Naomi Scheman is a former Professor of Philosophy and Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies (GWSS) in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota.  She began her career at the University in 1979 and retired in the spring of 2016.

Naomi donated her collection of books to ESFL in 2016-2017.  They are organized around feminist theory, especially philosophy and political theory.  Her books range from the historical foundations of feminist theory in the mid-20th century to recent arguments from the early 21st century.

Naomi has written four books: Engenderings: Constructions of Knowledge, Authority, and Privilege1993, Is Academic Feminism Dead? 2000; Feminist Interpretations of Wittgenstein 2002 and most recently Shifting Ground: Knowledge & Reality, Transgression & Trust 2011. She has also written a large number of peer-reviewed articles, commentaries and presentations.

Naomi graduated from Barnard College in 1968 with a B.A in Philosophy.  She got her Masters’ in 1971 and her Ph.D in 1978, both from Harvard University in Philosophy. She has stated that she knew she wanted to be a philosopher as soon as she took her first philosophy undergraduate class at Barnard.  “I felt like I was hearing my native language spoken for the first time,” Scheman recalled.

Her time at Barnard was at the height of student activism-civil rights and anti-war protests- but it wasn’t until the second wave of feminism that she became aware of sexism. She says that her ignorance of sexism, especially at a strong academic college like Barnard, is what motivated her to become a philosopher, with interests in epistemology and metaphysics. She didn’t study political epistemology at first but as she became more knowledgeable, she realized that” epistemology and even metaphysics are political.”

 As an epistemologist Naomi centered much of her work, research and engagement on how knowledge is acquired and shared. She was especially interested in the ways in which transgressive practices shine light on the actions of normal people, and on how insights gleaned from these observations allow for the chance of acting differently. 

Her areas of specialization included: Politics of Epistemology, Feminist Theory,     Trustworthiness and Community Engagement, Responsibility in Research, Queer/Sexuality and Transgender Studies.

She was also one of the first academics to read Ludwig Wittgenstein in a feminist light, and, bring his ideas to feminism.  Wittgenstein was an Austrian-British philosopher who was known for his work in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.

At Minnesota, Naomi taught classes in Introduction to Philosophy & Cultural Diversity, Philosophy and Feminist Theory, Queering Theory, Transgender Studies and Development Studies & Social Change: Ways of Knowing, among others. 

In her later research she became interested in the concept of trust and what that means as college communities “accept complexities and learn to deal with the tensions that diversity brings,” she said. She brought her expertise in that topic to her role as an affiliate faculty member of the University’s Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC) and the Nibi (water) Manoomin (wild rice) Bridging Worldviews committee. Both groups worked to respectfully engage diverse cultural ways of living in relation to university knowledge and research.

Naomi was chair of the GWSS department from 1986-1989 and was Director of the Director of Graduate Studies from 2007-2013.  She has also been Guest Professor at the Centre for Gender Studies, Umeí¥ University, Sweden, and visiting researcher from May 2009-June 2013.

Naomi also served as a member of the editorial boards of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy and NORA (the Nordic Women’s Studies Journal. In 2001, Naomi along with Susan Gust, a community activist and Cathy Jordan, an associate professor of pediatrics and an extension specialist in the U’s Center for Community Vitality, cofounded the organization GRASS Routes: Grass Roots Activism, Sciences, and Scholarship.  GRASS Routes mission was to build bridges of trust by encouraging collaboration and communication between diverse and often conflicting communities.