University Park

Africana Research Center presents speaker Yolonda Wilson Oct. 6

Wilson will offer virtual talk and Q&A titled "Squaring The Circle, Or How I Became A Black Woman Scholar"

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — In a virtual event sponsored by Penn State's Africana Research Center (ARC) in the College of the Liberal Arts, Yolonda Wilson, associate professor in the departments of Health Care Ethics, Philosophy, and African American Studies at St. Louis University in Missouri, will present a lecture titled "Squaring The Circle, Or How I Became A Black Woman Scholar." The talk will be take place from 1 to 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 6, held virtually via Zoom.

Yolanda Wilson Credit: ProvidedAll Rights Reserved.

Wilson will include lessons learned from her own circuitous route through the academy to encourage younger scholars to follow their own path, even if that path doesn’t conform to conventional wisdom. The event will include a Q&A session afterwards.

Wilson holds a doctorate in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research interests include bioethics, social and political philosophy, race theory, and feminist philosophy. She is broadly interested in the nature and limits of the state’s obligations to rectify historic and continuing injustice, particularly in the realm of health care, and is developing an account of justice that articulates specific requirements for racial justice in health care at the end of life. Her article, “Intersectionality in Clinical Medicine: The Need for a Conceptual Framework,” is a consideration on applying intersectionality’s intellectual approach — how race, gender, and other social identities converge in order to create unique forms of oppression — in the clinical environment.

She was the lead editor of a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Social Philosophy titled "Exploring Racial Injustice." The article, “A Postmortem on Postraciality,” appears in that issue. Wilson has also worked on a monograph, "Black Death: Racial Justice, Priority-Setting, and Care at the End of Life." She uses racial disparities in end-of-life care to argue that, "given historic and continuing racial injustice leading to African Americans being unfairly burdened with ill health, African Americans have a special justice claim on health care."

Last Updated September 20, 2021