Recent Offerings

FALL 2023

Caribbean Philosophy

PHIL 5050-001 | Dr. Eddy Souffrant | Mondays 2:30–5:15pm

We shall consider the nature of Caribbean Philosophy and explore its critical and expansive aspects with the works of Cesaire, Conde, Fanon, Glissant, Price-Mars, Scott, Trouillot, and Wynter.

Black Aesthetics

PHIL 5050-002 | Dr. Michael Kelly | online asynchronous

Aesthetics (critical imagining, making, and thinking about art, culture, design, everyday life, and nature) is as old as philosophy, but Black aesthetics typically has not been recognized as part of the modern history of aesthetics because of anti-Black racism. Some of the most creative philosophical as well as political developments in modern and contemporary aesthetics are to be found within the history of Black aesthetics.

Feminist Methods

PHIL 5180 | Dr. Kelsey Walker | Mondays 5:30–8:15pm [online]

Feminist Methods takes as its primary concern the relation between theory and practice. Specifically, in the first half of the class, we consider some of the central concepts and questions that arise from feminist theory, starting from women of color and queer feminist theory. In the second half of the class, we consider how we ought to engage in feminism as a method, thinking specifically about research and pedagogy from marginalized positions.

Philosophical Methods and Analysis

PHIL 6120 | Dr. Ruth Groenhout | Wednesdays 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.

Theories of Resistance

PHIL 6602 | Dr. Maria Labbato | Wednesdays 5:30–8:15pm [online]

Taking as its starting point the conception of “being human” in decolonial theory, we examine the relation between dominant conceptions of the political subject and structures of knowledge production, as well as the impact such conceptions have in the contemporary context. Doing so provides a framework for theorizing the tools necessary for resisting dominant and oppressive structures (impacting intersections of embodiment, sexuality, gender, and race) that operate through a process of dehumanization.

Master’s Research Paper

PHIL 6999 | Dr. Gordon Hull | Wednesdays 12:15–3:00pm

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.

Spring 2023

Alain Locke – Philosopher of the Harlem Renaissance

PHIL 5050 — 001 | T/Th 1:00-2:15pm | Dr. Pearce

This course is a deep dive into the philosophy of Alain LeRoy Locke, most famous as editor of The New Negro (1925), which collected the work of writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance. After spending the first third of the class learning about Locke’s intellectual background, we will read most of his philosophical work.

Queer/Trans Latinx Studies

PHIL 5050 – 002 | W 2:30-5:15pm | Dr. Pitts

This course offers a survey of several major philosophical trajectories within U.S.-based queer and trans Latinx studies, including analyses of desire, selfhood, coalition building, aesthetics, embodiment, land-based politics, transnational borders, and historiography, with a focus on knowledge-building praxes.

Mysticism|Pornography|Subjectivity

PHIL 5050-090 | T 5:30-8:15pm | Dr. Brintnall

Why do writers who attempt to record religious and erotic experiences so frequently appeal to the category of the inexpressible? Why are such experiences so frequently understood as disturbing to the fixity and coherence of the self? We will explore these questions through a reading of mystical texts, pornographic novels, and literary theory.

Disability, Technology, and Artificial Intelligence

PHIL 5050-091 | Th 5:30-8:15pm | Dr. Williams

Why do facial recognition systems have problems with certain features and movements? Why can’t autonomous vehicles recognize wheelchair users? Why do some people think there’s a “right kind” of mind or body? In this course, we will seek the origins of these and other questions, and how the answers can have life or death results.

Theories of Resistance

PHIL 6050-091 | W 5:30-8:15pm | Dr. Paquette

In this course, we consider the ways in which cartography and archives broadly construed operate either as perpetuating dominant structures, or as creating resistant terrains. Specifically, we consider the ways in which identity and place are co-constituted through conceptions of what it means to be human and various kinds of relations. With these tools in hand, we will critically interrogate the spaces and places through which we move, collectively and individually, and how we participate in the construction of these spaces, or resist them. Finally, we question the role monuments serve in maintaining or resisting the construction of spaces and identities. We will focus on the works of Katherine McKittrick, C. Riley Snorton, and Tiffany Lethabo King.

Ethical Theory

PHIL 6110-001 | M 4:00-6:45pm | Dr. Souffrant

Examination of major normative and meta theories that undergird our practical judgments about morally right actions and morally good persons, organizations, or policies. This examination may include central problems and issues concerning morality’s: requirements (e.g., utility, duty, virtue, care), authority (e.g., absolutism, relativism, pluralism, multiculturalism), scope (e.g., deceased or future human beings, animals, environment), justification (e.g., rationality, intuition), source (e.g., reason, sentiment, disagreement), and nature (e.g., realism/antirealism, objectivity/subjectivity).

Feminist Theory and its Applications

PHIL 6320-091 | Th 5:30-8:15pm | Dr. Ergun

This course is an interdisciplinary, intersectional, and transnational survey of the diverse body of feminist theories that analyze gender as a performative social construct in its intersections with other structures of power such as race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, nationality, ability, and religion. Conceptualizing feminism as a plural and heterogeneous political platform, the course examines the significant conversations and debates in contemporary feminist theory. Students will have the opportunity to engage with both foundational and cutting-edge works by a transnational body of feminist thinkers, analyze the complex theoretical perspectives they propose, discuss the commonalities and differences between them, and situate them within a wider social/historical/intellectual terrain.

Fall 2022

Africana Philosophy

PHIL 5050-002 | Eddy Souffrant | Tuesdays 2:30 – 5:15 PM F2F

The African, and later the African American, experience is silenced in the abstractions of the modern European and Euro-American philosophy. This class explores with the help of some of the works of writers ranging from DuBois, Glaude, Hartman, Sharpe, Trouillot, Wiredu, to Wynter, the bases of that silence. We shall also consider the ramifications of our exploration for our contemporary social and political philosophy.

Indigenous Feminisms

PHIL 5050-003 | Elisabeth Paquette | Wednesdays 2:30 – 5:15 PM F2F

The course focuses on Indigenous feminist writings that both aim toward a constructive project of maintaining and respecting indigenous ways of life and that seek to address the detrimental consequences of U.S. and Canadian settler colonialism.

Ethics after Auschwitz

PHIL 5050-090 | Martin Shuster | Wednesdays 5:30 – 8:15PM F2F

This course will center around what it means to “go on”—to live and function—as an ethical agent and as a human being in a world “after Auschwitz,” taken expansively to refer to an entire century of genocides, mass murder, extreme violence, and depredation. Throughout the course, we will focus on the ways in which various thinkers have assessed, responded to, and ultimately understood Western modernity after a century of mass murder, what they claim it revealed about humanity and society, and especially what it suggests for or proposes about our future. Some of the topics we may consider include racism, antisemitism, imperialism, and colonialism, and how these variously relate to genocidal violence, thinking especially about whether genocidal impulses continue to be found in present day institutions and forms of agency. Some of the figures we may read include Theodor W. Adorno, Cedric Robinson, Hannah Arendt, Aimé Césaire, Emmanuel Levinas, and others.

