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Hasana Sharp

Academic title(s): 

Professor; Associate Member of Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies

Hasana Sharp
Contact Information
Address: 

855 Sherbrooke St. W.
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 2T7

Email address: 
hasana.sharp [at] mcgill.ca
Office: 
Ferrier 404
Office hours: 

Please email for an appointment any time. 

Link(s): 
Papers Here
Research areas: 
Feminist Philosophy
Early Modern Philosophy
Political Philosophy
Spinoza
Biography: 

Hasana Sharp earned her PhD from the Pennsylvania State University (2005) and a diplôme (pensionnaire scientifique étranger) from the Ecole Normale Supérieure des Lettres et Sciences Humaines (2004). Her research is in the history of political philosophy with a focus on Spinoza.  Her book, Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization (University of Chicago, 2011), examines the implications of Spinoza's denial of human exceptionalism for ethics and politics, with consideration of arguments in feminist thought, critical philosophy of race, and ecocriticism. She is currently undertaking a SSHRC-funded research project on Spinoza and Servitude. She interested in how his analyses of human servitude, bondage, and slavery, central to both his ethics and politics, can be understood in relationship to other models. In particular, how do Spinoza's philosophical and political conceptions of servitude interact with the notions of his contemporaries objecting to the enslavement of African and Indigenous peoples or to the domination of women? Her teaching interests include the history of political thought, early modern philosophy, feminism, philosophy of race, and environmental thought. 

Teaching areas: 

History of Political Philosophy (esp. 17th and 19th centuries) (PHIL 240; PHIL 444; PHIL 445); 17th century philosophy (PHIL 360); Contemporary Political Philosophy (PHIL 446; PHIL 640); Feminist Philosophy (PHIL 242; PHIL 642; WMST 601, 602); Philosophy of Race (PHIL 327); Environmental Philosophy (PHIL 349).

Selected publications: 

Books:

  • Spinoza's Political Treatise: A Critical Guide, co-edited with Y. Melamed (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
  • Feminist Philosophies of Life, co-edited with Chloë Taylor (McGill-Queens University Press, 2016).
  • Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization (University of Chicago, 2011).

Recent & Representative Essays (all available on philpapers):

  • “Spinoza, Poetry, and Bondage,” Australasian Philosophical Review 7.1 (2023 [published October 2024]): 37-47
  • “Fugitivity in Spinoza,” Philosophy, Politics, and Critique 1.2 (2024): 201-218.
  • “Slavery and Servitude in Seventeenth-Century Feminism: Arcangela Tarabotti and Gabrielle Suchon,” in Routledge Handbook of Women and Early Modern European Philosophy, edited by K. Detlefsen and L. Shapiro (London: Routledge 2023): 297-310.
  • “Spinoza on the Fear of Solitude,” Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 11 (2022): 137-162.
  • “Not all Humans: Radical Criticism of the Anthropocene Narrative,” Environmental Philosophy 17.1 (2020): 143-158.
  • “Spinoza and the possibilities for radical climate ethics,” Dialogues in Human Geography 7.2 (July 2017): 156-160.
  • “Violenta imperia nemo continuit diu: Spinoza and the revolutionary laws of human nature,” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 34.1 (2013): 133-148.
  • “Eve’s Perfection: Spinoza on Sexual (In)Equality,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 50.4 (2012): 559-580.
  • “Hate’s Body: Danger and the Flesh in Descartes’ Passions of the Soul,” History of Philosophy Quarterly (2011) 28.4: 355-372.
  • “Animal Affects: Spinoza and the Frontiers of the Human,” Critical Animal Studies 9.1-2 (2011): 48-68.
  • “The Force of Ideas in Spinoza,” Political Theory 35.6 (2007): 732-755.
Courses: 

Fall 2025: (PHIL 360) 17th C Philosophy; (PHIL 445) 19th C Political Theory

Winter 2026: (PHIL 240) Political Philosophy 1; (WMST 602) Feminist Research Symposium 

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