Sandra Bartky

Sandra Lee Bartky (née Schwartz; May 5, 1935 – October 17, 2016) was an American philosopher and gender studies professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her main research areas were feminism and phenomenology. Her notable contributions to the field of feminist philosophy include the article, "Toward a Phenomenology of Feminist Consciousness". She held a BA, MA and PhD from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and studied at the University of Bonn, University of Munich, and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1997, she received an honorary degree, Doctor of Humanities, from New England College. Bartky joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 1963 and rose through the ranks to full professor in 1990, retiring in December 2003 as professor emerita. She was a founding member of UIC’s philosophy department and instrumental in developing its courses on women's issues. In the mid-70s, she helped found the Gender & Women’s Studies program at UIC and was a key figure in integrating feminist philosophical inquiry into the department. She was also a founder of the Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP) and Hypatia, a philosophy and feminist studies journal. Her main areas of interest included existential philosophy, phenomenology, critical theory, Heidegger, Marxism, postmodernism, and feminist theory. Bartky died on October 17, 2016, at her home in Saugatuck, Michigan at the age of 81.