Feminist Methods

PHIL 6050-090 | Elisabeth Paquette | Mondays 5:30 – 8:15 PM F2F

This course offers a survey of the various forms of feminist methodologies that have existed historically, and continue to impact the sphere of feminist methodologies today. Not only will this course seek to understand the experiences of race, gender, sexuality, but it will also seek to expand a framework to account for a multiplicity of systems of oppression, such as ableism, xenophobia, and settler colonialism. Also, this course will complicate understandings of these various systems, of the ways in which they compound and intersect. Finally, we will consider how we are to be accountable to the communities we seek to engage with textually, and how we ought to develop our political and philosophical commitments when doing this work.

Philosophical Methods and Analysis

PHIL 6120-001 | Ruth Groenhout | Thursdays, 2:30 – 5:15 PM F2F

Ethics of Public Policy

PHIL 6250-001 | Gordon Hull | Wednesdays 11:15 – 2:00 PM F2F

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. In this course, we will use an extended case study – intellectual property (IP) law – to pursue the ways in which public policies both express and advance some sets of values over others. The course combines theoretical reading (some of it classic moral philosophy: Mill, Locke and Kant) with current literature developing that theory as it applies to IP. Why IP? IP turns out to be one of the more complicated areas of national policy, and one with tremendously far-reaching implications: there is a truth to statements like “copyright policy is cultural policy” or “patent policy is science policy.”

Master’s Research Paper

PHIL 6999-001 | Lisa Rasmussen | Tuesdays 11:30 – 2:15 PM F2F

Spring 2022

Twentieth-Century Philosophy

PHIL 5050.001 | Dr. Michael Kelly | (100% online, asynchronous learning)

The twentieth century was as rich in philosophy as it was in art, science, and history: phenomenology, existentialism, analytic philosophy, logical positivism, pragmatism, ordinary-language philosophy, feminism, critical theory, hermeneutics, critical race theory, deconstruction, queer theory, etc. One way to introduce you to as many of these types of philosophy as possible is to focus on texts that highlight the similarities as well as differences among them and to discuss issues that do the same. This course will complement many other courses in the department, including Knowledge & Reality, Ethical Theory, Modern Philosophy, and Social Political Philosophy, as well as Aesthetics, Feminism, Philosophy of Language, and others.

Truth and Power in Artificial Intelligence

PHIL 5050.002 | Dr. Gordon Hull | Wednesday 12:20–3:05PM (face-to-face)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is often touted as revolutionary in fields ranging from healthcare to transportation. However, AI algorithms are always deployed both as part of sociotechnical systems and into existing social and political contexts. For this reason, the actual effects of AI systems depend on a complex series of interactions, and often have little to do with simplistic promises of revolutionary change. Work in AI “ethics” thus needs to be supplemented by work on the political economy of AI as well as how it is implicated in relations of social knowledge and power. In this course we will study critical theoretical literature on AI systems to better understand these relations, with attention to specific AI deployments such as natural language processing and specific issues such as fairness

Queer Theory

PHIL 5050.090 | Dr. Kent Brintnall | Tuesday 5:30–8:15PM (face-to-face)

Introduction to key issues in queer theory, a field of studies that questions and redefines the identity politics of early lesbian and gay studies by investigating the socially constructed nature of identity and sexuality and critiquing normalizing ways of knowing and being.

Body Politics

PHIL 6050.091 | Dr. Christine Davis | Thursday 5:30–8:15PM (face-to-face)

Body politics—a term that reflects Foucault’s concept of biopower, Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics, Haraway’s concept of ‘making monstrous,’ Kind Watts’s concept of ‘zombification of bodies of color,’ and Butler’s concept of ‘ungrievability’—refers to the use of bodies as sites of power, or, conversely, of powerlessness. There are a myriad of ways we use our bodies to gain power: through beauty and body adornment, exercise and fitness routines, offering and withholding sex, and coercion and violence, for example. There are also a myriad of ways we use others’ bodies against them, to take power away from them: persuading them their bodies need the purchase of cosmetics, adornment, diets, and exercise programs to be good enough; racist, sexist, and ageist aggressions and microaggressions; laws against abortion, family planning, and certain sexual acts; refugee and immigration restrictions; racial lynchings; deaths of refugees and migrants at the border; hate crimes; and violence against black people, people of color, and LGBTQIA people. for example. This class will use critical theories to examine the practical implications of body politics. We will look at the ways in which bodies are illegitimized, Othered, marginalized, dismissed, and discarded.

Ethical Theory

PHIL 6110.001 | Dr. Eddy Souffrant | Tuesday 2:30-5:15PM (100% online, synchronous learning)

The course is an introductory course in Moral Philosophy. Some of you asked that this course be a combination of historical perspectives and contemporary theories. We shall thus try to familiarize ourselves with some of the trends in concepts and normative theories of Morality. We shall examine a version of the historical perspective of the field by way of the works of two ancient philosophers, two modern pillars of the field. I shall however introduce us to some contemporary writers to complement the historical work with in-class lectures. The works read in this class will survey in rough terms the major constituents of the area of morality. The course also aims to demonstrate how metaphysics, self-awareness/identity, our common nature, and universal/objective extrapolations combine with the social component that constitutes our humanity (our appurtenance to our various communities), to help inform the many moral theories we have inherited and have come to adopt. We shall also study the manner in which the theories (a) help our determination of the morality of acts, (b) would shape our moral character, and ultimately (c) guide our moral behaviors. The fundamental import of the course however, will be to identify the nature of the arguments that support the moral theories and the practice of Ethics. Our long-term objective will consist in enabling the student to distinguish between Deontological, Virtue, Intuitive, and Teleological theories.

Research Ethics in the Biological and Behaviorial Sciences

PHIL 6240.001 | Dr. Lisa Rasmussen | Thursday 1:00-3:45PM (face-to-face)

Designed to identify the fundamental elements that characterize not only methodologically grounded but also morally appropriate scientific research. Class discussion and readings focus on key issues in biological and behavioral research including informed consent, privacy and confidentiality, risk-benefit assessments, mechanisms for protecting animal and human research subjects, international research, vulnerable populations, conflicts of interest and data management, publication ethics, intellectual property issues and the politics of research.

Feminist Theory and Its Applications

PHIL 6320.090 | Dr. Elisabeth Paquette | Wednesday 6:00-8:45PM (face-to-face)

This course examines rich intellectual engagements with sexuality and gender across the Caribbean, including their emergence in discourses of colonization, decolonization, and resistance. The course is organized around four themes: diaspora, language, creolization, and futurity. Specifically, we consider how conceptions of queer, or queering, are part of Caribbean resistance narratives. This course is organized around these various themes and concepts, rather than linguistic-specific regions (ex. French, English, Spanish).

FALL 2021

Aesthetics

PHIL 5050.002 | Dr. Michael Kelly | (100% online, asynchronous learning)

‘Aesthetics’ is as old as philosophy, though its modern disciplinary form emerged in the 18th century. After discussing some classical modern texts, we’ll focus on Black Aesthetics, which has a long history but which has taken on a new vibrancy and relevance in the last few years. What is Black Aesthetics, a question that philosophers, artists, and others answer in many different, mostly complementary ways? Black Aesthetics entails a critique of modern aesthetics because of the racism (colonialism and sexism) in its conceptual foundations. Is it also a new form or mode of doing aesthetics? Might this new form also be an invitation and a challenge to the rest of contemporary aesthetics to rethink what it’s doing and thinking? We’ll read Hume, Kant, Gikandi, Douglass, Du Bois, Davis, Morrison, Baraka, Lorde, Taylor, and more.

