This interview is part of a series of conversations I will have with Kathryn Sophia Belle over the coming months. The discussions will consider her academic research in greater depth, the future of the Collegium of Black Women Philosophers (CBWP), the obstacles Black women in philosophy continue to face, and life after academia.
Jasmine Wallace: Given your tremendous success as Associate Professor in Philosophy with appointments in African American Studies and Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State, author of two books, and founder of CBWP, among other achievements, why did you choose to leave academia?
Kathryn Sophia Belle: June 2023 marks the 20th anniversary of me earning my Ph.D. in Philosophy and the 15th anniversary of my arrival at Penn State University. After much reflection and consideration, including trusting and being guided by my intuition, I decided that it was time for me to transition out of academia full-time, effective June 30, 2023.
Throughout my nearly 15 years at this institution, especially the last three years, I took on an exorbitant load of administrative and service commitments. Ironically (and almost inexplicably), the more commitments that I took on, the more narratives circulated suggesting that the opposite is true. Put another way, the more that I did, the more it was suggested that I was not doing enough.
Between 2020-2023 (yes, the pandemic years), I served in at least two to three major administrative roles simultaneously including: Interim Director of Graduate Studies for Philosophy, Interim Director of the Africana Research Center, Director of the Africana Research Center, Interim Head of African American Studies, and Peer Coach for the Midcareer Faculty Advancement Program. In addition, I taught two graduate seminars, I continued directing, co-directing, and serving on dissertation committees, mentoring committees, candidacy/qualifying exams, writing letters of recommendation, participating in admissions rankings, and graduate recruitment—all in the philosophy department. I served on the Executive Committee for the Humanities Institute, met with candidates for the head of philosophy search, and did work related to Mellon grants (first for the philosophy department and then for a larger grant awarded across several departments and centers). I organized and hosted Collegium of Black Women Philosophers conferences. And I continued my service to the philosophy profession more broadly: UNCF/Mellon First Book Institute, Mentoring the Mentors Workshop for the American Philosophical Association, external reviewer for tenure and promotion, external examiner for a doctoral thesis in the UK, peer reviews for grant proposals, research proposals, journal articles, and serving on journal advisory and editorial boards.
Despite doing all the above, over the last three years, I was asked on many occasions some variation of the question: “When are you coming back to philosophy?” I found the question and its implications outrageous and perplexing. Built into the question was an attempt to render invisible the work that I had always done and continued to do within the philosophy department, as well as a devaluation of my heavy administrative workload—all while maintaining an active research agenda. The question also suggested, erroneously, that I had been altogether absent, uninvolved, and/or delinquent. Yet the above record demonstrates that this was not the case.
The “When are you coming back to philosophy?” probe was at the department level. But there were also signs it was time for me to move on at the college level. For example, I applied for an endowed professorship for full-time faculty at the rank of associate professor in Fall 2021. The Philosophy Department Head wrote a nomination letter for me. When I inquired about the opportunity at the college level, it was suggested that I “save something for someone else.” At the time, I was Interim Head of Africana American Studies, Director of the Africana Research Center, and Peer Coach for the Midcareer Faculty Advancement Program—all major administrative roles. The implication was that I should be happy with these service roles and save the endowed chair opportunity (which emphasizes and celebrates research) for someone else.
Posing the question, “When are you coming back to philosophy?” coupled with the “save something for someone else” attitude also overlooked my scholarly achievements during that period, research rooted in philosophy (e.g., my second book Beauvoir and Belle: A Black Feminist Critique of The Second Sex with Oxford University Press—a “top tier” press; a book chapter “Maria Stewart (August 20, 1829 – August 19, 1834)” in 400 Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain—an instant New York Times bestseller; an article “Interlocking, Intersecting, and Intermeshing: Critical Engagements with Black and Latina Feminist Paradigms of Identity and Oppression” in Critical Philosophy of Race Journal; a new preface for the French edition of my first book Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question; plus numerous conference presentations and talks—including a philosophy lecture at St. Hilda’s College, University of Oxford, UK, and several interviews about my research (e.g., with BBC Radio, Black Agenda Report/BAR Book Forum, academic journals, podcasts, etc.).
