What can the ideas of an eighteenth-century feminist thinker contribute to contemporary debates around gender and care? How should law and social policy support caregivers and create a better balance between care, work and family life? Is Catholic feminism a contradiction in terms - and if not, what's distinctive about the perspective that it offers on care?

These are some of the questions we discuss in this episode, with Erika Bachiochi. Erika is an American legal scholar who works at the intersection of constitutional law, political theory, women’s history, and Catholic social teaching. She is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center - and Professor of Practice and Director of the Mercy Otis Warren Initiative at the School of Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, where she also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the online journal, Fairer Disputations. A 2018 visiting scholar at Harvard Law School, Erika is a Senior Fellow at the Abigail Adams Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she founded the Wollstonecraft Project.

Erika received a B.A. from Middlebury College in 1996, an M.A. in theology as a Bradley Fellow from the Institute for the Study of Politics and Religion at Boston College in 1999, and a J.D. from Boston University School of Law in 2002. The mother of seven children, Erika was a co-founder of St. Benedict’s, a Catholic classical school in Massachusetts where she served as President of the Board from 2013-2015. She has published numerous articles in legal and political journals and in publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic.

Erika's book, The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, which offers a revisionist history of the early women’s rights movement, including a radical reassessment of the work of Mary Wollstonecraft, was published in 2021.

We discuss the following topics in this episode:

Erika's journey to becoming a legal scholar (03:02)

Erika's philosophical, political and spiritual journey (08:33)

The rationale for Erika's book The Rights of Women and its focus on Mary Wollstonecraft (17:28)

The balance between rights and duties and the emphasis on virtues in Wollstonecraft's thinking (25:56)

The lost legacy of first-wave feminism (37:30)

Mary Ann Glendon's work on care, families, and social policy (43:35)

Erika's critique of feminist care ethics, and her understanding of the distinctive role of fathers in care (49:38)

The role of the state in supporting caregiving within families (59:34)

A distinctive Catholic feminist position on care (01:03:37)

Erika's plans for a sequel to The Rights of Women (01:07:33)

Some of the writers, thinkers and activists mentioned in the episode:

Aristotle

Cicero

What can a protest movement organised by Muslim grandmothers in India teach us about the role of care in political action? In what sense should we understand care as performance and everyday caring activities as artful practices? And how might interpersonal care nurture a wider caring imagination and foster a politics of care?

These are some of the questions we discuss in this episode, with Alisha Ibkar. Originally from Kaliachak in West Bengal, India, Alisha has a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh, and a Master of Arts degree, also in English Literature, from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. She was a Commonwealth Scholar at the University of Warwick, where she completed a Master’s degree in applied theatre, with her dissertation focusing on the study of ethics and the aesthetics of care in the context of political activism. Alisha is currently a School of Arts, Languages and Cultures doctoral fellow in Theatre and Performance at the Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama in the University of Manchester. Since 2016 she has also held the post of Assistant Professor of English Literature and Language at Aligarh Muslim University. In Manchester, Alisha is associated with The Care Lab, which is partnered with the AHRC-funded Care Aesthetics Research Exploration (CARE) Project, led by Professor James Thompson, who was my guest in Episode 11 of the podcast.

Alisha’s academic research places the burgeoning critical theorisations around the ethics and aesthetics of care in dialogue with socio-political protest movements, a context within which the relevance of caretaking is yet to be studied. Her research engages with women-led social movements in India to examine the extent to which care played a principal role, with her understanding of care emerging from Muslim women’s cultural and domestic practices of care. Through her work, Alisha seeks a decolonial reorientation, not only within care theory and scholarship, but also within political performance.

Alisha has published articles about her research in The Sociological Review and in Theatre Journal, and she has contributed a chapter entitled ‘On the art of Khidmat; political afterlives of Muslim women's everyday practices of care’ to a forthcoming collection on Care Aesthetics and the Arts, edited by Kate Maguire-Rosier, Réka Polonyi andJames Thompson.,

We discuss the following topics in this episode:

Alisha's early life in West Bengal and how it shaped her thinking about care and community (03:26)

The importance of education in Alisha's upbringing and her choice of English Literature as a focus for her studies (07:43)

The roots of Alisha's interest in theatre and performance (11:53)

Alisha's critical engagement with feminist writers on care (14:11)

The protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act in India (18:15)

The Shaheen Bagh protest and Alisha's relationship to it (21:52)

The

What ethical challenges are presented by caring for people with dementia? How should we understand - and respect - the personhood of those experiencing cognitive decline? And what can virtue ethics and care ethics contribute to the development of an alternative ethical model for dementia care?

These are some of the questions we explore in this episode, in conversation with Vince Mitchell. Vince is a Lecturer in Health and Social Care, specialising in mental health, at The Open University (UK). He is a qualified mental health nurse with experience of nursing people in a wide variety of clinical settings. Having graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Health Care Practice and a Master of Arts in Applied Ethics from the University of York, Vince undertook doctoral research at the University of Surrey, where he was awarded a PhD in 2016 for his thesis examining ethical frameworks for dementia care. Since then, he has published a number of articles and book chapters on the ethics of mental health nursing and on ethical practice in dementia care.

We discuss the following topics in this episode:

Vince's journey into nursing (02:15)

Working as a mental health nurse (04:50)

Bridging the worlds of philosophy and care practice (07:00)

The challenges that dementia presents for care providers (10:40)

The inadequacy of existing ethical models (13:15)

Some of the key ethical issues in dementia care (15:35)

Personhood and autonomy (19:08)

The personal identity challenge to advance directives (23:50)

Thomas Kitwood's model of person-centred care (30:10)

Julian Hughes' Situated Embodied Agent approach (34:13)

Personal dignity and human flourishing (36:19)

Introducing virtue ethics (39:55)

Vulnerability, interdependence and trust (43:05)

Care ethics, justice and the socio-political context of dementia care (47:55)

An alternative ethical model for dementia care (51:10)

Implementing the model in practice (55:35)

Vince's plans for future work in care ethics (58:50)

A selection of Vince's publications

'Ethics and mental health nursing' (2017)

'Ethical practice in dementia care' (2019)

Some of the writers and thinkers mentioned in the episode

Rebecca Dresser

Ronald Dworkin

Derek Parfit

Thomas Kitwood

Julian Hughes

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Martin Buber

Martha Nussbaum

Emmanel Levinas