Caribbean Philosophy

PHIL 5050.001 | Dr. Eddy Souffrant | Monday 2:30–5:15PM (100% online, including some synchronous learning)

We shall consider the nature of Caribbean Philosophy and explore its critical and expansive aspects with the works of Aimé Césaire, Maryse Condé, Frantz Fanon, Édouard Glissant, Jean Price-Mars, David Scott, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, and Sylvia Wynter.

Religious Experience

PHIL 5050.090| Dr. Will Sherman | Monday 5:30–8:15PM (face-to-face)

How are we to understand accounts of extraordinary dreams, visions of angels, out of body sensations, and other religious experiences that may seem bizarre and impossible? This question has motivated a number of philosophers and scholars of religion, and the concept of “religious experience” has been central to a debate about how we define and think about religion. This course will introduce us to a number of approaches to religious experience: William James’s pragmatism, phenomenology from Merleau-Ponty to Sara Ahmed, literary approaches, neuroscientific explanations, and historical critiques of the very notion of experience. Along the way, we will encounter a wide array of narratives of religious experiences, ranging from medieval mystical visions to contemporary sightings of UFOs.

Biopsychosocial Health

PHIL 6050.091 | Dr. Shannon Sullivan | Tuesday 1:00–3:45PM (face-to-face)

How is human health transactionally constituted by biological, psychological, and social factors? “Transactional” here means that the bio, the psycho, and the social of biopsychosocial health are not separate and additive, but instead co-constitute each other in dynamic ways. This course will examine these questions both philosophically and empirically/psychologically. It will be team-taught (with Dr. Jeanette Bennett of the Department of Psychological Science) and cross-listed with the PhD program in Health Psychology. The course will examine empirical and applied research pertaining to the promotion and maintenance of health, the prevention and treatment of illness, and the examination of health behaviors. We will focus particularly on the impact of stress on health. Throughout the course, we also will ask meta-questions about what counts as “good health” and how, for example, that concept often is implicitly shaped by social dynamics related to white privilege, male privilege, and class privilege. While the empirical readings will emphasize the biological underpinnings of health, students in PHIL 6050 are not expected to be or to become experts in analyzing or conducting empirical studies on health, as Health Psychology students might be. The assignments for PHIL 6050 students will include an in-class presentation and leading discussion on the day’s readings, plus a final term paper in which each student researches philosophically a health-related topic with the benefit of their new understanding of empirical studies related to biopsychosocial health.

Theories of Resistance

PHIL 6050.002 | Dr. Elisabeth Paquette | Tuesday 5:30–8:15PM (100% online, including some synchronous learning)

Taking as its starting point the conception of “being human” developed in the work of decolonial theorist Sylvia Wynter, we examine the relation between dominant conceptions of the political subject-human and structures of knowledge production, as well as the impact such conceptions have in the contemporary context. Doing so provides a framework for theorizing the tools necessary for resisting dominant and oppressive structures that operate through a process of dehumanization. We will also consider the ways in which cartography and archives broadly construed operate either as perpetuating dominant structures, or as creating resistant terrains in the works of Katherine McKittrick, C. Riley Snorton, and Tiffany Lethabo King respectively. The course culminates in the development of a collective and nuanced account of Wynter’s conception of ceremony, as the foundation for liberation in the 21st century.

Philosophical Methods & Analysis

PHIL 6120.001 | Dr. Ruth Groenhout | Monday 2:30–5:15PM (hybrid)

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 significantly different approaches to various applied issues in philosophy, beginning with historical approaches, the analytic/continental divide, and concluding with alternative approaches that fall outside these three major categories. Members of the department will also visit the class, to introduce their approaches to these various methods as well as their analysis of specific issues in topics such as health care ethics, feminist theory, Africana philosophy and other prominent approaches.

Feminist Theory and Its Applications

PHIL 6320.001 · Dr. Emek Ergun · Wednesday 5:30–8:15 (100% online, including some synchronous learning)

This graduate-level course is an interdisciplinary and transnational survey of the diverse body of feminist theories that analyze gender as a performative social construct in its intersections with other structures of power such as race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, nationality, ability, and religion. That is, our examination of gender takes a relational and intersectional approach. Conceptualizing feminism as a plural and heterogeneous political platform, the course examines the significant conversations and debates in contemporary feminist theory. Students engage with foundational and cutting-edge works by a transnational body of feminist thinkers, analyze the theoretical perspectives they propose, discuss the commonalities and differences between them, and situate them within a wider social/historical/intellectual terrain. The readings are not always in agreement with each other, but they are drawn together by their joint search for answers to the causes and consequences of gender differences, hierarchies, inequalities, and injustices. Throughout the course, we will consider the relationships between feminist theories, contemporary women’s movements, and other political movements. We will also examine our own assumptions, those of the theorists, the explanatory power and limits of their perspectives, and the relationship between feminist thought and practice. Following the organization of our textbook, Feminist Theory Reader, which will be supplemented by some outside readings, the course is divided into four thematic units: (1) Theorizing Feminist Times and Spaces; (2) Theorizing Intersectionality and Difference; (3) Theorizing Feminist Knowledge and Agency; (4) Imagining Otherwise / Solidarity Reconsidered.

Master’s Research Paper

PHIL 6999.001 | Dr. Gordon Hull | Wednesday 12:30–3:15PM (100% online, including some synchronous learning)

SPRING 2021

Philosophy and Pop Culture

PHIL 5050 | Dr. Robin James | Wednesdays 5:30-8:15PM (100% online, including some synchronous learning)

This class is the meeting point of philosophy and media studies, pop music studies, visual culture studies, food studies, material culture studies, and other disciplines that study pop culture’s various dimensions. Though Western philosophers often like to establish philosophy’s elite status by defining it against vernacular practices, in this course we will study pop culture objects, practices, and discourses as modes of doing philosophy. Taking our cue from theorists such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Alexander G. Weheliye, and Denise Ferreira da Silva, we will treat traditional philosophical text and pop cultural texts as varieties of theoretical media that can be mixed, combined, and refracted through one another. We’ll consider the philosophical question of what pop culture even is and how the category intersects with other systems of social value, and other philosophical questions as they are worked through in screen media, music, sports, fashion, etc. Students will have the opportunity to solidify their grounding in the non-philosophy discipline that studies their primary area of pop culture interest, such as one of those fields listed in the first sentence.

Indigenous Feminisms

PHIL 5050 | Dr. Elisabeth Paquette | Wednesdays 2:30-5:15PM (100% online, including some synchronous learning)

The course focuses on Indigenous feminist writings that both aim toward a constructive project of maintaining and respecting Indigenous ways of life, and that seek to address the detrimental consequences of U.S. and Canadian settler colonialism. We begin with a theoretical analysis of key concepts such as settler colonialism, Indigeneity, gender, and institutional racism. Using these key concepts, we then examine present-day colonial formations located through state-sponsored child and family welfare services, patterns of incarceration, high rates of sexual violence, and the displacement of Indigenous peoples from their traditional lands. Lastly, we examine state-based efforts to address the needs of Indigenous communities, and collective strategies of resistance practiced by Indigenous women.

