2024/04/01: Please refer to my researchmap page (https://researchmap.jp/ryotanaka?lang=en) to see the most up-to-date list of the courses I taught (part of the info may only appear in Japanese, sorry!).

UConn Provost's Commendation for Excellence in Teaching

Fall 2020 - this is the University's acknowledgement that I was "among a select group of graduate assistants rated as 'excellent in teaching'" by students.

Couses taught as Instructor of Record (syllabus available upon request)

PHIL1101 Problems of Philosophy, Unviersity of Connecticut, Waterbury (Spring 2020)

This course provides an overview of some traditional philosophical issues. The first half of course is devoted to purely “theoretical” topics, such as cultural relativism, epistemological skepticism, the nature of human mind (functionalism and the problem of phenomenal consciousness), personal identity, etc. The latter half of the course is devoted to ethical and political issues such as social justice, racism, nihilism and the purpose of human life, self-deception, etc.

PHIL1102 Philosophy and Logic, University of Connecticut, Storrs (Fall 2018)

In this course, students aiml to develop critical thinking skills including techniques for recognizing and evaluating arguments in ordinary language, as well as basic conceptual toolkits in the classical truth-functional propositional logic.

PHIL1104 Philosophy and Social Ethics, University of Connecticut, Storrs / Stamford / Online (Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2021)

The course provides an overview of influential ethical and philsophical theories such as Utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, Virtue theory, Rawlsian theory of social justice, Nozickian entitlement theory of justice, existentialism, etc. and applies them to contemporary ethical issues such as abortion, charity, veganism, distributive justice, racism, feminism, meaning of life, ethical issues concerning the use of new technology (e.g. SNS, Network Surveillance, social robots, genetic engineering),  etc. The course also provides a non-Western perspective into ethics by introducing Buddhist theories of ethics.

PHIL1106 Non-Western and Comparative Philosophy, University of Connecticut, Online (Fall 2020)

The course surveys influential philosophical views on human nature both in the "Western" and the "Non-Western" traditions, and examines their implications on the philosophical issues such as the foundation of morality, freedom, responsibility, self-deception, racial and gender oppressions, meaning of life, etc. Schools of thought and philosophers in the "Non-Western" traditions discussed in this course include: Zera Yacob, Abhidharma (Buddhism), Confucianism, Daoism, Japanese Pure-Land Buddhism (Shinran), Frantz Fanon, Keiji Nishitani (Kyoto School).

As Teaching Assistant

PHIL1104 Philosophy and Social Ethics, University of Connecticut (Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Summer 2018)

PHIL1106 Non-Western and Comparative Philosophy, University of Connecticut  (Fall 2017)