Amy Reed-Sandoval goes by many titles: associate professor, academic philosopher, mom, and opera enthusiast.
She might also be called a myth buster who helps dismantle the stereotype of the European, bearded male philosopher in an ivory tower ruminating about questions that are disconnected from our everyday lives. In fact, she wants us to know that we’re all philosophers — especially children — and our backgrounds, cultures, and life experiences make the field of philosophy richer.
Before joining the UNLV College of Liberal Arts in 2019, she spent five years teaching at the University of Texas, El Paso, on the U.S.-Mexico border, which helped shape her research that explores the ethics of migration and the border-crossing experiences of vulnerable populations.
“I found that to be transformative, and I brought many of those insights to my work at UNLV,” she said. “That was a great opportunity to learn how to use philosophy to inspire positive social change.”
Here, Reed-Sandoval shares why her research and forthcoming book, Intimate Borders, Feminist Migration Ethics, are more timely and relevant than ever.
Who did you look up to in your field when you first started?
Two people had lots of influence on my career. One is a philosopher named Linda Martín Alcoff at City University of New York. She influenced my work by doing socially relevant philosophy and work on social identity in philosophy. She’s both brilliant and a genuinely kind person who always makes time to mentor me and so many others, and I find this inspiring on many levels.
Another person is Joseph Carens from University of Toronto. He was the first philosopher to challenge national state borders from an egalitarian perspective. Not only did he make a compelling argument, but he was willing to argue for something that truly went against the grain of what most political philosophers were saying at the time. He’s a model of a philosopher who is willing to challenge conventions and a lovely person and dedicated mentor.
What do laypeople usually ask you about philosophy?
People might assume there are no jobs in philosophy, so folks sometimes ask me about the stereotype of the starving philosopher. In fact, philosophy majors do really well on the job market, including and especially those who don’t go into academia!
I also think that many laypeople think being a philosopher is about being obsessed with one particular famous philosopher from the distant past (not that there’s anything wrong with this kind of approach — it’s important). I try to inform people that you can also create your own philosophical questions on issues that matter to you, including contemporary issues of social relevance. When people come to realize that they are philosophers themselves, philosophy seems important and more exciting than they originally thought.
Tell us about a lesson you learned from a student.
My students constantly remind me of the value of philosophy. I recently worked closely with an undergraduate philosophy major named Rachel Schell on getting more philosophy in the classroom in the K-12 system in the Las Vegas area.
Rachel helped me organize professors in our department to go into local schools to teach philosophy and critical thinking to young people. A lot of this work she did on her own, calling upon her own community contacts as a Vegas native. Rachel has a clear understanding of the relevance of philosophy and critical thinking to broader publics and communities. We professors all have our less-inspiring moments — our occasional “off days” — and students remind us of the importance of what we do.
What was your greatest day on campus?
When I worked to bring some local news media to our campus to observe some of my undergraduate students doing philosophy activities with kids at the UNLV/CSUN Preschool. It was exciting to see people who had never heard of philosophy for children become so interested in the work we were doing. I also loved getting support from the preschool families who were happy to show off their kids who were asking amazing philosophical questions.
You are very research active with multiple projects. Tell us about your forthcoming book.
My next book is coming out in November, and I’m doing a local book launch at the Writer’s Block bookstore here in Las Vegas. The book offers a framework for thinking about borders that allows for serious, ethical analysis of the kinds of border-crossing experiences that many particularly vulnerable groups — including women, pregnant people, children, and indigenous communities — have on a regular basis but that don’t get much public and philosophical attention. I argue that our typical way of talking about borders tends to hide from view a range of urgent migration questions that society needs to address. I hope that my feminist theory of borders creates space for the kinds of ethical conversations about migration that feminists have long wanted to have.
What about future research?
I have two research projects that I’m developing. The first is a book I’m writing for a more popular audience about the current Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum, the first woman and first Jewish president of Mexico. I believe her political work connects to major philosophical questions in the fields of Mexican philosophy, Jewish philosophy, and feminist philosophy.
A second project is a collaboration with a philosopher named Luvell Anderson who’s at University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. It’s about migration ethics in connection to African American philosophy. There’s been a reluctance to think about African American experiences as migratory because of the understandable worry that doing so erases the harsh realities of slavery, which is clearly different from “voluntary migration.” At the same time, African American philosophy offers us many fascinating conceptual tools for considering cross-border movements, complex conceptions of home, and notions of fugitivity that Luvell and I find potentially useful for thinking about migration ethics and justice in the world we live in right now.
Outside of your research, what are you passionate about?
Like so many of my students and colleagues, I’m committed to trying to work for a better world, and I recently became vice president of the UNLV chapter of the Nevada Faculty Alliance. I’m passionate about journalism as well. I’ve tried to do some journalistic work, sometimes in my capacity as a philosopher, but I’m always looking for spaces to write the stories that interest me.
I’m also passionate about being a mom. I’m a music lover and a big opera fan, so I enjoy a good night at the opera.
What advice would you give your younger self?
Pursue the projects that matter most without worrying so much whether others will think they are sufficiently “intellectual” and “philosophical.”
When I was doing my master’s (in philosophy and public policy) at London School of Economics, I was rather obsessed with showing that I had what it took to be a philosopher intellectually. Sometimes I let that distract me from pursuing the projects that matter most to me.
In graduate school in England, after your seminar, you’re supposed to go to a pub, have a drink, and have these extended, aggressive philosophical arguments with your classmates. Looking back, I wasted so much time in pubs arguing with male philosophy peers in a purely performative way; I felt I needed to prove to the male philosophers in my cohort that I was as good at philosophy as they were. But I should’ve been reading the books I cared most about, or cultivating more nurturing communities and support networks.
Fortunately, by the time I got into my Ph.D. program at the University of Washington, I had gotten over this kind of insecurity that disproportionately impacts women, minorities, and working-class folks in philosophy.
When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be a singer. I was very devoted to it and passionate about it. When I was a little girl, I had mostly been exposed to pop music, so that was the style I was trying to emulate. Once I got to high school, I started studying opera. I also started listening to lots of musical theater and opera and began dreaming of becoming an opera singer or doing musical theater. I eventually became a vocal performance major before I switched to philosophy.
Which is more exciting: the start of fall semester or the end of spring semester?
The start of fall semester. You can feel that energy and buzz on campus. So many students are on a college campus for the first time. The enthusiasm is contagious. Usually at the start of fall, I’ve spent the summer thinking about my syllabi and course design and often have new pedagogical techniques I want to try out or new readings I want to explore with students. Beginning of fall is a beautiful reminder of the privilege of being a college professor.
