosophy), MA (Art History), BA (Art History), BA (Philosophy)

Contact

Professor, Faculty of Arts - Womens & Gender Studies

Email: chloe3@ualberta.ca

Overview

About

I have a BA in Philosophy from the University of Victoria (1998), and a BA and MA in Art History from McGill University (2000 and 2002), and a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Toronto (2006), after which I was a Tomlinson and SSHRC postdoctoral fellow in Philosophy at McGill University (2006-2008). I have written three monographs on the philosophy of Michel Foucault in relation to confession, sexuality, feminism, queer theory, sex crimes and prison abolition: The Culture of Confession from Augustine to Foucault (2009), The Routledge Guidebook to Foucault's The History of Sexuality (2016), and Foucault, Feminism, and Sex Crimes: An Anti-Carceral Analysis (2018). My current work is in the areas of multispecies justice, Anthropocene studies, and critical animal studies, and I have edited or co-edited a series of books in these areas, including Colonialism and Animality: Anti-Colonial Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies (with Kelly Struthers Montford, Routledge 2020), Disability and Animality: Crip Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies (with Stephanie Jenkins and Kelly Struthers Montford, Routledge 2020), Building Abolition: Decarceration and Social Justice (with Kelly Struthers Montford, Routledge 2021), and The Routledge Companion to Gender and Animals (2024). In 2014 I was elected to the College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2019 I founded the North American Association for Critical Animal Studies (NAACAS) which meets biennially.

Research

A recently completed SSHRC Insight Grant, "Intersections of Animality," resulted in a series of edited and co-edited volumes exploring the ways that colonialism, race, disability, madness, gender and sexuality interact with, rely on, or interlock with speciesism and constructs of animality.

My current SSHRC Insight Grant, "Anthropocene ABCs: An Epochalyptic Primer," is a collaboration with environmental humanities scholars Jessie Beier and University of Alberta graduate students Danika Jorgensen Skakum and Dylan Hall. Together, we are co-authoring an Anthropocene abecedary, with entries such as A is for Anthropocene, B is for A Billion Black Anthropocenes, and C is for Capitalocene, and illustrations by Jessie Beier. This project is under contract with Fordham University Press with an expected publication in 2026.

In collaboration with criminologist Kelly Struthers Montford, I am also completing a short volume, Prison Animal Programs: Abolitionist Perspectives.

Research that is in the planning stages includes a project exploring defenses of misanthropy in contemporary moral and political philosophy on environmental and animal ethics grounds, and a study of the racial and sexual politics of conservation biology.

Teaching

In the past I have taught courses for Philosophy departments (at the University of Toronto, McGill University, the University of North Florida, and the University of Alberta) ranging from Philosophy 101: Values and Society (an introduction to Moral and Political Philosophy) and Philosophy 102: Knowledge and Reality (an introduction to Metaphysics and Epistemology) to Contemporary Ethical Issues, Applied Ethics, Feminist Philosophy, Philosophy of Sexuality, Humans and Animals, Philosophy of Food, and graduate seminars on continental philosophers such as Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, and Judith Butler.

In the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Alberta I have taught courses such as Contemporary Feminist Theory, Feminism and Food, Environmental Feminisms and Social Justice, Feminism and Sexualities, Critical Disability Studies, Prison Abolitionism, Anthropocene Feminisms, and Feminism at the End of the World, as well as the GSJ 501: Social Justice Workshop for the Gender and Social Justice M.A. program.

In the upcoming (2025 - 2026) year I am on sabbatical in the Fall and teaching two undergraduate courses, WGS 244: Critical Disability Studies and WGS 290: Feminism and Animals, in the Winter.