Titus-Hepp Lecture Series: Adriel Trott

Denison University’s Department of Philosophy and the Titus-Hepp Lecture Series welcomes Adriel Trott from Wabash College presenting “The Matter of Sexual Difference in Aristotle’s Biology.”

Aristotle’s account of sexual reproduction is often considered the root of the hierarchical opposition between form as male and matter as female. But form in the figure of semen curiously works through material elemental powers of heat and air. This talk considers the sense in which semen and thus form in generation is interrelated and dependent on material to do its work and the implications of this position for thinking the gender binary.

Trott is an associate professor in philosophy focusing on ancient, continental and political philosophy. Her work focuses on how ancient philosophy can be a resource both for diagnosing contemporary conceptions of political life, of being human, of nature and of gender and for presenting alternatives to these accounts