Nietzsche

PHIL 5050 | Dr. Michael Kelly | (100% online, asynchronous learning)

Friedrich Nietzsche, a 19th-century German philosopher (1844-1900), is known for his genealogical method (tracing the origins of concepts, beliefs) and controversial ideas about morality (art, etc.). How are his method and ideas interconnected in the development of his philosophy? And are they relevant today? After focusing on original texts, we’ll examine some contemporary interpretations of Nietzsche.

Theories of Resistance

PHIL 6050 | Dr. Elisabeth Paquette | Mondays 5:30-8:15PM (100% online, including some synchronous learning)

Latina/x Feminist Philosophy

PHIL 6050 | Dr. Andrea Pitts | Thursdays 5:30-8:15PM (100% online, including some synchronous learning)

U.S.-based Latina/x feminist writers have explored diverse political, epistemological, ethical, historiographical, and aesthetic themes, including topics within interdisciplinary areas such as Indigenous studies, disability studies, decolonial theory, queer theory, trans studies, healthcare justice, and Marxist critique. This course traces historical and recent work by Latina/x feminists, beginning with writings by women activists of the 1970s in the Chicano Rights Movement and the Young Lords. We will also read selections from new works by authors such as Francisco J. Galarte, Johanna Fernández, Linda Martín Alcoff, and two recent edited collections on Chicana feminist activism and Latina/x and Latin American feminist philosophy.

Ethical Theory

PHIL 6110 | Dr. Eddy Souffrant | Tuesdays 2:30-5:15PM (100% online, including some synchronous learning)

The course will combine a survey component with the study of One to Three contemporary figures in moral philosophy. The survey part will provide an account of the historical development in the field and the contemporary figures will extend our understanding of deontology, consequentialism and/or the ethics of care.

Fall 2020

Philosophy of Education

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Mark Sanders · Tuesday & Thursday, 11:30-12:45

This class will explore the philosophy of education theories of John Dewey and approaches to education that take into account the problems faced by America’s schools, including the effect of race, class, and gender on school culture. It will also look specifically at the role that philosophy can and should play in education. Class members will work in groups to put together a Philosophy lesson plan and go to a high school class to lead the class through the lesson plan. (Face-to-Face / Hybrid)

Theories of Neoliberalism

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Robin James · Monday, 5:30-8:15

Though people often dismiss “neoliberalism” as a term that has been overused to the point of meaninglessness, it really does have a precise meaning: neoliberalism is the overlapping set of ideologies and practices that aim to transform everything, especially traditionally non-economic activities like friendship, into private markets. In this class, we examine scholarship across philosophy, political theory, feminist/queer/critical race theory, and popular music and popular culture that defines what neoliberalism is, explores why it is harmful, and identifies alternatives and ways to resist it. The course will focus primarily on two kinds of neoliberalism: the ones Foucault talks about in his 1970s lecture courses, which rely on probabilist models of the market, and the speculative ones used by contemporary finance capitalism. We will read authors such as Lisa Adkins, Melinda Cooper, Dale Chapman, Kara Keeling, Adam Kotsko, and Lester Spence. (100% online)

Caribbean Philosophy

PHIL 6050 · Dr. Eddy Souffrant · Tuesday, 2:30-5:15

Biopsychosocial Health

PHIL 6050 · Dr. Shannon Sullivan · Monday, 12:20-3:00

Philosophical Methods & Analysis

PHIL 6120 · Dr. Ruth Groenhout · Thursday, 2:30-5:15

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 significantly different approaches to various applied issues in philosophy, beginning with historical approaches, the analytic/continental divide, and concluding with alternative approaches that fall outside these three major categories. Members of the department will also visit the class, to introduce their approaches to these various methods as well as their analysis of specific issues in topics such as health care ethics, feminist theory, Africana philosophy and other prominent approaches. (Face-to-Face / Hybrid [100% online option available])

Ethics of Public Policy

PHIL 6250 · Dr. Gordon Hull · Thursday, 10:00-12:45

Feminist Theory and Its Applications

PHIL 6320 · Dr. Emek Ergun · Wednesday, 5:30-8:15

This course is a seminar that focuses on two themes or subfields in feminist theory. The first theme is political philosophy and political economy. We will study feminist analyses of private property. These analyses touch on key issues in feminist theory, such as: personhood, the public/private distinction, consent, marriage, work, neoliberalism, and race. The second theme focuses on feminist and queer methods in the discipline of sound studies, and touches on many of the same issues as the first theme. Students will do a literature review of recent research in feminist theory on a topic closely related to their own research interests, and will write a seminar paper addressing course material. (Face-to-Face / Hybrid)

Master’s Research Paper

PHIL 6999 · Dr. Lisa Rasmussen · Wednesday, 2:30-5:15

Spring 2020

Theories of Resistance

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Elisabeth Paquette · Monday, 5:30-8:15

This course takes as its starting point the conceptions of “being human” developed in the work of decolonial theorist Sylvia Wynter. Beginning with her decolonial project, we examine the relation between dominant conceptions of the political subject-human and structures of knowledge production, as well as the impact such conceptions have in the contemporary context. Doing so provides a framework for theorizing the tools necessary for resisting dominant and oppressive structures. For instance, we consider the implications of Wynter’s conception of “epistemic disobedience,” as well as her conception of the “disenchantment of discourses,” for the production of counter narratives by women of color writers. We will also consider the ways in which “mapping” and cartography broadly construed operate as perpetuating dominant structures, or as creating resistant terrains. Other figures of study include Katherine McKittrick, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Suzanne Césaire, Monique Wittig, Maria Lugones, and Mishuana Goeman.

Mark Jordan

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Kent Brintnall · Monday, 5:30-8:15

This course will consider the work of Mark Jordan, a preeminent queer theologian, ethicist, and historian of Christianity whose work examines sexuality, gender, Catholicism, the writings of Michel Foucualt, and gay male cultural production. Jordan will be the Witherspoon lecturer (Department of Religious Studies) during the spring semester and will attend at least one session of the seminar sharing yet-to-be-published work.

Existentialism

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Phillip McReynolds · Tuesday, 11:30-12:45

The goal of this course is to introduce students to French existentialism and to help them understand the historical and political circumstances in Paris following WWII that helped give birth to French existential philosophy. Coined by Jean-Paul Sartre in the 1940s, the term ‘existentialism’ fundamentally—and somewhat infamously—means that existence precedes essence. Human beings create the “essence” of humanity in and through their choices; there is no natural or God-given form of humanity to which they must conform. Thus, human freedom and responsibility, which often are accompanied by bad faith as people avoid their freedom, are central components of human existence. Co-developed by Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and critically modified by Franz Fanon and Albert Camus, French existentialism influenced many philosophers, scholars, and artists in the 20th century and continues to be an important and influential theory today. (This course has a spring break study abroad component in Paris.)