The primary and crucial reason why I quit (with intention and purpose right before successfully going up for promotion to the rank of professor *and* walking away from a one-semester administrative leave at full pay as well as a paid sabbatical!) is that I trusted and followed my intuition telling me to “Get Out!” Or more accurately, “Get Out NOW!”—not after another promotion or raise, not after a paid sabbatical and paid administrative leave, but now. The other contributing factors for my departure, partially outlined above, are already well-known and understood by Black women in the Academy. These experiences are very familiar to Black women academics across disciplines—namely, the continued devaluations and attempted erasures of our intellectual and administrative labor. After 15 years at an institution where I had an impeccable record of outstanding research, teaching, and service, I decided that it is time for me to go.
JW: Something I have noticed during my own career, beyond the need to encourage and provide increased support for more Black women to pursue PhDs in Philosophy, is that the field has a real problem with retention. Before we get into some of the reasons for this, I want to ask if part of the reason you’re leaving is due to this problem of retention. I suppose my question is this: did you outgrow academia or did the field become inhospitable to your goals in some way?
KSB: Recruitment and retention of Black women in philosophy has been a long-standing issue. The first Black woman to earn a PhD in Philosophy is Joyce Mitchell Cook (Yale, 1965). Cook was the first Black woman to teach in the philosophy department at Howard University, where she was denied tenure. Anita Allen would later describe this tenure denial as an “inexplicable failure” on Howard’s part, but it is also representative of a problematic pattern of tenure denials for Black women philosophers. Allen offers the following examples, “Cook was denied tenure by Howard. Adrian Piper had been denied tenure by the University of Michigan before being tenured by Georgetown University; Angela Davis had been twice fired by the University of California, and Lavern Shelton had been denied tenure by Rutgers University.” Allen adds, “Indeed the first four black women PhDs to be eligible for tenure in a US philosophy department all had the experience of being passed over for tenure, despite being brilliant and having PhDs from top schools—Harvard (Piper), Yale (Cook), Humbolt University (Davis) and the University of Wisconsin (Shelton).” I think Allen said it best in an earlier interview she gave ahead of these later observations about tenure denials, “With all due respect, what does philosophy have to offer Black women? It is not obvious to me that philosophy has anything special to offer Black women today. I make this provocative claim to shift the burden to the discipline to explain why it is good enough for us; we should be tired of always having to explain how and prove that we are good enough for the discipline… Any Black woman who has the smarts to do philosophy could do law, medicine, and politics with greater self-esteem, greater financial reward, greater visibility, and greater influence” (Yancy 1998, 172, italics in original).
To be sure, I am a Black woman of a later generation who benefited from the Black women who sacrificed and blazed the trail ahead of me. I have found value in doing philosophy and being a philosopher. One of the “best quality of life” decisions that I made was to pursue philosophical studies—from majoring in philosophy at Spelman College (a historically Black women’s liberal arts college), to earning my MA and PhD in Philosophy, to being a philosophy professor. My experiences as an academic philosopher have been mostly positive. I have always had “good” jobs for which I was reasonably compensated (from postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Memphis and Emory University, to my first tenure-track position at Vanderbilt University, to my last position at Penn State University). I have a great publication record, writing about things that are of philosophical interest to me. I have always been at well-resourced institutions with access to research budgets, funding for my various initiatives, course releases and fellowships to focus on research, etc. Learning and doing philosophy, including my philosophical training and holding various positions in the Academy, helped me develop highly valuable and transferable skills—critical thinking, critical reading, writing, researching, asking the right questions, identifying bullshit answers, thinking about race, class, gender, and other identities and oppressions in relationship to one another, building community and sisterhood, creating initiatives, planning major events, managing budgets, mentoring, coaching, etc.
Having said that, I agree with Anita Allen 100% when she asserts that the burden is on the discipline to explain why it is good enough for us and not the other way around. Allen also poses a pointed question in the interview quoted above. She asks, “Why bother with philosophy when there’s so many other fields of endeavor where one can do better more easily?” And this brings us to the latter part of your question about outgrowing academia and the field’s inhospitality.
I have always been and will always be a philosopher, or as bell hooks put it, a “true philosopher.” And yet, I have outgrown academia and it became inhospitable to my goals, at least working from the inside. My experience with the extraction and simultaneous minimalization of my labor was exhausting. My job felt misaligned with my higher calling and sense of purpose. I reminded myself of all my highly valuable and transferable skills. I remembered Allen’s insights that there are other things I can do and other ways I can do them, better and more easily. So, I quit!
