Marie Draz, Associate Professor

Office: AL 429 | Email: [email protected]

Dr. Marie Draz’s research focuses on the social, political, and ethical implications of how gender is lived and understood today. Trained in both philosophy and the interdisciplinary field of gender studies, Prof. Draz pursues this broad area of scholarly interest through specializations in feminist philosophy, critical theory (especially transgender, decolonial, and queer theory), and continental philosophy. Drawing on the analytical tools of these fields, she asks how and why meanings of gender have shifted over time, paying particular attention to how gender intertwines with other salient categories of difference such as race and sexuality to enable or constrain one’s possibilities in the world. Several of her published articles have taken up the question of how the state and institutional administration of sex/gender categories (e.g. gender markers on identity documents) is inflected by the racial and colonial history of contemporary concepts of gender. Her research further highlights the challenges posed to longstanding scholarly and popular views of gender by the interdisciplinary field of transgender studies. Across her work on these topics, she also frequently engages philosophical questions related to time and temporality. 

At SDSU, Prof. Draz regularly teaches Introduction to Philosophy: Ethics, Women and Philosophy, Queer Theory, and 20th Century Continental Philosophy, as well as graduate seminars on feminist philosophy. She is committed to working with members of groups currently underrepresented in philosophy and has served as a teaching assistant for the Philosophy in a Key Summer Institute Program and a mentor for The Job Candidate Mentoring Program in Philosophy. Prof. Draz is currently serves as the Director and Program Advisor for SDSU’s LGBT Studies Program.