Pragmatism

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Phillip McReynolds · Tuesday, 2:30-5:15

This class will introduce students to the diverse philosophical field known as American Pragmatism. We will spend the first half of the course reading primary texts from three of the tradition’s founders, Charles S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. In the second half of the course we will examine the influence and extent of pragmatism through (mostly) contemporary readings in neo-pragmatism, feminist pragmatism, environmental pragmatism, pragmatism and critical race theory, and related areas. (This course has a required study abroad component in Paris.)

Religious Experience

PHIL 5050 · Dr. William Sherman · Tuesday, 5:30-8:15

When a friend tells you of a dream—or describes a mystical feeling, a vision, or a drug trip that they had—what do you make of that? This course examines different approaches to narratives of religious experience in order to practice how we, in our capacity as scholars, may use these narratives to understand religion in society in critical and reflexive ways. We will consider a range of literary, historical, psychological, and phenomenological approaches and examine accounts of “religious experience” that range from medieval mystical poetry to contemporary narratives of UFOs.

Africana Philosophy

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Eddy Souffrant · Wednesday, 2:30-5:15

The African, and later the African American, experience is silenced in the abstractions of the modern European and Euro-American philosophy. The recognition of that silence by folks who have lived the modern experience even if by proxy and who, in addition, are aware of the bifurcation in the field, leads them to acknowledge that the practice of professional philosophy is wanting. This class explores with the help of Trouillot, Eze, Du Bois, Wynter, Sharpe, Condé, Mills, Wiredu, and McGary, the sources of that silence, and its ramifications for our contemporary social and political philosophy.

Queer Theory

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Kent Brintnall · Thursday, 5:30-8:15

Born out of engagements with the AIDS crisis and struggles for LGBTQ equality in the 1980s and 1990s, queer theory uses the insights of feminism, critical race theory, trans* theory, Foucault, and psychoanalysis to understand the operation of power, particularly the power of moralizing and normalization. Scholars associated with queer theory have generated some of the most incisive, trenchant, radical, and influential critiques of gender, sexual, racial, and national identity.

Ethical Theory

PHIL 6110 · Dr. Ruth Groenhout · Thursday, 2:30-5:15

This class will focus on the central ethical theories being applied to contemporary issues. It will begin with Utilitarianism, focusing on Peter Singer’s work, its popularity (in the animal rights movement), and its serious criticism (in the disability movement). The next theorist will be John Rawls and his influence in the bioethics context. The class will then move to the two most important alternative theories, virtue ethics and care ethics, working through Rosalind Hursthouse’s development of virtue ethics and Eva Kittay’s development of care ethics, examining how both thinkers offer important alternatives to both utilitarian and Rawlsian accounts of the ethical structures that should prevail in social settings.

Fall 2019

Indigenous Feminisms

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Elisabeth Paquette · Monday, 2:30-5:15

The course focuses on Indigenous feminist writings that both aim toward a constructive project of maintaining and respecting Indigenous ways of life, and that seek to address the detrimental consequences of U.S. and Canadian settler colonialism. We begin with a theoretical analysis of key concepts such as settler colonialism, Indigeneity, gender, and institutional racism. Using these key concepts, we will then examine present-day colonial formations located through state-sponsored child and family welfare services, patterns of incarceration, high rates of sexual violence, and the displacement of Indigenous peoples from their traditional lands. Lastly, we examine state-based efforts to address the needs of Indigenous communities, and collective strategies of resistance practiced by Indigenous women.

Latin American Thought

PHIL 6050 · Dr. Andrea Pitts · Tuesday, 5:30-8:15

The focus of this section of PHIL 6050 will be Queer Migration Studies. This means that we will focus on themes of movement, mobility, and displacement within the context of Latin American and Chicanx/Latinx Studies. Additionally, our analysis in the course will include issues relating to gender and sexuality through various transnational, diasporic, and hemispheric lenses to underscore the movement of forms of identification, meaning-making, and community formation across the Americas.

Philosophical Methods & Analysis

PHIL 6120 · Dr. Trevor Pearce · Wednesday, 1:25-4:10

This course is an introduction to the various methods of doing philosophy—not only to the analytical reading and writing skills you will need as a graduate student, but also to various philosophical traditions, each characterized by a certain approach to philosophical problems. Philosophy at UNC Charlotte is intertraditional, meaning that our students and faculty draw from many traditions of philosophy rather than focusing on a single approach. We will begin the class by examining three broad traditions: history of philosophy, analytic philosophy, and continental philosophy. We will then turn to several historically situated ‘methods’ used by those working in and across these traditions: pragmatism, existentialism, phenomenology, and genealogy. Finally, we will investigate a series of approaches that are prominent in our own department: applied ethics, feminism, global justice, Latinx philosophy, and Africana philosophy. Throughout the class, you will get to know your fellow first-year graduate students as well as many faculty members here, since most classes will include a visit from a specialist in the relevant approach to philosophy.

Research Ethics in Biomedical & Behavioral Sciences

PHIL 6240 · Dr. Lisa Rasmussen · Thursday, 1:00-3:45

This course is designed to identify the fundamental elements that characterize not only methodologically grounded but also morally appropriate scientific research. Class discussion and readings will focus on key issues in biomedical and behavioral research including informed consent, privacy and confidentiality, risk-benefit assessments, mechanisms for protecting animal and human research subjects, international research, vulnerable populations, conflicts of interest and data management, publication ethics, intellectual property issues and the politics of research.

Feminist Theory and Its Applications

PHIL 6320 · Dr. Elisabeth Paquette · Wednesday, 5:30-8:15

The primary concern in this course is the intersection of gender and language. Specifically, we will address how writers attempt to represent gender through the act of writing, paying particular attention to the limits of language, relations between dominant narratives and marginal feminist perspectives, and consider ways of disrupting these dominant narratives. This course begins with French feminist theorists, such as Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva and their performances of feminine écriture (feminine writing), a technique which aims to create space for women centered theories of gender through writing. However, this course also seeks to further displace problematic sex and gender categories by examining decolonial, queer, and anti-racist frameworks of analysis by such authors as Sylvia Wynter and Monique Wittig.

MA Research Paper

PHIL 6999 · Dr. Gordon Hull · Tuesday, 1:00-3:45

Spring 2019

Theories of Resistance

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Elisabeth Paquette · Wednesday, 2:30-5:15

Feminist Philosophy & Music

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Robin James · Monday, 2:30-5:15

From Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze to Toni Morrison’s novels, work in the visual arts and literature has always been central to feminist theory. Though there is a long history of feminist musicians and feminist music scholarship, such work has had less of an impact on feminist theory generally and feminist philosophy in particular. This course is designed to introduce students already familiar with feminist theory to feminist approaches to music. One aim of this course is to help students incorporate both musical observations and scholarship on music in their feminist scholarship and activism. Another is to use music as an opportunity to analyze and reflect on issues in feminist theory and activism. We will study topics such as feminism and Frankfurt School approaches to music, gender, and feminism (including Angela Davis); gender and cultural appropriation; feminist theories of the ontology and metaphysics of music, sound, and noise; voice, class, and gender destabilization in country music; sexual violence in music; and the role of black women’s voices in bystander recordings of extrajudicial killings by police.

