Education

Biography

Shay Welch is an associate professor of philosophy at Spelman College. She is currently the Scholar-in-Residence for the city of Atlanta's public art project; the project is titled "Public Performance Art as Resistance to Epistemic Injustice."

Recently, she was the 2020-2021 Carnegie Corporation and Rockefeller Foundation Distinguished Research/Creative Scholar. She was chair of the Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory and board member for the Emotions Matter national non-profit organization. Her current book is "Choreography as Embodied Critical Inquiry: Embodied Cognition and Creative Movement" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). Her recent book is "The Phenomenology of a Performative Knowledge System: Dancing with Native American Epistemology" (Palgrave-Macmillan 2019).  Her previous books are "Existential Eroticism: A Feminist Ethics Approach to Women’s Oppression Perpetuating Choices (Lexington Books 2015) and A Theory of Freedom: Feminism and the Social Contract" (Palgrave-Macmillan 2012). 

She teaches courses on freedom, embodied knowledge, embodied cognition, dance, systemic oppression, ethics, epistemology, feminism and Native American Philosophy.  Her professional goals are to support and mentor young women of color in philosophy and to aid the discipline in recruiting and retaining more underrepresented young philosophers.  She is especially interested in supporting first generation students and students with cognitive and affective disorders.

Courses Taught

• The Ethics of Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence
• Oceania Philosophy: Art-as-Knowing, Study Abroad course, University of the South Pacific, Fiji
• Philosophy and Data Science, AUC Summer Institute
• Aesthetics: Philosophy of Dance
• Metaphysics: Embodied Cognition
• Epistemology: Social and Feminist Epistemology
• Introduction to Political Philosophy
• Native American Philosophy
• The Philosophy of Sex and Domination (Spelman College, Williams College) Introduction to Ethics
• Advanced Seminar in Ethics: Feminist Ethics
• Introduction to Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy: Ancient Ethics

Research Interests

Shay Welch is a committee board member for "Emotions Matter," a national non-profit organization, which specializes in destigmatizing Borderline Personality Disorder. She is currently writing extensively on the Philosophy of Disability Studies.

Her most recent book is "Choreography as Embodied Critical Inquiry: Embodied Cognition and Creative Movement" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). Previously she authored: "The Phenomenology of a Performative Knowledge System: Dancing with Native American Epistemology" (Palgrave-Macmillan 2019), "Existential Eroticism: A Feminist Ethics Approach to Women’s Oppression Perpetuating Choices" (Lexington Books 2015), and "A Theory of Freedom: Feminism and the Social Contract "(Palgrave-Macmillan 2012).  She is currently developing an account of public performance art as a mode of democratic deliberation and as a tool for resisting epistemic injustice. 

She teaches courses on freedom, embodied knowledge, embodied cognition, dance, systemic oppression, feminist ethics, social epistemology, and Native American and Indigenous Philosophy.  

Her professional goals are to support and mentor young women of color in philosophy and to aid the discipline in recruiting and retaining more underrepresented young philosophers.  She is especially interested in supporting first-generation students and students with cognitive and affective disorders.

Publications

Select Publications

Performance Art as Democratic Deliberation: Choreography as Reason-Giving and the Power of Embodied Meta-Linguistic Acts (in progress)

Choreographing as Embodied Critical Inquiry: Embodied Cognition and Creative Movement, New York: Palgrave Macmillan February 2022

The Phenomenology of a Performative Knowledge System:  Dancing with Native American Epistemology.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2019.

Existential Eroticism: A Feminist Approach to Women’s Oppression-Perpetuating Choices.  Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015.

A Theory of Freedom: Feminism and the Social Contract. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Publishing Co., 2012.