Quill Kukla (previously known as Rebecca Kukla) is a Canadian and American philosopher. They are a Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University and the Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. In 2020 and 2021, they were Humboldt Research Scholar at Leibniz University Hannover.^[1] They are known for their work in bioethics, analytic epistemology, philosophy of language, and feminist philosophy.^[2]

Kukla received their bachelor's degree in philosophy at the University of Toronto in 1990, and their PhD in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, where their supervisor was John Haugeland.^[3] Kukla held various academic appointments in the United States and Canada before taking up their current post at Georgetown; these include Johns Hopkins University, Queen's University at Kingston, Carleton University (where they held a tenured appointment), and the University of South Florida. At the latter, they were professor in both the Department of Philosophy and in the School of Medicine.^[3] Kukla is Editor-in-Chief of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal and former Editor-in-Chief of Public Affairs Quarterly. They were formerly co-coordinator of the Feminist Approaches to Bioethics Network. They completed a master's degree in geography at Hunter College in 2019.

Kukla has been interviewed about their work in various venues, including 3AM,^[4] Washington Post, Huffington Post, Slate, and Quartz. Their work on historical, cultural, and political attitudes towards bodies, especially those of mothers and pregnant women—found in their book, Mass Hysteria: Medicine, Culture, and Mothers' Bodies—has led to their being interviewed and authoring media articles on topics including the culture of pregnancy,^[5][6] sexual fetish,^[7] and attitudes towards race and obesity.^[8] They are a vocal defender of women, ethnic minorities, and other minorities, especially in academia, and have been interviewed in the media on this topic.^[9][10]

They have won national and state-level medals in powerlifting.^[11]

Books

• Q. R Kukla, City Living: How Urban Spaces and Urban Dwellers Make One Another (New York: Oxford University Press 2021).

• R. Kukla and M. Lance, 'Yo!' and 'Lo!': The Pragmatic Topography of the Space of Reasons (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2009).

• R. Kukla, Mass Hysteria: Medicine, Culture and Mothers' Bodies (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield 2005).

Edited books

• J. Arras, R. Kukla, and E. Fenton, ed. The Routledge Companion to Bioethics (Routledge 2012).

• R. Kukla, ed. Aesthetics and Cognition in Kant's Critical Philosophy (Cambridge University Press 2006).

Dissertation

Rebecca Kukla, Conformity, Creativity, and the Social Constitution of the Subject (Department of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh: 1995).^[12]