“Look at This Great Alice in Wonderland Dress I Found!”

The metaphysically magic moment of real sisterhood bonding between myself and Catherine Hundleby happened on a six-hour drive to a FEMMSS (Feminist Epistemologies, Methodologies, Metaphysics, and Science Studies) conference in 2012. I picked Cate up at the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit and we set out together to College State, Pennsylvania. Cate and I had met before and shared ideas and material we were working on following meetings at OSSA (Ontario Society for the Study of Argument) in Windsor and various APA (American Philosophical Association) meetings in the U.S. I think we were together in the late 1990s at a conference organized by Nancy Tuana in Oregon and another at Notre Dame? Or was it Villanova? I remember several lunches in the Detroit area organized by Phyllis Rooney prior to that 2012 conference. The point is we were after all, in the early 2000s, youngish feminist scholars working on the intersections between feminist theory, reasoning, and argumentation. Both of us trained in the analytic tradition. Cate in argumentation theory and a fan (and thoughtful critic) of Douglas Walton’s work in argument schemas and me, in philosophy of language and Quinean models of indeterminancy. We were fortunate to be together, brought together by feminist theorists who were our seniors and saw the odd niche we both were trying to carve out professionally in analytic philosophy, argumentation theory, and critical thinking.