TEACHING @ FLORIDA GULF COAST UNIVERSITY
BIOETHICS & SOCIETY
This upper division course focuses on the relation between classic questions in contemporary bioethics (e.g., consent, access, autonomy) and central debates in the history of political philosophy (e.g., individual rights, state intervention). The course is organized into three modules: 1) ‘Critical Approaches to Medicine and Society,’ which introduces students to pertinent methods and conceptual frameworks 2) ‘Alternative Medicine I,’ which critically examines ‘alternative’ medical discourses, medical and scientific skepticism, and critiques of ‘big Pharma’, and 3) ‘Alternative Medicine II’ which focuses on distinct social models for the provision of health (from profit-driven industry to universal healthcare). These three modules allow students to engage in bioethics from a critical vantage, with a special emphasis on applied ethics for the benefit of both philosophy majors and students in or headed toward the medical field.
Philosophy of decolonization
This course examines central texts in the anti-colonial movements of the 20th and 21st century across Latin American (e.g., Mariátegui, Guevara), the Caribbean (e.g., Fanon, Césaire, Rodney), and the African continent (e.g., Cabral, Sankara) with special attention to their theoretical foundations. Modulating this content is historical and critical reflection on the mediating relations of the Cold War and the confrontation between distinct economic and social forms, including but not limited to the critical assessment of the relation between capitalism and colonialism (i.e., imperialism). The course offers (for advanced undergraduates) an introduction to 20th century decolonization as a social, economic, as well as philosophical project and offers a view of decolonization in relation to strategies of colonialism, neocolonialism, the international division of labor, and a globally integrated capitalism.
ADVANCED DEBATES IN FEMINIST THEORY
This upper division course examines debates within feminist political theory, examined through the ‘big three’ approaches: liberal, Marxist, and radical feminism(s). The course is organized around 4 units: 1) ‘Approaches to Feminist Political Theory,’ which introduct 2) ‘The Gendered Division of Labor and the Family,’ which examines accounts of domestic/reproductive work and the social functions of marriage and familial relations, 3) ‘Sexual Politics and Gender Theory,’ which focuses on the social mediation of sexuality and gender identity, and 4) ‘Feminism and the State,’ which draws out classic debates about state formation, provision, and intervention in the production and maintenance of gendered relations, but also state provision as means toward gender liberation.
Topics in philosophy of law
In this course, we consider the philosophical, social, and political dimensions of the practice of international law in a globalized world, a world where cultural, social, and economic differences and inequalities present unique challenges to developing and maintaining laws and legal institutions. We focus on how the legal systems of the U.S. and Europe, for example, relate to the governments and economies of formally independent, former colonies; how laws and legal institutions contend with or reproduce historical asymmetries in political and economic power wrought by the history of colonialism and neocolonialism; and examine how our understanding of law and the legal system are informed by a broader set of historically and culturally specific philosophical claims. The course explores these themes through three approaches to international law: the liberal, Marxist (esp. dependency theory), and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL)..
Major Figures: Marx & Marxism
This course focuses on the historical and philosophical significance of the Marxist traditions both in the history of philosophy and political theory. The course examines the work of Marx and his inheritors through the critique of capitalism, categorized into 6 types: the exploitation critique, the critique of alienation, the crisis-prone critique, the critique of anarchic-production, the critique of production for exchange-value, and the classic ‘fetters’ critique. The course explores the critique of capitalism through a multi-tendency historical approach to the tradition, with special emphasis on the topics of ideology, imperialism and ecology. The course moves between social theory and political economy, giving students a sense of the philosophical foundations and critical implications of the tradition.
HISTORY OF IDEAS (INTRO LEVEL)
This course is a historical and comparative introduction to the various key philosophical orientations, thinkers, and topics which have evolved throughout history. The course consists of primary texts in the history of European philosophy from Descartes to Kant and Hegel to Critical Theory. It narrativizes the history of philosophy along two indices: idealism versus materialism and, pertaining to the task of philosophy, critique versus contemplation. It also considers how central figures in the history of philosophy have viewed, not only the basis of our knowledge and commitments as either concrete or ideal, but also the aim of philosophical inquiry itself in relation to the lived, social world.
Teaching @ the University of Oregon
Primary Instructor Courses:
PHIL 170: Love & Sex
Course Abstract: In this introductory level course, students consider three major debates in feminist theory and the study of gender and sexuality: the commodification of sexuality and sexual freedom, the classic feminist ‘porn wars’/’sex wars’, and contemporary debates about the status of gendered labor and sex work. The course is designed with a distinctively critical bent, focusing on interrogating prohibitions, manipulations, and distortions of sexual desire and the exploitative dimensions of sex/sexuality in a society shaped by male-dominance. Concretely, students will confront questions of ‘sexual morality’, coercion/consent, and sexual or ‘romantic authenticity’ in an alienated society.
PHIL 309: Global Justice (2021)
Course Abstract: This upper-division course is informed by my research, drawing students into a term-length debate about the history of what we now call ‘globalization.’ In the course, students ask whether globalization itself is just or unjust (and whether this question is itself the right one) and, of course, what we mean by ‘globalization’ (the latter necessarily bearing on the former). The course content focuses on theories of imperialism, anti-colonial / postcolonial / decolonial thought, dependency/world-systems theory. Early in the course, students also have an opportunity to critically engage the assumptions and claims of the rising tide of right-wing anti-globalism, in order to examine its assumptions and its diagnosis of global ills. Historically, the course is situated in the 20th century, with supplementary material (including a collectively-built ‘Global Justice Glossary’) on the historical context of the Cold War, African decolonization, and U.S. foreign policy in Latin America.
PHIL 102: Ethics (2020)
Course Abstract: This course is designed (with some creative license) around the classic ‘trolley problem.’ However, rather than focus on the literature surrounding the thought experiment, students encounter the history of moral philosophy with a thematic twist. Ethical theories are paired with literary and popular media which feature trains, planes, boats, and other modes of transportation. Importing the social situation of the trolley problem (i.e., isolation, transience, distance from formal authority, a closed social environment, anonymity), these alternate ‘trolley’ situations allow students to engage ethical theories as they bear on fictional constructions of lived experience, constructions which import their own social norms and expectations and situations in which people are thrown together, carrying society’s ‘baggage’ with them.
PHIL 110: Human Nature (2020)
Course Abstract: In this introductory level course, course content is geared toward, not only reviewing philosophical views on human nature in the history of philosophy, but also on the social and political implications of different conceptions of human nature, different ways of constructing a theory of human nature, and the historical decline of philosophical anthropology. The course focuses on what human nature does at a social and political level and how it functions in grounding or displacing various political claims, with attention to social problems such as the climate crisis, the ills of contemporary capitalism, the ‘normalization’ of sex/gender roles, and the historical justification of colonialism.
PHIL 103: Critical Reasoning (2018)
Course Abstract: This introductory level course, while covering many of the formal aspects of logic and argumentation, also focuses on the history of philosophy in two distinct ‘modes’: critique & contemplation. In this course, students consider how and on what basis one might philosophically ground a critique of social institutions and society more broadly. These questions are raised through an examination of the critical v. contemplative status of major figures in the history of philosophy.
Assisted Teaching Courses:
PHIL 216: Philosophy & Cultural Diversity (2017)
PHIL 102: Ethics (2018)
PHIL 312: History of Philosophy: 19th Century (2018)