teaching philosophy

I constantly strive to: make the classroom a community where every voice has a chance to be heard, help each student cultivate a sense of ownership over their educational experience, and make sure that students are exposed to a diverse range of voices and topics in philosophy.

I think that student lived experiences can be an important tool for getting students from all backgrounds interested in philosophy. So, I love experimenting with writing assignments that reflect various insights and methods from standpoint epistemology. One method involves an inquirer incorporating personal lived experiences into a rigorous and critical engagement with theory about a given topic, often of social significance, e.g., gender, race, marriage, or grief. In this way, an inquirer tests a philosophical claim against their lived experience rather than abstract thought experiments. My hope is that these assignments potentially improve diversity in philosophy majors and minors by helping more students feel personally invested in the philosophical questions being explored and by giving students a voice on a philosophical topic from the very beginning.

As an undergraduate I participated in the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl. As a faculty member I have been a coach for an ethics bowl team as well as served as judge for a high school ethics bowl competitions. I think that the team debate format of the ethics bowl is a great platform for helping students learn to critically discuss pertinent and contentious moral issues while helping them learn to solve ethical problems as a team, which reinforces knowledge and understanding of applied and normative ethics by making students vocally explain how various ethical theories apply to real world scenarios.  In the future, I would like to explore the potential of the ethics bowl as a form of outreach by focusing on building teams in high schools or community colleges that primarily serve students from low income backgrounds.

upcoming spring courses

Next semester (spring 2024) I am teaching:

• The Meaning of Life - PHIL 207 G (syllabus): In this course we will explore various cultural and philosophical perspectives on living a life with meaning. Specifically, we will explore connections between philosophical perspectives on meaning in life and philosophical perspectives on community, the self, work, love, art, and death. In addition, we will look at these topics from culturally diverse philosophical traditions such as East Asian, Ancient Greek, Africana, Anglo-European, Black Feminist, and North American Indigenous philosophies. In addition, each week will involve activities including personal assessments, activity journaling, mind-mapping, group collaboration, and networking. These activities will help you reflect on your own personal values and goals. Finally, you will also learn how your very own perspective on life, your very own goals and values, are an important source of philosophical evidence that can be used to critically evaluate what philosophers say about meaning in life.  This course is an intermediate seminar. 

• Moral and Social Problems - PHIL 108 (syllabus): The primary objective of this course is to learn how to locate the social, moral, and political features of real-world scenarios, form an ethical question regarding those features, and then argue for a position. We will begin by learning how to critically construct and evaluate ethical arguments. As we will see, constructing an ethical argument requires understanding many different dimensions of ethical evaluation. For example, when ethically evaluating an action we might focus on the consequences of the action, the fairness of the action, the character of the person performing the action, or even the relationships between the people impacted by the action. So, in order to understand these dimensions of ethical evaluation, we will survey major ethical theories such as utilitarianism, deontology, social contract theory, virtue ethics, care ethics, and Buddhist ethics. Next, we will look at different philosophical accounts of social and political justice. In addition, we will critically explore some of the theoretical underpinnings of social phenomena such as oppression, sexism, and racism. As we build a platform of ethical and social theory, we will practice applying that theory to "real-life" scenarios as well as practicing constructive dialogue in ethics through public debate. 

future courses

These are samples of courses that I have developed and am eager to teach. 

Reality, Culture and Society (sample syllabus): 

• Metaphysics is a philosophical investigation into questions central to our understanding of existence, being, identity, change, and time. This course surveys metaphysical questions important to our understanding of reality and society from a multicultural perspective. We will explore important metaphysical questions central to understanding of the world we live in such as the nature of persons, social construction, the nature of race and gender, and the nature of change over time. We will survey these topics from culturally diverse philosophical traditions and perspectives such as Classical Indian, Africana, Anglo-European, Nahua, and North American Indigenous philosophies. However, throughout the semester we will carefully consider potential limitations in approaching Non-Western philosophical thought using concepts and distinctions developed from Anglo-European philosophical perspectives . 

Philosophy of Logic: Truth, Inquiry, and Society (sample syllabus): 

• This course explores philosophical questions about the relationship between logic, truth, inquiry, and culture. We start the course by looking at formal logic and its development in the analytic tradition. In the next part of the course, we will explore issues surrounding the connection between logic and rationality and inquiry, e.g. Are logical principles revisable in light of new empirical discoveries? Should we be focusing on how logic connects inquirers rather than how logic governs individual thought? If so, what role does logic play in coordinating discourse and inquiry between members of a community? In the final part of the course, we will explore how logic connects with culture and society. We will look at feminist critiques of analytic developments of logic and feminist responses to those critiques. We will also look at developments in philosophical logic from Africana philosophers and Classical Indian philosophers.

