Samia Hesni

Samia Hesni joined the department in 2019, after receiving their PhD from MIT. Their main research interests are in feminist philosophy, social/political philosophy, and philosophy of language. Their current research is about normative discourse and social negotiation: examining the ways in which speakers use language to propose, enforce, reinforce, and modify power dynamics within linguistic interactions. Examples of such language are normative generics — expressions, like “boys don’t cry,” whose typical usage conveys more than its straightforward surface content — presupposition, and non-literal speech more generally. They have also published work on harassment and silencing. Samia is currently working on a project on social scripts and disruption that develops a notion of cooperative disruption. Their future work examines the role of kindness in social movements. They are also core faculty in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program.