One of my colleagues, Jeff Gross (Asst Professor of American Literature and Culture), posted a really excellent essay entitled “Rethinking Grades” earlier today, which I want to recommend that everyone (especially educators in Tennessee) read post haste. There, he raises a number of questions about how we think about the phenomenon, widespread in higher education today,…
Read MoreThis is the second installment in my How It Will Go series, documenting the regularity of students’ responses to certain figures/texts and, in the occasional rare instance that it happens, noting whatever variations I witness. Today’s episode: W.E.B. Du Bois on “The Conservation of Races” Context in which I teach this figure/text: I usually teach…
Read MoreI’m starting a new series on this blog today, which I’ve named How It Will Go (hereafter, HIWG). In each installment, I will anticipate how teaching a particular figure or text will go in my class, based on patterns that I’ve seen previously. If something unusual or noteworthy happens, I’ll report back on it, but I…
Read MoreThis is the third installment of my series How It Will Go, documenting the regularity of students’ responses to certain figures/texts and, in the occasional rare instance that it happens, noting whatever variations I witness. Today’s episode: Plato, “The Story of Gyges’ Ring,” (from The Republic) Context in which I teach this figure/text: I begin…
Read MoreThis is the fourth installment of my series How It Will Go, documenting the regularity of students’ responses to certain figures/texts and, in the occasional rare instance that it happens, noting whatever variations I witness. Today’s episode: Karl Marx on “Estranged Labor” from the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 Context in which I teach this…
Read MoreJust a random”Philosophy pedagogy” insight today: I’m teaching three sections of a course entitled “Contemporary Moral Problems” at Christian Brothers University this term, which is more or less CBU’s version of “Intro to Ethics.” As I’ve done in all of my past Ethics courses, I spend the second day of class leading students through a…
Read MoreMany of you have probably seen the excellent “Ferguson Syllabus” created by Sociologists for Justice, which has been circulated widely over the last several days and which provides a collection of research articles used to inform the arguments and positions represented in their Statement on Ferguson. I strongly encourage you to keep circulating that document, and…
Read MoreThe blogosphere has been all abuzz with commentary on the merits and demerits of “trigger warnings” (henceforth, TWs) of late, which has sparked an interesting conversation not only about what sorts of norms we ought to strive for in the Academy but also how we can or ought police those norms. With regard to TWs…
Read MoreOnce again this semester, I assigned short-film projects to the students in my Existentialism course. And once again, the products of that assignment (which I only just finished grading) were amazing. I’ve employed this assignment in select courses for the last several years and each year the students’ films have gotten more and more impressive. …
Read MoreLet me be clear at the outset: when I say that tolerance is not a virtue, I’m saying that as a philosopher for whom virtue has a conceptually substantive meaning. I do not mean to imply that tolerance is a vice, a claim to which I think no reasonable moral agent, and no philosopher worth…
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