Janet Kourany
University of Notre Dame  
Spring 2004
Philosophy of Science After Feminism

Janet Kourany was born and raised in New York City (traces of a New York accent remain), and earned her B.S. and Ph.D. degrees at Columbia University. She taught at Rutgers University and the University of Utah before joining her husband (Jim Sterba, a Pitt alumnus) at the University of Notre Dame, where she is a Faculty Fellow of the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values and an Associate Professor of Philosophy. Her current research focuses on science and social values and feminist philosophy. While at the Center she worked on two projects: to replace the ideal of value-free science with one that is as epistemically and politically powerful as the old ideal aspired to be; and finding ways to shift the unit of analysis within philosophy of science from (an historicized, socialized) science-in-a-vacuum to science-in-society, so as to make philosophy of science more socially relevant. Her most cherished experience at the Center: listening to philosophy of science talks in a cathedral while eating bagels and cream cheese—a real treat for a New York-bred philosopher of science from Notre Dame.