Scholarship

Scholarship by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Pix4free

Current Projects

The Toxic Cycle of Motherblame-Stigma: The Children’s Mental Health Crisis & The Care Crisis (working title).

Constructions of motherhood are an important tool in motivating and justifying social oppressions against communities, particularly through their children. The epistemic oppression of mothers constructed as “bad” functions to obscure social injustices their children face, as well as their structural and institutional causes. This book introduces the concept of ‘motherblame-stigma’ – a social prejudice that does the conceptual work of structural gaslighting to obscure institutional failures to meet the needs of children and communities by scapegoating mothers in those communities. Such mothers face social disgrace, blame and distrust both for their proximity to their stigmatized child / community combined with a narrative that she caused the child’s / community’s stigmatized characteristics. This concept can be used to analyze various contemporary and historical oppressions (e.g., poverty and the welfare queen narratives of the 1990’s, justifications for continuing residential schools for Indigenous children, and in the case of this book, the lack of community supports for children with disabilities).

This book examines the historical construction of motherblame-stigma through the eugenics and euthenics movements of the Progressive Era in the early 20th century. It then examines how motherblame-stigma remains with us today in relation to the current children’s mental health crisis and care crisis (failed and gutted care infrastructures due to decades of privatization and austerity). Motherblame-stigma is an intersectional oppression that includes both sexism and ableism, and often other identities as well. It affects how caring logics and punitive logics are distributed in policy and cultural practices. This distribution contributes to the two interwoven crises, ensuring that children with mental disabilities do not have access to the non-carceral community services and supports they need to live and thrive and maintaining a hidden economy of unpaid family care labor and an underpaid direct care workforce. The causes and realities of these crises are further obscured with epistemic oppressions fueled by the prejudice of motherblame-stigma, namely contributory injustice and institutional and systemic gaslighting.

Wisdom Collective Methodology and Praxis (working title) co-author Dionne Bensonsmith

This handbook begins by laying out the Wisdom Collective Methodology developed by Mothers on the Frontline and its significance for research. It lays out a trauma-informed approach to community participatory research based on the Design Justice Framework and an ethics of community care. The remainder of the handbook provides methods and strategies for gathering knowledges, growing knowledges, and sharing knowledges.

Publications

Books

Spinoza’s Radical Cartesian Mind, Continuum, 2007.

Abstract

In her first book, Dr. Nyden examines the cultural divides of seventeenth-century Holland. Orthodox Calvinists, loyal to both scholastic philosophy and the quasi-monarchical House of Orange, saw their world turned upside down with the sudden death of Prince William II and no heir to take his place. The Republicans seized this opportunity to create a decentralized government favorable to Holland’s trading interests and committed to religious and philosophical tolerance. The now ruling regent class, freshly trained in the new philosophy of Descartes, used it as a weapon to fight against monarchical tendencies and theological orthodoxy. It is within these tensions that the great pamphlet debate about Cartesianism and its political and religious consequences arose. This book begins with a study of key Radical Cartesian pamphlets and Spinoza’s role in a Radical Cartesian movement in Amsterdam. Next, it examines Spinoza’s political writings and argues that they should not be seen as political innovations so much as systemizations of the Radical Cartesian ideas already circulating in his time. Nyden then reconstructs the development of Spinoza’s thinking about the human mind, truth, error, and falsity to explain how this development, particularly the innovation of parallelism allowed Spinoza to provide philosophical foundations for Radical Cartesian political theory. She concludes that Spinoza’s rejection of Cartesian epistemology involves much more than the metaphysical problems of dualism – ironically, it is Spinoza’s attempt to make coherent a political theory bearing Descartes’s name.

Cartesian Empiricisms (co-edited with Mihnea Dobre), Spring, 2013.

