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Courses Taught at Connecticut College
PHI 229: Bioethics (Spring 2017) [Syllabus] Course description: This course offers an introduction to contemporary issues in bioethics. In this course, those issues will largely concern whether, when, and how to bring about, extend, and end human lives. We will focus primarily on questions that arise at, and in between, the margins of life. We begin the course, in our first unit, with ethical issues that surround the beginning of life. Some of the questions we will ask in this unit include: Is abortion morally permissible? Does the issue of whether or not abortion is morally permissible hinge on whether or not fetuses are people, or on something else? Is it permissible to pay women to carry another person's child? Can we harm future people by bringing them into existence? Can it ever be immoral to have children? In our second unit, we will turn to ethical issues that concern how to treat and value the human lives that are here. Some of these questions concern extending human lives: How should we allocate scarce medical resources to needy patients? Should we be able to buy and sell human organs? Other questions in this second unit concern the doctor-patient relationship: Do healthcare providers have an obligation to tell their patients the truth, or to perform services they believe to be immoral? Are there limits to what patients can choose to have done to themselves? Finally, in our third unit, we turn to questions that concern the end of life. Is there an important difference between killing and letting die? Is it ever morally permissible for individuals to end their own lives? Can we make decisions about end-of-life care for our future selves, even when those future selves may be quite different from our present selves? PHI 265: The Ethics and Epistemology of Stereotypes (Fall 2016) [Syllabus] Course description: In this course, we will examine epistemological and ethical questions surrounding stereotypes and the forms of prejudice to which stereotypes can give rise. (We will focus, in particular, on stereotypes and prejudices concerning race). Epistemological questions about stereotypes and prejudice largely concern their psychological status. Some of these questions include: How do stereotypes and prejudices take root in our minds? How might language affect the development of stereotypes and prejudice? How can we know about, and try to regulate, the stereotypes and prejudices we hold, if, as many social psychologists suggest, these are often largely unconscious and relatively automatic? How do the stereotypes we have about certain social groups (including racial groups) impact the ways in which we form beliefs and gain knowledge from the testimony of members of those groups? Ethical questions about stereotypes and prejudice concern their moral status. For example: What, if anything, is morally problematic about stereotyping, as such? What is (individual) racism, and what makes it morally problematic? Can it ever be morally justifiable to treat people in certain ways on the basis of stereotypes about their social-group membership? (For example, can racial profiling be morally justifiable?) What, if anything, is morally problematic about forms of humor that exploit stereotypes and prejudicial attitudes? Past Courses (at Connecticut College) PHI 202: History of Modern Philosophy [Syllabus] PHI 330i: Major Texts: David Hume [Syllabus] |
Teaching Experience at U.C. Berkeley
As Primary Instructor Early Modern Philosophy, Summer 2012 Early Modern Philosophy, Summer 2011 As Graduate Student Instructor (* = upper-level course) Ancient Philosophy, Richard Lawrence, Summer 2015 * Aesthetics, Alva Noë, Summer 2014 Early Modern Philosophy, Hannah Ginsborg, Spring 2014 * Ethical Theories, R. Jay Wallace, Spring 2013 * Plato, Klaus Corcilius, Fall 2012 Early Modern Philosophy, Barry Stroud, Spring 2011 * Theory of Knowledge, Sherrilyn Roush, Fall 2010 Ancient Philosophy, Vanessa de Harven, Summer 2010 * Hume, Barry Stroud, Spring 2010 Nature of Mind, Geoffrey Lee, Fall 2009 Knowledge and Its Limits, Stanley Chen, Summer 2009 Early Modern Philosophy, Hannah Ginsborg, Spring 2009 * Free Will (Philosophical Methods), Lara Buchak, Fall 2008 * Hume, Josef Moural, Summer 2008 Early Modern Philosophy, Hannah Ginsborg, Spring 2008 Individual Morality and Social Justice, Niko Kolodny, Fall 2007 Teaching Awards (at U.C. Berkeley) In 2013, I won the university-wide Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, awarded to less than 10 percent of Berkeley GSIs. In 2013, I also won the university-wide Teaching Effectiveness Award, which recognizes pedagogical innovation. |