Kelly Oliver is W. Alton Jones Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Women's Studies at Vanderbilt University. She has written on issues such as the ethics of surrogate motherhood, the ethics of reproductive technologies, affirmative action, reverse discrimination and the courts, ethics of adoption, family values, and more recently on the effects of embedded journalism, women in the military, the ethics of war, and women suicide bombers. Her book, Women as Weapons of War: Iraq, Sex and the Media, analyzes how women and their bodies (from the female soldiers involved in Abu Ghraib to Palestinian women suicide bombers) have become powerful weapons in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Oliver is also the author of Noir Anxiety: Race, Sex and Maternity in Film Noir; Subjectivity Without Subjects; and Womanizing Nietzsche: Philosophy's Relation to the "Feminine."

Presented in conjunction with the Chancellor’s Colloquium.