Abstract

Cartesian Empiricisms considers the role Cartesians played in the acceptance of experiment in natural philosophy during the seventeenth century. It aims to correct a partial image of Cartesian philosophers as paradigmatic system builders who failed to meet challenges posed by the new science’s innovative methods. Studies in this volume argue that far from being strangers to experiment, many Cartesians used and integrated it into their natural philosophies. Chapter 1 reviews the historiographies of early modern philosophy, science, and Cartesianism and their recent critiques. The first part of the volume explores various Cartesian contexts of experiment: the impact of French condemnations of Cartesian philosophy in the second half of the seventeenth century; the relation between Cartesian natural philosophy and the Parisian academies of the 1660s; the complex interplay between Cartesianism and Newtonianism in the Dutch Republic; the Cartesian influence on medical teaching at theUniversity of Duisburg; and the challenges chemistry posed to the Cartesian theory of matter. The second part of the volume examines the work of particular Cartesians, such as Henricus Regius, Robert Desgabets, Jacques Rohault, Burchard de Volder, Antoine Le Grand, and Balthasar Bekker. Together these studies counter scientific revolution narratives that take rationalism and empiricism to be two mutually exclusive epistemological and methodological paradigms. The volume is thus a helpful instrument for anyone interested both in the histories of early modern philosophy and science, as well as for scholars interested in new evaluations of the historiographical tools that framed our traditional narratives.

Articles, Reviews & Chapters

“The Making of the Unfit Mother and Unfit Child: the Eugenicist and Euthenicist History of Motherblame and Ableism in the United State,” chapter in Mothers and Disability, Demeter Press, accepted and in progress.

“Motherblame-Stigma and Institutional Gaslighting: Obscuring Failures in Child Disability Care Infrastructures,” Journal of the Motherhood Initiative, Vole. 15 No. 1. Spring / Fall (2025): 25th Anniversary Issue on Mothering and Motherhood.

Abstract

Mothers of children with mental illness are on the frontlines of two global crises. The rates and severity of children’s mental illness have been rapidly growing, increasing the need for services and community supports. At the same time, four decades of privatization and austerity have resulted in what Emma Dowling calls “the care crisis,” including a state of disarray in the children’s mental health service sector. The intersection of the children’s mental health crisis with the care crisis makes it impossible for many children to access hospital beds for mental health emergencies and community-based disability services necessary to keep them alive and in their own homes. Mothers overwhelmingly bear the economic and social burdens of filling in disability service gaps. Furthermore, the very agencies charged to serve children with disabilities depend on the exploited and appropriated unpaid labour of their mothers. This article introduces the concept of “motherblame-stigma,” a social prejudice in the form of social disgrace, blame, and distrust of mothers related to a stigmatized characteristic of their child. After tracing the history of motherblame-stigma for children’s mental illness, I apply an epistemic oppression framing to illustrate how motherblame-stigma functions to prevent mothers from correcting distorted public narratives about child disability service infrastructures (a contributory injustice) and to sow self-doubt within mothers about their own experiences and capabilities (gaslighting). I provide examples of institutional gaslighting in state policy, law, public statements, and narratives to blame mothers for failing to seek and navigate services that do not exist.

“Children’s Mental Health, Institutional Gaslighting, and Mother-Blame,” American Philosophical Association Women in Philosophy Blog, February 8, 2023.

“Living Force at Leiden: De Volder, ‘s Gravesand and the Reception of Newtonianism” In Zvi Biener Eric Schliesser (ed.), Newton and Empiricism. New York: Oxford University Press USA (2014).

Abstract

This paper examines the work of two physics professors at the University of Leiden: Burchard de Volder (1643-1709) and his successor, Willem J ‘s Gravesande (1668-1742). Both men are responsible for innovations in pedagogy that emphasize the demonstration of experiment: de Volder was the first university physics professor to demonstrate experiments in his classroom and created the Leiden Physics Theatre for that purpose; one generation later, ‘s Gravesande taught in that same theatre and provided students with the first comprehensive textbook in experimental physics. While both men emphasize experiment in their pedagogy, they differ in their epistemological commitments. De Volder, a Cartesian, demonstrates experiments to inspire his young students, still greatly affected by sensory perception, to take on the daunting task of true science, which for him involves deduction from first principles. In contrast, ‘s Gravesande, a Newtonian, teaches his students how to use experiments in order to gain reliable information about the world. This paper studies their respective positions in the ongoing vis viva controversy as a means of understanding the influence Locke’s epistemology had on early eighteenth-century physics, particularly on the Dutch reception of Newton.

“De Volder’s Cartesian Physics and Experimental Pedagogy” In Mihnea Dobre Tammy Nyden (ed.), Cartesian Empiricisms, Springer. 2013, pages 227-249.

