Catherine Hundleby (1966-2023)
Catherine Hundleby, professor of philosophy at the University of Windsor, has died.
Professor Hundelby worked in epistemology, the philosophy of argumentation, and feminist philosophy, combining these interests in recent works such as “Feminist Approaches to Argumentation,” for the Stanford Enyclopedia of Philosophy and “Thinking Outside-In: Feminist Standpoint Theory as Epistemology, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science” in the Routledge Handbook of Feminist Philosophy of Science. You can learn more about her writings here and here.
Professor Hundleby joined the philosophy faculty at Windsor in 2003. Her primary appointment was in the Department of Philosophy, and she was cross-appointed in Women’s and Gender Studies. She created and directed the university’s interdisciplinary PhD program in Argumentation Studies and was a fellow of the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric. She maintained as part of her website a guide to selecting critical thinking texts. Prior to her time at Windsor, she was an assistant professor at Eastern Oregon University. She earned her PhD from Western University, her MA from the University of Guelph, and attended the University of Toronto for her undergraduate degree.
She died unexpectedly of a pulmonary infection on Saturday, August 26.
(Note: the original version of this post misstated Professor Hundleby’s birth year.)
This is very sad news. I knew Catherine from the University of Toronto, when we were both completing our BAs, and from Western, where we both completed our PhDs. She was a very thoughtful and sincere person and philosopher. Also, she seemed unaffected by the cyncism that plagues our profession.
Friends can also see this reflection from her colleague, Jeff Noonan, beautifully said. When he writes “loud and effective” I can hear her clear voice in my head.
https://www.jeffnoonan.org/?p=5602&fbclid=IwAR2nVPoNV3_XelphthrgfM9P6QHbMhFSd4Z5ygGTIHV3_tl1g8m75CVlA6I
Actually, Cate was a full professor, recently promoted.
Thank you. I’ve corrected the post.
I am so saddened by this loss to our academic community. Cate was thoughtful, irreverent, FUN, generous and lively: a wonderful colleague. Her contribution to feminist scholarship — and her encouragement to all of us question, engage and go further in our inquiries — will live on. Beautiful tribute, Jeff.
Cate and I did our PhDs together at Western–in fact, we received our degrees on the same day. We spent many hours together in classes, and especially with our cohort at the Grad Pub. Cate was a kind person and an insightful philosopher, and really fun. I learned a lot from her, especially about feminist epistemology and standpoint theory. Mostly I remember a couple of her hilarious lines. I haven’t seen Cate in almost twenty years, but I know that for people close to her, this is a gap that won’t be filled.
Cate had recently been promoted to full professor and if you think she would be OK with you getting this wrong, you didn’t know Cate. You don’t have to post this comment, but please correct it above.
In all the time I knew her, from our BFF bond in grade 9 at Centennial high school in Guelph, to becoming colleagues at Windsor, I always came away from a chat inspired by her positivity and generosity. What a loss for so many. Thank you for that reflection, Jeff.
I have posted a remembrance of Catherine–written by Letitia Meynell–at BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. You can find the remembrance on BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY here: Remembrance of Catherine Hundleby, 1968-2023 (Guest post) – BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
Hi Justin, we are Cate’s friends and we wanted to tell you her correct year of birth was1966, not 1968 as stated above in your article stated. We want Cate to be acknkwledged for every single year we were fortunate to know her. Thanks for your attention to this detail. Jw
My apologies for the error. It has now been corrected.
I never post on social media but this is so sad. Dr. Hundleby was one of my professors while I was an undergrad at Western and she was a grad student. She was incredibly supportive and ended up writing a letter of recommendation for me that ultimately helped me get into a PhD program. I was not the best student at Western, being far mor focused on athletics, but she encouraged me when many others didn’t. I would not be where I am today without her amazing dedication to her students.
Being a commentator on a presentation by Cate at the 2013 Pacific APA was my first foray into feminist philosophy of logic (at a symposium organized by Audrey Yap). I was until then a feminist and a philosopher of logic, but not a feminist philosopher of logic! Thanks to the opportunity to comment on Cate’s paper, I began thinking more about adversariality and cooperation and how they relate to logic, reflections that came to have much influence on my later work.
After that we regularly met at conferences, especially on argumentation theory, and I continued to enjoy talking to her and learning from her. I was also one of the editors commenting on her brilliant SEP entry on feminist approaches to argumentation, which is such an important contribution to the literature! All this just to say that Cate was an amazing scholar, teacher and person; I am lucky to have interacted with her on multiple occasions. Her death is an unfathomable loss for the multiple academic communities she contributed to.
Go well, Cate. Thank you for your great heart, your prodigious mind, your deep commitment to feminism, equity and anti-racism, and your wonderful and collegial friendship and alliance.