[philosophy section]
Breaking All the Rules: A North Dakotan Philosopher by Elizabeth M.K.A. Sund
When I was a philosophy major at the University of North Dakota, the fact that I am a female North Dakotan rarely crossed my mind. It wasn’t until I arrived at Georgia State University in downtown Atlanta that these two seemingly insignificant aspects of my existence began to color my experience as a philosopher. I was there to earn my Masters Degree and, as it turns out, very few women go to grad school for philosophy. Even fewer become professors. There were about twenty-five students in my incoming class, only three of whom were women. Of the three of us, I am the only one who is going on for a PhD in philosophy after graduation. And like many people I meet when I travel, most of my cohorts told me that I was the first person they had ever met, or even heard of, from North Dakota. For the first time being a woman and a North Dakotan became my defining characteristics. Simone de Beauvoir argues in The Second Sex that, “A man would never
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