Abstract

In 1675, Burchard de Volder (1643–1709) was the first professor to introduce the demonstration of experiment into a university physics course and built the Leiden Physics Theatre to accommodate this new pedagogy. When he requested the funds from the university to build the facility, he claimed that the performance of experiments would demonstrate the “truth and certainty” of the postulates of theoretical physics. Such a claim is interesting given de Volder’s lifelong commitment to Cartesian scientia. This chapter will examine de Volder’s views on experiment and show that they are not Newtonian or inductivist, as is sometimes claimed. While de Volder thinks we need deductive reasoning from first principles to provide evidence of the certainty of the content of our physical theories, he also contends that we need experiment to provide evidence of the certainty of the existence of the particular bodies those theories discuss. This approach to experiment is based on a distinction between rational certainty and the certainty of material bodies in the actual world. While this account is deeply influenced by Descartes, it is importantly different than Descartes’ distinction between absolute and moral certainty. De Volder’s “Cartesian Empiricism” is best understood as a continuation and further development of a long tradition of teaching through observation at Leiden.

“Sankara, Śāntarakṣita and Spinoza.” In Marie-Louise Friquegnon & Noé Dinnerstein (eds.), Studies on Śāntarakṣita’s Yogācāra Madhyamaka, Global Scholarly Publications. 2012.

Abstract

Baruch Spinoza, the seventeenth century Dutch rationalist, has always been seen as a bit of an anomaly within the Western tradition. His monism, unique conception of God as Nature, and ethical focus on human freedom or liberation has occasioned some comparisons with Asian philosophies. Unfortunately, almost all of these comparisons take the form of vague passing remarks within the context of a work or discussion with another philosophical focus. The reader is often left to wonder what the particular commonalties are and may even get the impression that such comparisons result from frustrations in placing certain Spinozistic views within the European tradition, rather than concrete affinities with various Asian traditions. This is unfortunate, as it would be beneficial to see how a Western philosopher might approach the philosophical problem of human liberation and the nature of the self. In the following, I will argue that while Spinoza provides a decidedly Western epistemic answer to this problem, his metaphysical account may be viewed as a middle ground between Sankara’s Advaita Vedantic approach and Santaraksita’s Vajrayana Buddhist approach.

“Experiment in Cartesian Courses: The Case of Professor Burchard de Volder.” In The Circulation of Science and Technology: The Proceedings of the 4rth International Conference of the European Society of the History of Science (ESHS), Barcelona, 18-20 November 2010. Ed. A. Roca-Rosell, Barcelona: SCHCT-IEC (Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica – Institut d’Estudis Catalans), 2012, 384-388.

“Conscientia,” and “Affectus: laetitia, tristitia, and cupiditas,“ in Continuum Companion to Spinoza. Eds. W. van Bunge, H. Krop, J.M.M. van den Ven, and P. Steenbakkers. Continuum, 2011, 189-190 and 151-154.

Book Review of Feminist Interpretations of Benedict Spinoza. Edited by Moira Gatens. The Pennsylvania University Press, 2009 in Notre Dame Philosophical Review, March 2010.

Book Review of Interpreting Spinoza: Critical Essays. Edited by Charles Huenemann. Cambridge University Press, 2008 in Philosophy in Review, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2009), 35-37.

Bibliographies for Pierre Bayle, Giordano Bruno, Chuang-tzu, Hsun-tzu, Mencius, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, and Isaac Newton, World Philosophy, rev. ed., Salem Press, 2000.

“Radical Cartesian Politics: Van Velthuysen, De la Court, and Spinoza,” Studia Spinozana, Volume 15, 2006 (journal dated 1999), 35-65.

“Salvation in a Naturalized World: The Role of the Will and Intellect in the Philosophies of Nietzsche and Spinoza,” NASS Monograph # 7, ed. Steven Barbone. Baltimore: North American Spinoza Society, 1998, 17-31.

Presentations

“The Making of ‘Normal’: The Shared Euthenic History of Motherblame-Stigma and Ableism,” NWSA (National Women’s Studies Association) 2025 Conference: An Honor Song: Feminist Struggles, Feminist Victories” in Suan Juan, Puerto Rico, November 13-16, 2025, accepted.

