Current Offerings

FALL 2024

Race, Sexuality, and the Body

PHIL 5050 | Dr. Sonya Ramsey | Thursdays 5:30–8:15pm [online]

This course examines how biological, historical, and cultural interpretations of race and gender influenced and characterized definitions of sexuality and body image among Black, White, Indigenous people, and Persons of Color. Discussion topics include the scientific and historical descriptions of the racialized body; the impact of race upon historical and cultural representations of beauty, racialized concepts of masculinity and femininity, the queer experience; and the politicization of the human body as it relates to violence, activism, popular culture, labor, and relationships.

Feminist Methods

PHIL 5180 | Dr. Paula Landerreche Cardillo | Tuesdays 5:30–8:15pm

In this interdisciplinary course we will examine feminist work as feminist method. We will begin by reading feminist perspectives on the relationship between theory and practice and we will then examine different ways of bridging theory and practice through methods such as consciousness raising, self-narration, poetic creation, protest, re-reading the archive, among others. Throughout the course we will examine how different feminist methods become responses to different axes of oppression such as sexism, racism, ableism and imperialism.

Approaches to the Study of Religion

PHIL 6050 | Dr. Kent Brintnall | Mondays 5:30–8:15pm

Through a careful reading of classic and recent book-length works in the field of religious studies, this course will help students understand how to engage in the academic study of religion, including how to think about the work the category “religion” does and how “religion” shapes experiences of race, gender, sexuality, and class. Attention will be given to students’ development and pursuit of research questions and projects.

Philosophical Methods and Analysis

PHIL 6120 | Dr. Ruth Groenhout | Mondays 2:30–5:15pm

This course is an introduction to the various methods of doing philosophy, examining both the various philosophical traditions as well as the reading and writing skills necessary for success in a philosophy graduate program. Because the MA program at UNC Charlotte is an Applied Philosophy program, the focus of this class will be on methodologically different approaches to various applied issues in philosophy, focusing on issues of identity, agency, and selfhood. We begin with historical approaches, move to the analytic/continental divide, and conclude with alternative approaches that fall outside these three major categories.

Ethics of Public Policy

PHIL 6250 | Dr. Gordon Hull | Wednesdays 12:20–3:05pm

In many ways, modern policymaking might appear to be a technical matter, concerned with scientifically or economically provable matters of administration. Aside from local conflict of interest concerns, cases of inappropriate employee conduct, and compliance with statutory law, ethics might appear to be irrelevant. That appearance is an illusion, and the primary goal of this course is to think about how policy decisions, even at a micro level, are deeply value-laden. Even the decision to pursue economic efficiency – the central move in the modern welfare economics that dominates policymaking circles – is itself a decision with moral implications.

Latin American and Caribbean Thought

PHIL 6300 | Dr. David Dalton | Tuesdays 6:30–9:10pm

When it was named, America represented the new world. In the early twentieth century, after a decade of Independence movements, a new wave of Americanism swept the region as it sought to define itself vis a vis the emerging colonial power of North America. In this seminar we will begin with a discussion of the privileged role that writing has traditionally played in defining Latin American identity. From there, we will explore how an array of thinkers have grappled with the region’s troubled colonial history and imagined alternatives to societal conditions that divide people by race, gender, sexuality, and social class.

Master’s Research Paper

PHIL 6999 | Dr. Lisa Rasmussen | Wednesdays 3:15–6:00pm

Students begin with a previously submitted course paper and spend the semester revising it. The goal is for each student to produce a polished, professional paper worthy of submission to a philosophical journal. Additional reading and research on the topic is conducted, and multiple steps of revision and presentation of work in progress to the class are included.