Linda McAlister, a noted philosopher and long-time faculty member at the University of South Florida, died last month at her home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, from heart failure. She was 82 years old.
A native of Los Angeles, Dr. McAlister studied philosophy at Barnard College in New York City. After college, she acted in New York, Michigan, and California before entering the doctoral program in philosophy at Cornell University in New York.
After earning her doctorate, Dr. McAlister began her academic career at Brooklyn College and then taught at the Imperial Valley campus of San Diego State University. She came to the University of South Florida in 1982 as dean of the Fort Myers Campus. She spent two years in Tallahassee as a special assistant to the vice chancellor of the state university system.
In 1987 she returned to the University of South Florida as a professor of philosophy and women’s studies, specializing in feminist philosophy, the history of women in philosophy, and feminist film studies. She served as chair of the philosophy department from 1996 to her retirement in 1999.
Dr. McAlister was a founder of the Society for Women in Philosophy and the group had the goal of producing a journal in the field. It took more than a decade before Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy first appeared as an insert in the Women’s Studies International Forum. It then became an independent publication of Indiana University Press.
Hypathia was a fourth-century Greek philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. She was murdered by a mob in the year 415.