Philosophy of Poetry (sample syllabus):

• Imagine trying to climb to the top of a ladder while at the same time having someone pull it out from under you. Seems impossible. But many poems seem to do something similar by trying to use language to express and communicate while at the same time subverting linguistic meaning. How is that possible? After looking at various connections between poetry and meaning, we will explore to what extent we can learn about the world through poetry. For example, some poems seem to provide important social and ethical arguments (often written by people from group that have been historically marginalized from academic philosophy). Finally, we will explore to what extent we can draw well-defined lines between poetry, prose, and philosophy. While the primary emphasis will be on poetry, throughout the course we will explore philosophical topics such as the nature of meaning, personal identity, and social justice . 

past courses

Introduction to Philosophy (fall 2015, spring 2016, spring 2017, spring 2018, fall 2019, winter 2022, fall 2022, spring 2023) 

• The overarching theme of this course will focus on what philosophy can tell us about what it might be to live a meaningful and morally good life both as individuals and with others. This course covers a variety of topics in modern and contemporary philosophy such as free will, personal identity, philosophy of Buddhism, philosophy of mind, existentialism, philosophy of love, and philosophy of race and gender. (sample syllabus)

Philosophy of Language (spring 2023)

• Language is everywhere—in our daily interactions, business, law, medicine, literature, and just about any important aspect of life. But while it is easy to take language for granted in practice, there are many philosophical puzzles surrounding language. This course covers key philosophical views about the nature of reference, meaning, and interpretation. We also explore philosophical accounts of the relationship between speech acts, communication, history, and power. Finally, we will discuss how metaphors and poetic language manage to communicate thoughts, evoke images, and express feelings despite seeming to subvert meaning itself.  (syllabus)

Philosophy of Mind (winter 2022)

• Is it possible to use information about your individual neurophysiology, e.g., facts about your brain states, to upload your mind to a computer? If so, would it be possible to live indefinitely in a digital afterlife? It’s a tempting thought, but it is a thought that comes with many conceptual and metaphysical challenges. For example, who is to say that your mind is not extended beyond your individual neurophysiology, i.e., beyond your individual “skull”? Alternatively, your mind and who you are might be constituted by broad networks that cannot be reduced to facts about your individual neurophysiology. In that case, will any version of you programmed into a computer be connected to the world in any meaningful way that lets us say that you are living in a digital afterlife? This course will critically introduce this and other central problems in the philosophy of mind. (sample syllabus)

The Philosophy of Social Science  (fall 2021)

• This course will survey issues in the philosophy of social science. However, one overarching question will be: In what ways might the values and interests of inquirers shape scientific hypotheses and theories? For example, should some community of inquirer’s ontological commitments about the nature of social groups, e.g., gender, be guided by their values and interests? In what ways is acknowledging presupposed values and interests important to critically evaluating competing explanations of social phenomena? What role does the cultural perspective of some community of inquirers play in their interpretation of the evidence, e.g., in archaeology?  (sample syllabus)

The Metaphysics of Intersectionality (winter 2021)

• The primary focus of this course is the metaphysics of intersectionality. First, we will explore the metaphysics of gender, race, disability, and class. Then we will look at how seeming intersections of these identities raise important questions about categorical and social injustices. In particular, we will explore the metaphysical assumptions underlying claims and arguments about the intersection of social groups made in social and political philosophy (sample syllabus).

Philosophy of Feminism (fall 2020): 

• This course will survey feminist perspectives on language, thought, and reality. Gender seems to be pervasive in our thought and language. One important issue we will explore in this course is how different ways of thinking and speaking connect to important gender realities and social arrangements. For example, to what extent do gender representations reinforce dominant gender dynamics, many of which are oppressive. All of this raises important questions about the possibility of language reform and how such reform relates to other social reform efforts. Throughout the course we will also explore issues about social construction and the nature of gender and other social categories such as race (sample syllabus).

Modern Empiricism (winter 2020, winter 2021):

• This course surveys empiricist thinkers of the early Modern era of European philosophical thought. In particular we will cover five thinkers: John Locke (1632-1704), Catharine Trotter Cockburn (1679-1749), George Berkeley (1685-1753), David Hume (1711-1756), and empiricist critic  Mary Shepherd (1777-1847). A more speculative theme that we will explore is the extent to which we can legitimately interpret these thinkers as primarily engaged in conceptual work rather than attempting to uncover deep metaphysical truths about the world (sample syllabus).

Nature of Social Identity (spring 2019)

• Focuses on questions surrounding the metaphysics of social identity. Explores general questions about social construction and the existence and nature of social groups. Explores various arguments regarding the existence and nature of particular social groups: gender, race, and (social and economic) class. Applies the metaphysics to questions in social and political philosophy, e.g. the meaning of identity politics, and the role social identity plays in perpetuating moral and political injustices. This course also serves as an introduction to formal and philosophical resources being used in contemporary analytic metaphysics, e.g. social construction, grounding, conceptual engineering, and fundamentality (sample syllabus).

Philosophy of Love and Sex (fall 2018)

• Focuses on contemporary philosophical literature on gender, romantic love, and family and the challenges that literature raises for more "traditional" expectations about what counts as "normal" when it comes to romantic love and the nature of family (sample syllabus).

Ethics (fall 2018)

• This course surveys a number of prominent approaches to ethical theory: Kantian deontology, consequentialism, social contract theory, virtue ethics, and care ethics. In addition, we explore a number of meta-ethical issues (sample syllabus).

Symbolic Logic (fall 2014, spring 2015, fall 2015, spring 2016, fall 2017, fall 2019, spring 2020, winter 2021, fall 2021)

• Technical course that covers sentential and predicate logic (sample syllabus).

Social and Ethical Issues in Computing (spring 2017, fall 2017) 

• Explores epistemological issues related to computing such as the spread of misinformation on the web.

• Explores ethical and legal issues related to computing such as: intellectual property rights, the relationship between the right to free speech and protection from harassment and hate speech on the web, and diversity in STEM fields such as computer science (sample syllabus).  

Contemporary Moral Issues (fall 2013, spring 2014, summer 2015, spring 2018, fall 2022) 

• Introduces students to modern and contemporary ethical theories and has them apply those ethical theories to real-world ethical questions surrounding the environment, healthcare, and government.

• I structure the last third of the course around the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl.