Imagination: Social & Revolutionary w/ Dr. Michele Moody-Adams

In this episode, we explore the role of imagination in social movements and the ongoing fight for justice. We investigate both how the imagination helps us think of how the world might be better and identify the problems of the moment. Our guest scholar in this episode is Dr. Michele Moody-Adams, Joseph Straus Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory at Columbia University.

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Michele Moody-Adams is Joseph Straus Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory at Columbia University, where she served as Dean of Columbia College and Vice President for Undergraduate Education from 2009-2011. Before Columbia, she taught at Cornell University, where she was Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Director of the Program on Ethics and Public Life. She has also taught at Wellesley College, the University of Rochester, and Indiana University, where she served as Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education. 

She has published on equality and social justice, moral psychology and the virtues, moral objectivity and moral relativism, and the philosophical implications of gender and race.  She is the author of Making Space for Justice: Social Movements, Collective Imagination and Political Hope, published in 2022.  She is also the author of a widely cited book on moral relativism, Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture and Philosophy, and a co-author on the multi-author work Against Happiness (May 2023).  Her current work also includes articles on academic freedom, equal educational opportunity, democratic disagreement, and what constitutes an epistemically and morally defensible understanding of history. A special focus of her work on democracy is the connection between democracy and the civic art and architecture of remembrance.

---While her full catalog of articles and books is far too long to list here, the publications below provide a useful introduction to her scholarship addressing the topic of imagination and justice:

Moody-Adams, M. (2022). Making Space for Justice: Social Movements, Collective Imagination, and Political Hope. Columbia University Press.

Moody-Adams, M. (2015). The enigma of forgiveness. The Journal of Value Inquiry, 49, 161-180.

Moody-Adams, M. M. (2018). Democratic conflict and the political morality of compromise. Nomos, 59, 186-219.

Moody-Adams, M. M. (2017). Moral progress and human agency. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 20, 153-168.

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The Social Science for Public Good Podcast is a project of the ⁠Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance⁠ and ⁠VT Publishing⁠ intended to make social science theories accessible and available to individuals and organizations seeking to promote social change.

Music: purple-planet.com