Existentialism

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Phillip McReynolds · Tuesday, 11:30-12:45

The goal of this course is to introduce students to French existentialism and to help them understand the historical and political circumstances in Paris following WWII that helped give birth to French existential philosophy. Coined by Jean-Paul Sartre in the 1940s, the term “existentialism” fundamentally—and somewhat infamously—means that existence precedes essence. Human beings create the “essence” of humanity in and through their choices; there is no natural or God-given form of humanity to which they must conform. Thus, human freedom and responsibility, which often are accompanied by bad faith as people avoid their freedom, are central components of human existence. Co-developed by Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and critically modified by Franz Fanon and Albert Camus, French existentialism influenced many philosophers, scholars, and artists in the 20th century and continues to be an important and influential theory today. (This course has a spring break study abroad component in Paris.)

Georges Bataille’s College of Sociology

PHIL 6050 · Dr. Kent Brintnall · Monday, 5:30-8:15

Facing the 1930s collapse of capitalist markets, waning legitimacy of democracies in Europe, rise of fascism, limitations of Marxist agitation, and revelation of Stalinist terror, George Bataille’s College of Sociology attempted to think politics and the social anew relying on senses of community and the sacred found in the work of French sociologists Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss. Although short-lived, the College has on-going relevance for questions about the appeal of fascism and totalitarianism, the intractability of violence, the cultural operation of religion, the political relevance of art, and the constitution of the self in relation to the social. The seminar will give close attention to primary texts produced by the College’s members; all texts will be read in English translation. This seminar should be of interest to students in religious studies, sociology, anthropology, history, literary studies, French studies, ethics, political theory, and art history.

Ethical Theory

PHIL 6110 · Dr. Phillip McReynolds · Tuesday, 2:30-5:15

In this course, we will critically examine some of the major historical approaches to ethical theory including the moral theories of Aristotle, Kant, Mill, and Hume. After this, we will shift to more contemporary approaches to moral theory rooted in existentialism, pragmatism, and recent empirical research into (4E) cognitive science, linguistics, neurophysiology, and the social sciences. By the end of the course students will understand the key ideas of, differences between, and critiques of the main historical approaches to moral theory and a have knowledge of a lively area of current research into the origins, nature, and grounding of goodness, values, justice, right, and related concepts.

Ethics and International Affairs

PHIL 6260 · Dr. Ruth Groenhout · Thursday, 2:30-5:15

This course begins with an over view of the central debates in global justice studies, reading Global Justice: The Basics by Williams and Death. We will then move to a more in-depth discussion of global justice and human rights from a specifically feminist, activist point of view—Just Responsibility: A Human Rights Theory of Global Justice by Ackerly. The second half of the semester will be a variety of shorter readings on three specific areas of international affairs: economic justice, environmental issues, and global health care. Students will choose one of these three areas of concentration for their own focused research.

Fall 2018

Foucault

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Gordon Hull · Tuesday/Thursday, 11:30-12:45

From the early 1960s until his death in 1984, Michel Foucault was one of the most innovative and influential figures in French philosophy. Known most fundamentally for the thesis that our most basic categories of thought are inescapably the products of their social and institutional environments, Foucault wrote about such topics as the emergence of a clinical understanding of insanity; the change in punishment theory from the dungeon to intensive surveillance; the emergence of power as a force for fostering life and managing populations; the emergence of “sexuality” as a marker of identity; and the transformation of economic thought from classical, laissez faire liberalism to the intensely interventionist theory of today’s neoliberalism. Not surprisingly, given the range of his thought, Foucault’s influence today extends into such diverse fields as philosophy, sociology, criminal justice, literary theory, and queer and feminist theory. In this course, we will read a number of Foucault’s most important works, with attention both to the questions they enable us to ask and to prominent criticisms of his work.

Latin American Thought

PHIL 6050 · Dr. Eddy Souffrant · Tuesday, 2:30-5:15

This course aims, through the prism of national or international affairs, to familiarize the student with trends in historical concepts and theories of intercultural relations that have helped shape aspects of Caribbean and Latin American thoughts . The course will establish that there is a distinction between recounted and lived history. It will argue that recounted history harbors silences that are at times intentional. It will insist that whether intentional or not, the silences and the recounted histories do impact subsequent generations. The identities of such generations reflect not only the recounted histories but also the silences. Furthermore, when the silences are nefarious, a critical (read philosophical) approach to the study of the lived experiences of those who precede us is enlightening and liberating. This course will serve as an example of the manner in which a critical assessment of recounted and lived history can be formative of new experiences that spark the development of new worlds and conceptions of identity.

Philosophical Methods & Analysis

PHIL 6120 · Dr. Trevor Pearce · Wednesday, 1:25-4:10

This course is an introduction to the various methods of doing philosophy—not only to the analytical reading and writing skills you will need as a graduate student, but also to various philosophical traditions, each characterized by a certain approach to philosophical problems. Philosophy at UNC Charlotte is intertraditional, meaning that our students and faculty draw from many traditions of philosophy rather than focusing on a single approach. We will begin the class by examining three broad traditions: history of philosophy, analytic philosophy, and continental philosophy. We will then turn to a few of the ‘methods’ used by those working in these traditions: phenomenology, genealogy, and pragmatism. Finally, we will investigate of series of narrower approaches and sub-traditions that are prominent in our own department: applied ethics, feminism, Latin American philosophy, philosophy of disability, Africana philosophy, and critical philosophy of race. Throughout the class, you will get to know your fellow first-year graduate students as well as many faculty members here, since most classes will include a visit from a specialist in the relevant approach to philosophy.

Feminist Theory and Its Applications

PHIL 6320 · Dr. Elisabeth Paquette · Tuesday, 5:30-8:15

The primary concern in this course is the intersection of gender and language. Specifically, we will address how writers attempted to represent gender through the act of writing, paying particular attention to the limits of language, relations between dominant narratives and marginal feminist perspectives, and consider ways of disrupting these dominant narratives. This course begins with French feminist theorists, such as Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva and their performances of feminine écriture (feminine writing), a technique which aims to create space for women centered theories of gender through writing. However, this course also seeks to further displace problematic sex and gendered categories by examining decolonial, queer, and anti-racist frameworks of analysis by such authors as Sylvia Wynter and Monique Wittig.

MA Research Paper

PHIL 6999 · Dr. Lisa Rasmussen · Thursday, 2:30-5:15

Spring 2018

Race, Gender, and Prison Abolition

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Andrea Pitts · Tuesday, 5:30-8:15

This course focuses on what prison studies scholars have described since the late 1990s as the “prison industrial complex.” Accordingly, we will examine systems of incarceration as transnational networks of cultural, political, and historical materials that have supported the maintenance and operation of prisons, jails, and detention facilities worldwide. Our analysis will also address how patterns of incarceration, criminalization, and law enforcement have worked in tandem with a number of forms of structural oppression, including racism, sexism, nativism, xenophobia, ableism, heteronormativity, and transphobia. Lastly, to further develop our understanding of the prison industrial complex, the course will include a study of a series of projects that seek an end to penal institutions and the corresponding networks that support them. Previous coursework/experience in political theory, feminist theory, postcolonial/decolonial studies, disability theory, critical race theory, transgender studies, queer theory, or prison studies is strongly preferred but not required.

