Harvard panel to take philosophical look at ‘bad romance’
Blushing. The interplay between self-love and social justice. Socialist sex. These topics set the tone for “Bad Romance: The Ethics of Love, Sex, and Desire,” an interdisciplinary graduate student conference hosted at the Mahindra Humanities Center this weekend. Using the #MeToo movement as a starting point, conference organizers and Harvard doctoral candidates Tess McNulty and Becca Rothfeld wanted to bridge the divide between public conversations about sexual consent and academic research on ethics and love. “Scholars actually have something to say in this conversation [about #MeToo],” said McNulty, a Ph.D. student in the English Department. “The idea behind the conference is to actually do some of the work of applying the things that scholars know to this popular conversation.” During the two-day conference, graduate students from institutions in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. will gather to discuss sexual ethics in philosophical texts, film, and literature, on the internet, and in social justice circles. “The...