Rowan Bell is a PhD candidate in philosophy at Syracuse University, where they serve as President of the Philosophy Graduate Student Organization. They work on feminist theory, metaethics, and trans philosophy, with a focus on the nature of gender norms and normativity.
What are you most proud of in your professional life?
My teaching. Hands down. I love research, and I’m very proud of my accomplishments in that arena. However, I think teaching is the most important part of being a philosopher. This is especially true if you work on something that is relevant and pressing. I think philosophy has unique potential to help people understand tangled social issues like systemic oppression; but that isn’t much good if that knowledge only gets passed around to other academics. I teach a class on Philosophy of Feminism, and I think the most important thing I can do is to help my students gain the tools they need to understand and dismantle oppressive power structures.
Once, I had a student tell me that she appreciated how I would talk to my students, rather than at them. Maybe that comment is the thing I’m most proud of.
If you could wake up tomorrow with a new talent, what would you most like it to be?
I want to be good at singing and dancing. There’s a lot of performative talent in my family, but most of it seems to have missed me. I’d like to have a side gig of performing in musical community theater, but right now nobody would want that.
Mainly, I’d like to be a sleeper hit at karaoke.
If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know?
There’s so much! When I was a kid, I used to imagine that heaven was a place where you could know anything you wanted to know. I thought that I could be happy for eternity if I could just keep learning new facts that are unknowable to us now.
This is a pretty nerdy answer, but I want to know whether any of my philosophical views on controversial topics are correct. Is constructivism the right metaethical theory? Is physicalism true? What about the views I defend in my research; are they correct? I mean, of course I think they’re correct, but are they really?
I want to know things about the existing universe that are knowable but not to me; whether aliens exist and what they’re like, what the dinosaurs looked like, what it’s like to be a bat.
I want to know what the future is like for humanity. I want to see what it’s like in 500 or 1000 years, assuming there still is humanity. However, I’d try not to ask it anything about my future. The temptation’s always there, right? On some level I want to know how I die or if I’m happy at 80 or whether I survive the coming class war. But do I really want to know? I don’t think I do. There’s always the chance that it would show you dying horribly, and the anticipation of that makes your life worse. Of course, that would also depend on whether knowing the future makes the future unchangeable. This is a common theme in sci-fi; once you see something, your knowing about it makes it inevitable. If that’s right, then I definitely don’t want to know anything about my future.
Most importantly, though, I want to know what my cat is yelling about all the time. She’s clearly trying to communicate something to me — what is it?!
What do you like to do outside work?
Anything physical. Over time I have traded in a lot of my bad habits for various forms of exercise. My favorite things to do are road biking and rock climbing, but I also like to run, hike, and lift weights. Working out is the fastest way to feel better. Some bad feelings, like sadness and anxiety, seem to go away altogether when you’re sweating and producing endorphins. Others, like anger, can fuel you; an angry workout is really cathartic.
Also, it forces me to be more organized. If I have a lot to do today, but I want to go on a bike ride, I have to plan my day out according to the weather, traffic patterns, and so forth. I like having some structure — especially during a pandemic.
What books have changed your life? In what ways?
The first answer would be The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. I grew up in a small town and I didn’t always fit in, so I spent a lot of time reading. The scope of Tolkien’s work is so grand that it was easy to get swept away. I read them so much that I broke the spines on my paperbacks. The main message of those books is that humility is the most valuable thing, and the desire for power and control is the beginning of evil. I think reading Tolkien when I was 9 or 10 has had a huge impact on my value system.
More recently, I read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. That book shocked me out of my safe racial comfort zone. I knew systemic anti-Black racism was still a problem in the US, but White ignorance is real, and I wasn’t nearly educated enough or invested enough in being an anti-racist or fighting for Black lives. Reading that book made me realize that I had to be better.
What’s your favorite quote?
“You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time.” – Stephen Colbert
What advice do you wish someone had given you?
At age 10: It gets better.
At age 15: Practice being honest with yourself. It’s important but really hard.
At age 20: You don’t have to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.
At age 25: Sounding confident is not the same as feeling confident, and neither one is the same as knowing what you are talking about. Trust yourself more and other people’s opinions less.
At age 30: You can finally afford it, so go to therapy!
This section of the APA Blog is designed to get to know our fellow philosophers a little better. We’re including profiles of APA members that spotlight what captures their interest not only inside the office, but also outside of it. We’d love for you to be a part of it, so please contact us via the interview nomination form here to nominate yourself or a friend.
Dr. Sabrina D. MisirHiralall is an editor at the Blog of the APA who currently teaches philosophy, religion, and education courses solely online for Montclair State University, Three Rivers Community College, and St. John’s University.
