Research Overview

My research specializations are ethics and social and political philosophy as these literatures intersect with topics and problems in participatory democracy theory and in applied and professional ethics. My work draws on American Pragmatist philosophers, Jane Addams (1860-1935) and John Dewey (1859-1952) to develop and defend a Pragmatist feminist social epistemology for communicative democracy, in order to provide a philosophical framework in normative democracy theory that can make conceptual space to name and address the communicative dimensions of deliberative inequality. Much of this historical work is oriented towards contemporary literatures in Pragmatist feminism, critical social epistemology, and Iris Marion Young's (1949-2006) Communicative Democracy. As a whole, my theoretical work aims to develop an Ethics of Inclusive Political Communication for contemporary participatory democracy theory. 

In my more applied work, I bring this theoretical and historical body of research into conversation with contemporary professional practice in public administration and nonprofit professional practice and organizational structures. I am especially interested in mapping this research onto nonprofit professional practice at the intersection of human services and healthcare industries, and among professionals working with community-based organizations in the social justice and social change nonprofit sector. The critical aspect of this applied work focuses on identifying and analyzing how democratic norms (e.g., political autonomy, political equality, transparency, inclusion and accessibility, and public, and public reason-giving and deliberation processes) are problematized within bureaucratic and nonprofit organizational structures. The reconstructive aspect of this applied work focuses on imagining, constructing, and implementing more deeply participatory organizational structures, and equipping organizational leaders in these sectors with conceptual equipment and practical strategies for this work.

In both my more theoretical work and practical and applied work, I am particularly interested in defending the value of inclusive participatory processes on normative, epistemic, and economic/pragmatic justifications. ​

Publicly Engaged Scholarship

Learn about how I share my research in non-traditional settings. Julian Hayda with Lake Effect, Milwaukee's NPR WUWM 89.7 features me in his exploration of freedom, rights, and community in the context of COVID-19 anti-quarantine protests. ​​

Writing Samples​

'Our Feet are Mired in the Same Soil': Deepening Democracy with the Political Virtue of Sympathetic Inquiry [Dissertation, Open Access]
Abbreviated Abstract: This dissertation puts American philosophers and social reformers, Jane Addams (1860-1935) and John Dewey (1859-1952), in conversation with contemporary social and political philosopher, Iris Marion Young (1949-2006), to argue that an account of deliberative equality must make conceptual space to name the problem of 'communicatively structured deliberative inequality'. Addams and Dewey, like Young, saw exclusion as a serious social and political problem, and they looked to democratic norms and practices as a resource for social justice. The project ultimately argues that in order for participatory democracy theory to imagine and construct genuinely inclusive deliberative spaces, it must be grounded in a relational ontology of political agency and a Pragmatist feminist social epistemology.  
Jennifer Kiefer Fenton (2019) 'Our Feet are Mired in the Same Soil': Deepening Democracy with the Political Virtue of Sympathetic Inquiry [Dissertation]
File Size: 479 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File
Lessons from Jane Addams for Constituent Storytelling in the Social Change Nonprofit Sector [Under Review, Hypatia​]
Abstract: This essay recovers Jane Addams’s (1860-1935) practice of constituent storytelling as a resource for contemporary social change nonprofit professional practice and activism. Whereas feminist theorizing is rich with resources for theorizing about constituent storytelling, Addams’s life as both a publicly engaged philosopher and a social change nonprofit professional make her uniquely situated to provide practical ways forward for social change practitioners navigating the lived complexities of speaking for others in light of spatial stratification, subordinating structures, and epistemic exclusion. As a hybrid activist-scholar situated across diverse spaces, Addams serves as a bridge between feminist theorizing about speaking for others, and practices of it among social change nonprofit professionals and activists. I show that Addams reveals new ways of thinking about the practice of constituent storytelling for social change nonprofit professionals. Namely, in this lived context, speaking for others entails speaking for others through one’s own story. Responsible constituent storytelling both names oneself as a speaker (and additionally describes one’s own social standpoint in this rhetorical naming practice) and orients the story through one’s own journey – a journey inevitably riddled with failures and faulty assumptions – towards democratic neighborship with the Other across difference. 
Lessons from Jane Addams for the Social Change Nonprofit Sector
File Size: 305 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File