Mary Townsend is an associate professor of philosophy at St. John’s University, Queens, NY. Her research interests include political and moral psychology ancient and modern, existentialism from Kierkegaard to Simone de Beauvoir, and the history and politics of feminist philosophy. Her 2017 book, The Woman Question in Plato’s Republic was named required reading by University of Pennsylvania’s Emily Wilson, translator of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and her academic work on Plato, Beauvoir, and the American abolitionist Julia Ward Howe has appeared in Hypatia, Polis, and Social Philosophy Today. Dr. Townsend has also written on philosophy and culture for The Atlantic, The Hedgehog Review, Gawker, The Bulwark, Wisdom of Crowds, Plough Quarterly, and Commonweal on topics ranging from moral relativism, effective altruism, desire and the mind/body split, mental health, and the political psychology of democracy.