W. E. B. Du Bois

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Trevor Pearce · Wednesday, 5:30-8:15pm

W. E. B. Du Bois is one of the most famous activists in American history, serving as founding editor of the NAACP magazine The Crisis from 1910 to 1934 and giving voice to both Marxism and Pan-Africanism until his death in 1963. Du Bois has been claimed by many disciplines: his book The Souls of Black Folk has been studied as literature and philosophy; Black Reconstruction is still seen as a watershed in the history of that period; and he founded the first American school of sociology at Atlanta University. In this course, we will try to do justice to this broad range of intellectual interests, examining not only Du Bois’s theories of race—the usual focus of philosophers—but also his sociology, his views on education and evolution, his polemics on the role of art, his novel Dark Princess, his treatment of Reconstruction, and his account of Africa and colonialism. Along the way, we will read all three of the autobiographical works that Du Bois published in his lifetime, each of which combines personal narrative with philosophical history.

Existentialism

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Phillip McReynolds · Tuesday, 2:00-3:15

The goal of this course is to introduce students to French existentialism and to help them understand the historical and political circumstances in Paris following WWII that helped give birth to French existential philosophy. Coined by Jean-Paul Sartre in the 1940s, the term “existentialism” fundamentally – and somewhat infamously – means that existence precedes essence. Human beings create the “essence” of humanity in and through their choices; there is no natural or God-given form of humanity to which they must conform. As a result, human freedom and responsibility, which often are accompanied by bad faith as people avoid their freedom, are central components of human existence. Co-developed by Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and critically modified by Franz Fanon and Albert Camus, French existentialism influenced many philosophers, scholars, and artists in the 20th century and continues to be an important and influential theory today. Classes on the development of postwar existentialism will take place in a local cafe and daily afternoon excursions will include the Eiffel Tower, the Catacombs, a climb up the Arc de Triomphe, a visit to the Champs Élysées (upscale shopping district), a walking tour of the area to visit sites of significance to the development of French Existentialism, a visit to the Shoah (Holocaust) memorial, and a river cruise along the Seine.

Ethical Theory

PHIL 6110 · Dr. Ruth Groenhout · Thursday, 2:00-4:45

What does it mean to be a self or an agent? And how do various understandings of the nature of the self generate commonly accepted accounts of basic ethical concepts? This class will offer an examination of an issue that crosses normative and meta-ethical boundaries, looking at various constructions of the self and their relationship to concepts such as responsibility, freedom, or agency (here we’ll read Bernard Williams Making Sense of Humanity), their historical roots (Charles Taylor’s Ethics of Authenticity will offer some guidance here) the extent to which they are or are not up to the individual (Linda Alcoff’s Visible Identities) and the broader meaning of the ways we construct our understanding of the selves of others (Judith Butler, Frames of War).

Ethics and Public Policy

PHIL 6250 · Dr. Gordon Hull · Wednesday, 2:00-4:45

Feminist Theory & Its Applications

PHIL 6320 · Dr. Robin James · Monday, 3:30-6:15

This course is a seminar that focuses on two themes or subfields in feminist theory. The first theme is political philosophy and political economy. We will study feminist analyses of private property. These analyses touch on key issues in feminist theory, such as: personhood, the public/private distinction, consent, marriage, work, neoliberalism, and race. The second theme focuses on feminist and queer methods in the discipline of sound studies, and touches on many of the same issues as the first theme. Students will do a literature review of recent research in feminist theory on a topic closely related to their own research/thesis project, and will write a seminar paper addressing course material.

MA Research Paper

PHIL 6999 · Dr. Lisa Rasmussen · Tuesday, 11:00-1:45

Fall 2017

African American Philosophy

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Eddy Souffrant · Monday/Wednesday, 9:30-10:45

“Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle.” These words of Frederick Douglass serve as the impetus of the course. We shall see to what extent African American philosophy can be construed as a philosophy of reform. We shall take as our starting point the role that race plays in the development of African American thought. We shall not however understand that the essence of that African American thought is a negative one, namely that it is simply or solely a response to racial policies. I aim to explore the legacy of racism and the efforts to liberate at once individuals and society at-large from the constraints of negative prejudice.

Queer Theory

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Kent Brintnall · Monday, 6:30-9:15

An examination of the ways the social order shapes our sense of gender and sexual identity, and imposes norms regarding gender behavior and sexual desire. This course will also think about how gender and sexuality inform our experience of subjectivity and the political costs that relate to conforming to or deviating from social norms. It will give close and careful attention to works by central authors in the field—for example, Gayle Rubin, Michel Foucault, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, and Lee Edelman—as well as more contemporary works that examine race, class, disability, and trans* identities.

Marx

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Gordon Hull · Tuesday, 12:30-3:15

Although often reduced to a series of clichés by both their opponents and defenders, Karl Marx’s texts present a complex treatment of wide variety of issues in political philosophy. They have also been fundamental to the development of a variety of approaches to “critical” philosophy in the twentieth-century – not just Marxists such as Lenin, Lukács and Althusser, but thinkers such as Adorno, Derrida, Deleuze, and Foucault (to name a few) acknowledge the importance and influence of Marx on their work. In this course, we will look carefully at representative texts from Marx’s corpus in order to study some of the main themes, issues and interpretive difficulties which develop in them. Although most of the course will focus on Capital, we will also look at some of his early writings and later, more programmatic political writings. Although we will make occasional reference to current debates about and applications of his work, the course’s main focus will be on Marx’s own writings.

Philosophy of Emotion

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Shannon Sullivan · Tuesday/Thursday, 11:00-12:15

Emotion often has been ignored or denigrated by philosophers, contrasted with reason and associated with the body, women, people of color, and other subordinated groups. Challenging dualisms of emotion versus reason, this course will focus on philosophies that explore the epistemological, political, existential, and other forms of emotion’s relevance and value to human life. We will analyze emotions such as love, anger/rage, resentment, shame, and joy. The material for the course will range from historical to contemporary and will draw from a variety of philosophical and interdisciplinary traditions: continental, American, analytic, feminist, and critical race. Likely readings will come from the work of Plato, Nietzsche, William James, Sara Ahmed, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and other contemporary figures.

Philosophical Methods & Analysis

PHIL 6120 · Dr. Michael Kelly · Monday, 5:30-8:15

Explores the distinctive and various methods within philosophy (logical, phenomenological, feminist, conceptual, linguistic, deconstructive, and others), their uses in particular contexts (including links to other disciplines), and how methodology shapes philosophy (including its social impact). One aim is to clarify “applied philosophy” by examining its methods. Students will analyze, evaluate, reconstruct, and originate arguments, judgments, and decisions. They will do so in connection with both texts shared among all the students in the class and the particular interests of individual students. Each student will develop a paper over the course of the semester to bring these issues together.

