Eva Feder Kittay
Professor Emeritus
Distinguished Professor
Ph.D. City University of New York, 1978
B.A. Sarah Lawrence College, 1967
Stony Brook University
Tel: (631) 632-7570
Areas of Specialization
Feminist philosophy, feminist ethics, social and political theory, metaphor, disability studies
Additional Interests
Philosophy of language, normative ethics, social thought
Eva Feder Kittay is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University/SUNY; a Senior Fellow of the Stony Brook Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics, and an Affiliate of the Women's Studies Program. She is member of the American Association of Arts and Sciences and a former APA President, Eastern Division. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEH Fellowship, and the APA and Phi Beta Kappa Lebowitz Prize. She has also been recognized for her work in Feminist Philosophy, being named Women Philosopher of the Year (2003-2004) by the Society for Women in Philosophy and having chaired the Committee on the Status of Women (1997-2001). She was the chair and a founder of Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institute, a summer program for undergraduates who are from groups underrepresented in philosophy.
Her book Learning From My Daughter: the Value and Care of Disabled Minds, Oxford University Press 2019 was Winner of the Prose award in Philosophy (2019). And it along with Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency (Routledge, 1999) have received international attention and have been translated into Korean, Japanese and Italian. Her other books includes Cognitive Disability and the Challenge to Moral Philosophy (Blackwell, 2010), Blackwell Guide to Feminist Philosophy (Blackwell, 2007), Theoretical Perspectives on Dependency and Women (Rowan and Littlefield, 2003), Metaphor: Its Cognitive Force and Linguistic Structure (Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1987, 1985), an edited collection Frames, Fields and Contrasts (Erlbaum, 1992), and Women and Moral Theory (Rowan and Littlefield, 1985). Her forthcoming book (in progress) is Who’s Truly Human: Moral Status and Personhood (Oxford University Press).
She has also edited many journal issues in feminist philosophy and the philosophy of disability and published over 100 articles and book chapters.
Her philosophy courses both graduate and undergraduate, feminist philosophy, feminist ethics, social and political theory, metaphor, and philosophy of disability. She has advised and directed numerous dissertations in these areas.
Selected Journal and Book Chapters
- ”How Can We Be Equals?” Basic Equality: its Meaning, Explanation edited by Giacomo Floris and Nikolas Kirby, Oxford University Press (2025)
- “We Have Seen the Mutants and They are Us” S10 Hastings Center Report March-April 2020
- “How Not to Argue for Selective Reproductive Procedures.” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal Vol. 27, No. 2, 185–216, June 2017
- “Centering Justice on Dependency and Recovering Freedom” Hypatia, Vol 30 No. 1, 2015.
- “The Ethics of Care, Dependence and Disability" Ratio Juris 24:1 (March 2011).
- The Moral Harm of Migrant Carework: Realizing a Global Right to Care” Philosophical Topics, vol. 37, no. 1, Spring 2010, pp. 53-73.
- At the Margins of Moral Personhood, Ethics 116 (October 2005), pp. 100-131. [PDF]
- Dependency, Difference and the Global Ethic of Longterm Care (with Bruce Jennings and Angela A. Wasunna), The Journal of Political Philosophy, 13:4 (2005), 443-69. [PDF]
- Equality, Dignity and Disability, in Mary Ann Lyons and Fionnuala Waldron (eds.) (2005) Perspectives on Equality: The Second Seamus Heaney Lectures. Dublin: The Liffey Press, pp. 95-122. [PDF]
- Encyclopedia of Philosophy Article: Metaphor [PDF]
- Response to Peter Singer [PDF]
- A Feminist Public Ethic of Care Meets the New Communitarian Family Policy [PDF]
- Case Study: Shouldering the Burden of Care, Hastings Center Report, September-October 2005 [PDF]
- “When Care is Just and Justice is Caring Public Culture, 13(3): 557-579, Special issue (2001)
- “On the Expressivity and Ethics of Selective Abortion for Disability: Conversations with My Son” in Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights edited by Erik Parens and Adrienne Asch. Georgetown University Press / Washington, D.C. pp. 165-195 (2000).