Dean’s Lecture in Humanistic Inquiry: Kate Manne on Sensitivity and Survival

The Inaugural Dean’s Lecture in Humanistic Inquiry

Thursday, April 30
4 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Royce Hall Room 314

Presented by the UCLA College Division of Humanities

The Dean’s Lecture in Humanistic Inquiry is a biennial lecture dedicated to exploring cross-cutting topics and ideas in humanistic research and examining how humanistic inquiry connects to the most pressing questions of the day.

About our inaugural speaker

Kate Manne is a professor at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University. She specializes in moral, social and feminist philosophy, and has written three books: DOWN GIRL: The Logic of Misogyny (Oxford University Press, 2018), ENTITLED: How Male Privilege Hurts Women (Crown, 2020) and UNSHRINKING: How to Face Fatphobia (Crown, 2024). In addition to her academic work, she regularly writes opinion pieces and essays for a wider audience, including in outlets such as The New York Times, The Cut, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Nation and Time. She writes a Substack newsletter, More to Hate, exploring misogyny, fatphobia and their intersection.

About Professor Manne’s lecture

Sensitivity and Survival
Accusations of oversensitivity are nowadays very common. Are they typically warranted? Is there in fact a scourge of snowflakes?

In this lecture, Kate Manne will distinguish three things that are commonly meant by “oversensitivity”: over-identification of instances, over-extension of the relevant concepts and over-reactions to the relevant harms or forms of injustice, such as sexism, misogyny and racism. Her talk will draw on two rich humanistic traditions: feminist epistemology and non-ideal theory.

While acknowledging that oversensitivity of all three kinds can and does occur, Manne will highlight and explore the comparatively under-emphasized converse dangers: the under-identification of instances, the under-extension of concepts, and under-reactions or the undermining of warranted reactions, respectively. In view of this, she concludes that what is called oversensitivity is often simply sensitivity: a normatively valuable and justified way of reacting to harms and injustices that often go under the radar in society as we know it.

Event cosponsors

Thank you to our cosponsors: UCLA Department of Philosophy, UCLA Department of Gender Studies, UCLA Center for the Study of Women | Streisand Center, and UCLA Program in Critical Experimental Theory