Mary Phillips

Faculty Fellow

Raised in Detroit, Michigan, Mary Phillips received her PhD in African and African American Studies from Michigan State University. She currently teaches at Lehman College, City University of New York. Her research explores women and gender in the Black Panther Party. Her recent article, “The Power of the First Person Narrative: Ericka Huggins and the Black Panther Party” (Women’s Studies Quarterly, 2015) analyzes the relationship between oral history and feminism. She is currently completing her book manuscript, “Ericka Huggins, Gender Politics, and the Black Panther Party” which offers an in-depth analysis on the contributions and worldviews of Ericka Huggins, a high-ranking woman in the Black Panther Party from 1967-1981.

Participating Years

2015–2016

Dialectics of Autonomy and Dependence

Self-determination had a heady run in the 20th century, instanced by both revolutionary assertion and homogenizing mimicry. But what is autonomy now? What is dependence? How are these conditions of existence necessarily related – as contradictory rather than contrasting ideologies, representations, relations, outcomes? What forms reveal the dialectic at work? What forms disguise or displace the dynamic?