But this was not a hasty decision. I knew ten years ago (when I was going up for tenure) that I would be leaving the Academy. The first urge to quit my academic job came when I was successfully promoted to associate professor with tenure. My decision to leave the academy was delayed in part by another great quality-of-life decision I made at the time—getting a divorce (what I call going from unhappily married to happily unmarried). I started planning my exit from two forms of institutional bondage—marriage and the academy. In both cases, it was going well until it wasn’t. When it stopped bringing joy and pleasure, when it started feeling misaligned, when it started adversely impacting my health and wellness—I knew it was time to move on. I extracted myself first from the marriage and then from the academy.
JW: What’s next for you?
KSB: My immediate next step is to REST for several months! After that, I will continue to read and write and speak. I am giving a keynote address at an Arendt conference in August. And I was offered a research fellowship that takes me to Europe for six months in 2024. I am also founder and owner of La Belle Vie Academy which provides Philosophical, Purposeful, and Practical Approaches to La Belle Vie (the good life/the beautiful life)—including signature programs and courses for High Achievers, Happily Unmarried, and Erotic Empowerment. My signature programs and courses provide Black feminist frameworks designed to support our self-realization and self-actualization journeys of transformation in these key areas of our work and lives. I describe my method as “Embodied Existentialism” because I take seriously mind/body connections, physical and metaphysical inquiry, the power of self-awareness, as well as the insights gained when we contemplate life’s bigger and deeper questions. My method also includes what I call “Embodied Emotional Epistemologies” or the profound knowledge that we have access to when we are consciously connected to our bodies and our feelings. So basically, I am making good life choices and living La Belle Vie!
The Women in Philosophy series publishes posts on those excluded in the history of philosophy on the basis of gender injustice, issues of gender injustice in the field of philosophy, and issues of gender injustice in the wider world that philosophy can be useful in addressing. If you are interested in writing for the series, please contact the Series Editor Alida Liberman or the Associate Editor Elisabeth Paquette.
Kathryn Sophia Belle
Dr. Kathryn Sophia Belle is a philosopher, author, speaker, and entrepreneur. After majoring in philosophy (Spelman College, 1995-1999) and then earning a MA and PhD in philosophy (University of Memphis, 1999-2003), she worked in Academia for 20 years (2003-2023), including postdoctoral fellowships (University of Memphis and Emory University) and tenure track positions (Vanderbilt University and then Penn State University where she was promoted to associate professor with tenure and held several major leadership and administrative roles). Her scholarly specializations include African American/Africana Philosophy, Black Feminist Philosophy, Continental Philosophy/Existentialism, and Social/Political Philosophy. She has published on assimilation, existentialism, feminism, intersectionality, race and racism, and sex and sexuality in contemporary hip-hop. Her most recent book manuscript is titled Beauvoir and Belle: A Black Feminist Critique of The Second Sex (Oxford University Press, 2023). Under the name Kathryn T. Gines, she co-edited an anthology titled Convergences: Black Feminism and Continental Philosophy (SUNY Press, 2010) and wrote Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question (Indiana University Press, 2014), which now has a French edition translated by philosopher Benoît Basse (Éditions Kimé, 2023). Dr. Belle has two new book manuscripts on Audre Lorde on the horizon as well as her own “autobiomythographies” in progress. She also continues her work as founder and owner of La Belle Vie Academy with signature programs: High Achievers, Happily Unmarried, and Erotic Empowerment, as well as La Belle Vie Writing program – a predominantly Black and Women of Color, international, mutigenerational, virtual writing community.
Jasmine Wallace
Jasmine Wallace is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Georgia Southern University. She works in Critical Philosophy of Race, Queer Theory, and 20th and 21st century social and political philosophy with an emphasis on race, gender, sex, sexuality, (dis)ability, colonialism, and practices of decolonization. Her current work utilizes Merleau-Pontian phenomenology to explore the sedimentation of Black history as embodied memory expressed in Black gestures. This project draws on the work of Saidiya Hartman, Sylvia Wynter, Christina Sharpe, Michel Foucault, and Hortense Spillers to construct a theory of what I refer to as a “Black archive.”