” ‘If Only You Would Listen to How We Feel’: Caregiver Storytelling for Healing and Systemic Change,” an interactive workshop by Mothers on the Frontline: Presenters: Tammy Nyden, Angela Riccio and Dionne Bensonsmith. NWSA (National Women’s Studies Association) 2025 Conference: An Honor Song: Feminist Struggles, Feminist Victories” in Suan Juan, Puerto Rico, November 13-16, 2025, accepted.

“The Making of the Unfit Mother: The Eugenicist and Euthenicist History of Motherblame,” IAMAS (International Association of Maternal Action and Scholarship 2025 Conference, Boston University, June 17, 2025.

“Motherblame-Stigma & Its Legacy of Institutional Gaslgihting,” U.S. Midwest SWIP (Society for Women in Philosophy) Conference, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, March 21, 2025.

Panel member of “(In)Essential Discourse, Patriarchal Recuperation and Gender Expansiveness: Negotiating the Meaning(s) of Motherhood in the 21^st Century and Beyond”, IAMAS (International Association of Maternal Action and Scholarship 2024 conference, Boston University, June 21, 2024.

“Motherblame-stigma, Epistemic Injustice, and the Government’s Failure to Care”, Grinnell Convocation (as Humanities Center Fellow), Grinnell College, IA, April 4, 2024

“Storytelling: A Trauma-Informed Research Methodology”, Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) 2023 Conference, Hawai’I Conference Center, Honolulu, HI, November 9, 2023.

“How Institutional Gaslighting Obstructs Access to Children’s Mental Health Care”, Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) 2023 Conference, Hawai’I Conference Center, Honolulu, HI, November 9, 2023.

“Iowa’s Children’s Mental Health Care Crisis: Mother Blame and Institutional Gaslighting” Gender Women and Sexuality Studies Brown Bag Lunch Presentation, April 6, 2023.

“Epistemic Exploitation and the Appropriation of Mother-Labor.” National Women Studies Association 2022 Annual Conference “killing rage: resistance and the other side of freedom”, Minneapolis, MN, November 8, 2022.

“The Gaslighting Trifecta: Epistemic Harms to Mothers of Children with Severe Mental illness.” The North American Society for Social Philosophy 39th International Social Philosophy Conference: “Polarization, Reconciliation, and Community”, Neumann University, Aston, PA, July 15, 2022.

“Theory, Praxis, and a Pedagogical Bridge”. Co-presented with Dionne Bensonsmith. Seminar Series on Philosophy and Activism (virtual), June 13, 2022.

“The Mothers on the Frontline Children’s Mental Health Justice Framework: Practice and Methodology”. Co-presented with Dionne Bensonsmith and Angela Riccio. 42nd Annual CMHACY (California Mental Health Advocacy for Children and Youth) Conference: “Not Business as Usual: From Conversation to Action”, Monterey, CA, April 27, 2022.

“Seclusion and Restraint at Iowa City School District: Why Framing Matters,” University of Iowa Libraries Staff Development and Diversity Speaker Series, (virtual presentation) November 3, 2021.

“Wisdom Collective: Our Methodology, Our Practice” Co-presented with Dionne Bensonsmith (Visiting Professor of Government Studies, Claremont McKenna) and Angela Riccio (Mothers on the Frontline) at the “Building Racial Equity In and Across Motherhood” conference of the International Association of Motherhood Action and Scholarship (IAMAS). October 26, 2021.

“Digital Stories for Social Justice.” Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, University of Iowa. October 3, 2018.

“Wonder, Experiment, and Scientia at Leiden,” This presentation was part of a panel called “Wonder and the Scientific Method” that was part of the series: “From Wunderkammer to the Modern Museum, 1606-1884” at Faulconer Gallery, November 21, 2013.

“Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, Center for the Humanities Book Talk, Grinnell College, November 16, 2013.

“Paradigms Lost: How Leiden Made Experimental Physics Real Science.” Iowa Philosophical Association Work-in-Progress Workshop, November 9, 2013.

“The New Physics at Leiden.” Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, University of Iowa. April 3, 2012.

“Not Scientia, but Not Nothing: de Volder on the Role of Experiment in Natural Philosophy.” The Battle for Scientia in the 17th Century: 2012 Princeton-Bucharest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy, Bran, Romania, June-29-July 4, 2012.

“How Theology in 17th-Century Leiden Influenced the Acceptance and Spread of Experimental Physics.” Science and Religion: A Role for Metaphysics? Bard College, April 16-19, 2012.

