AWARD ANNOUNCEMENT:

Victoria Davion Award for Intersectionality in Environmental Ethics

Chris Cuomo Keynote Presentation at 17th Annual ISEE Meeting

To help build a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive field of environmental ethics, the International Society for Environmental Ethics seeks to highlight intersectional scholarship in environmental philosophy. This includes, but is not limited to, work that examines linkages between environmental philosophy, feminist and gender studies, critical race theory, Indigenous studies, and disability studies. ISEE aims to support research, teaching, and service that extend the scope of environmental ethics to incorporate perspectives and methods that have been historically marginalized or excluded from environmental philosophy as a discipline, and that address questions of epistemic justice, such as the devaluation of certain forms of knowledge within academic environmental philosophy, barriers to and opportunities for developing more inclusive perspectives, and approaches to respectfully collaborating across perspectives and traditions. We seek to honor and advance work that brings different threads of philosophy and environmental thought together.

In support of these aims, we establish the Victoria Davion Award for Intersectionality in Environmental Ethics.

Victoria Davion was raised in New York City, earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1989 and joined the department of Philosophy at the University of Georgia in 1990. She became the first woman to become a full professor in Philosophy at UGA, and the first woman to be appointed department head in 2005, a position she held until her death in 2017. She became widely known for her cutting-edge interdisciplinary work in feminist and environmental ethics, where she made truly transformative contributions, and was a beloved teacher and mentor to many who were inspired by her engaging, accessible, and innovative teaching methods. She presented and published on a breadth of philosophical areas including political philosophy, power and privilege, healthcare, nuclear deterrence, artificial intelligence, abortion, whiteness, and technology. She co-edited The Idea of a Political Liberalism: Essays on Rawls (2000) and was an associate editor of the Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics (2009). A lover of nonhuman animals, music, and travel, as well as a witty, engaging, generous, and astute person, Vicky also made a far-reaching impact as the founder and editor of the journal, Ethics & the Environment , which she first published in 1995 and which continues as a highly influential journal today.

In helping to catalyze and bring forth intersectional understanding within environmental philosophy, her contribution inspires this Award and all those whose accomplishments it recognizes.

ISEE is pleased to announce that Prof. Chris Cuomo is the recipient of the inaugural Victoria Davion Award for Intersectionality in Environmental Ethics. Dr. Cuomo is Professor of Philosophy and Women’s at the University of Georgia, where she is an affiliated faculty with the Institute for African American Studies, the Institute for Native American Studies, the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program, and the Initiative on Climate and Society. Cuomo has made substantial contributions in the areas and intersections of feminist theory, environmental philosophy, philosophy of science, philosophy of race, climate justice, postcolonial thought, Indigenous knowledge, and activism.

In addition to many journal articles and book chapters, Cuomo is the author of Feminism and Ecological Communities: An Ethic of Flourishing (Routledge 1998) and The Philosopher Queen: Feminist Essays on War, Love, and Knowledge (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2002), co-author of the Feminist Philosophy Reader (McGraw Hill 2007), and co-editor of Whiteness: Feminist Philosophical Reflections (Rowman & Littlefield 1999).

On October 16, 2020 Prof. Chris Cuomo will deliver the keynote presentation at the 17th Annual ISEE Conference and will be awarded with the 2020 Victoria Davion Award for Intersectionality in Environmental Ethics.