“From Moral Certainty to Moral Evidentia: an Epistemological Shift in the Leiden Physics Theatre.” Passionate Minds: Knowledge and the Emotions in Intellectual History. Conference of the International Society for Intellectual History (ISIH), University of Bucharest, Romania, May 26-28, 2011.

“Moral Certainty to Moral Evidentia: An Epistemological Shift in Leiden’s Physics Theatre.” Philosophy Colloquium. Grinnell College, October 12, 2011.

“Experiment in Cartesian Courses: The Case of Professor Burchard de Volder.” The Circulation of Science and Technology: 4rth International Conference of the European Society of the History of Science (ESHS), Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC), Barcelona, Spain, November 18-20, 2010.

“The Case of Burchard de Volder: Pre-Newtonian, Dutch Cartesian Experiment in the University.” Thought in Science and Fiction: 12th Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas (ISSEI), Çankara University, Ankara, Turkey, 2-6 August 2010.

“De Volder and the Physics Theatre: Experimental Pedagogy, Cartesian Physics.” HOPOS (History of the Philosophy of Science) Biennial Conference, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, June 26, 2010.

“Living Force at Leiden: Burchard de Volder (1643-1709), Willem J. ‘s Gravesande (1688-1742) and the Teaching of Experimental Physics.” Newton and Empiricism Conference, Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, April 10-11, 2010.

“De Volder’s Introduction of Experimental Physics to the University.” POROI (Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry) Rhetoric Seminar, University of Iowa, January 28, 2010.

“De Volder’s Cartesian Reasons for Bringing Experiment to the Academy.” The Princeton-Bucharest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy, Bran Romania, July 31, 2009.

“Spinoza’s Passionate Politics.” Passion & Body in Spinoza, University of Leiden, The Netherlands, July 2008.

“How Hobbes Got to Spinoza.” Early Modern Philosophy in Britain and the Netherlands 1500-1800. Conference sponsored by the British Society for the History of Philosophy, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, March 26-28, 2007.

“Parallelism à la Mode.” The North American Spinoza Society, December 2005.

“Spinoza’s Radical Cartesian Roots: De la Court and Dutch Politics.” Iowa Philosophical Society, Simpson College, November 5, 2005.

“Sankara, Spinoza, and Santaraksita.” International Conference on Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, Fordham University, November 1, 2003.

“The Metaphysical Appendix and its Place in the Development of Spinoza’s Theories of Error and Falsity.” International conference: “le contexte intellectuel du spinozisme.” Le Groupe de recherches spinozistes (CERPHI) and l’Association des Amis de Spinoza. Sorbonne, Paris, France, March 30, 2002.

“Individuals and Singular Things: Spinoza’s Unified Account of Individuation and Identity.” Symposium on Spinoza and Leibniz, University of Turku, Finland, November 7, 2001.

“Self-identity in Spinoza.” Claremont Early Modern Studies Graduate Symposium, March 6, 1999.

“Salvation in a Naturalized World: The Role of the Will and Intellect in the Philosophies of Nietzsche and Spinoza.” North American Spinoza Society, May 1998.

“Salvation in a Naturalized World.” Syracuse University Graduate Philosophy Conference, March 7, 1998.

Selected Fellowships & Honors

Humanities Center Fellow, Grinnell College, 2023-2024.

Keynote Speaker, Iowa City Human Rights Commission Awards Breakfast, 2018.

Obermann Fellow-in-Residence, Obermann Center, University of Iowa, Fall 2018.

Grinnell College Innovation Fund Grant, Pilot Project. Co-investigators: Kesho Scott and Stephanie Jones, 2018-2019.

The Isabel Turner Award from the Iowa City Human Rights Commission, 2016.

ARC Community Advocacy Award, The ARC of Southeast Iowa, 2015.

ID Action (Iowans with Disabilities in Action) 2014 Advocate of the Year

National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, 2013.

Obermann Fellow-in-Residence, Obermann Center, University of Iowa, Spring 2013.

Scaliger Fellow, Scaliger Institute, Leiden University, 2013.

American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, Fall 2008.

American Philosophical Society Franklin Research Grant, 2008.

Kristeller-Popkin Travel Fellowship, 2005.

Fulbright Fellow / Netherland-America Foundation Fellow 2001-2002.