Research Ethics in Biomedical and Behavioral Sciences

PHIL 6240 · Dr. Lisa Rasmussen · Wednesday, 2:00-4:45

Spring 2017

Theories of Sound, Noise, and Music

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Robin James · Monday, 3:30-6:15

This course will introduce students to various theories of sound and music, both within the history of Western philosophy and in the contemporary academic field called sound studies. These theories consider what sound, noise, and music are, how they work, (the metaphysics and ontology of sound/noise/music); when they’re pleasing and when they’re displeasing or harmful (the aesthetics of sound/noise/music); and the ways these phenomena interact with broader systems of social in/exclusion (the politics of sound/noise/music). We will pay particular attention to the relationship between the philosophy of music and political philosophy, and theories of sound in African-American philosophy. There will be assigned readings and assigned listening, and one or two practical exercises (e.g., build a simple stringed instrument, play a phase composition on smartphones and bluetooth speakers, etc.). No background or experience in music is required, though students with experience in music performance, theory, and/or musicology are welcome.

Social Practice Art

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Michael Kelly · Monday, 6:30-9:15

Since the 1960s, art practices around the world have experienced a participatory turn, characterized by the active engagement of nonartists in the production of art in nontraditional settings, giving rise to a new genre called participatory art, also known as socially engaged, collaborative, or social practice art (as distinct from studio practice art). A few recent U.S. examples are: Theaster Gates’s “Rebuild Foundation” in Chicago; Tania Brughera’s “Immigrant Movement International” in Queens; and Mel Chin’s “Fundred Dollar Bill Project” travelling around the country.

Art and architecture students will develop individual social-practice art projects, while philosophy and other students will develop social-practice art research projects—or possibly there will be some collective art/research projects. Throughout the semester, all students will study the aesthetics and politics of social practice art against the background of its history and other forms of contemporary art.

Students will start their own research or art projects right from the start, focusing on these questions: What particular social-political-cultural issue, story, group of people, place, or phenomenon concerns you? What particular project would you like to create? What would be the best artistic form and forum for your project, including nontraditional forms of artistic expression and non-traditional venues? Why is this concern and your project important? How do you see your role in this project? What results do you expect? And how can you/we measure the effectiveness of your project? How can you sustain your involvement?

Theoretical Approaches to Gender

PHIL 6050 · Dr. Emek Ergun · Thursday, 5:30-8:15

An interdisciplinary examination of the core theories about the role of gender in identity formation and social organization. Topics include: the feminist critique of biological essentialism; gender as a continuum; the social construction of gender; gender performativity; historical changes in gender; masculinity studies; the intersection of race, class and gender; and the economics of gender.

Ethical Theory

PHIL 6110 · Dr. Phillip McReynolds · Tuesday, 5:30-8:15

Examination of major normative and meta theories that undergird our practical judgments about morally right actions and morally good persons, organizations, or policies. This examination may include central problems and issues concerning morality’s: requirements (e.g. utility, duty, virtue, care), authority (e.g. absolutism, relativism, pluralism, multiculturalism), scope (e.g. deceased or future human beings, animals, environment), justification (e.g. rationality, intuition), source (e.g. reason, sentiment, disagreement), and nature (e.g. realism/antirealism, objectivity/subjectivity).

Philosophy of Mind

PHIL 6340 · Dr. Andrea Pitts · Wednesday, 5:30-8:15

Examines questions concerning the relationship between body and mind, the existence of other minds, the nature of consciousness, and the architecture of cognition. Approaches to these questions include traditional philosophical sources (emphasizing metaphysics and epistemology) and more recent developments in cognitive science (including the computational model of mind, mental representation, connectionist systems, and artificial intelligence). Also addressed are ethical and social issues involved in the design and implementation of intelligent systems. Inquiries bear on issue such as free will and determinism, emotion and reasoning, and the nature of rationality.

Fall 2016

Language and Meaning

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Daniel Boisvert · Wednesday, 6:30-9:15

Human languages, like English or Portuguese, are essentially arbitrary strings of marks and sounds. But human beings can use these arbitrary marks and sounds to communicate—and thereby to do some virtuous and, sometimes, horrible things—because these marks and sounds are meaningful. But what is it for a word or sentence to “mean” something? What do particular words and sentences actually mean? How do they get those meanings? What could a person know that would enable her to understand any sentence of her language(s)? Especially the latter question is what our course will aim to answer.

Latin American Thought

PHIL 6050 · Dr. Andrea Pitts · Tuesday, 5:30-8:15

This course will provide an overview of major trends in Latin American thought from the pre-Columbian period to the present day. Methodologically, we will focus on texts by authors working in the areas of Latin American cultural studies, philosophy, subaltern studies, feminism, and postcolonial/decolonial theory. Themes we will discuss include: cultural agency and revolution, philosophy of liberation, intellectualism and cosmopolitanism, gender, race, class, and sexuality, positivism and evolutionary theory, nationalism and pan-national identity, indigenismo, blanqueamiento, and mestizaje, hybridity and transculturation, and globalization and neocolonialism.

Big Data and Ethics

PHIL 6050 · Dr. Gordon Hull · Wednesday, 5:30-8:15

According to its proponents, “big data” promises to revolutionize many of the most basic ways that we interact with one another, access services, and do business. The resulting “evidence-based” gains in these areas promise to make life better in numerous ways. As the debate around electronic health records testifies, many of these expected benefits are in terms of efficiency. At the same time, many have raised serious ethical questions about not just the technologies themselves, but their implementation: with this amount of information available about everyone, what happens to privacy? Will big data enable new forms of discrimination, or help to ameliorate it? These concerns have been voiced in places ranging from the popular press to a governmental task force report. Ethical concerns, in other words, are at the heart of the implementation of analytics, even if the only goal is efficiency, as efficiency might trade off with other, morally important values.

In this course, we will pursue a sampling of the ethical concerns that arise with big data, with attention to the ways that policies and technological developments can either ameliorate or increase them. The course combines theoretical reading (some of it classic moral philosophy) with current literature developing that theory as it applies to data analytics. In doing so, we will look primarily at what ethicists call “thick concepts,” values like “privacy” and “equality” through which most of us do most of our moral thinking

Philosophical Methods & Analysis

PHIL 6120 · Dr. Michael Kelly · Monday, 5:30-8:15

The main objective of this course is to explore, critique, and practice a variety of philosophical methods (i.e., ways of practicing philosophy, convincing other people of your philosophical beliefs)—e.g., genealogy, feminism, phenomenology, logic, critical theory, pragmatism, intersectional theory, Marxism, deconstruction, queer theory, hermeneutics, postcolonial theory, race theory, and assemblage theory.

After a brief survey of some historical examples of philosophical method in the first month of the semester, the range and ultimate selection of methods to be discussed will be determined largely by the students’ research topics. Each student will write a research paper on a topic of their choice, which will be developed through multiple drafts written over the course of the semester and involve whichever method(s) they find most appropriate.

In the end, this course should prepare you for all your other graduate courses, as every philosopher has some method, regardless of the subject matter or the perspective they take on it. At the same time, we will develop a sense of method that will enable you to interact with your peers in other disciplines, not to separate you as philosophers from them.

MA Research Paper

PHIL 6999 · Dr. Lisa Rasmussen · Thursday, 1:00-3:45

In this course, students will 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 will be conducted, and multiple steps of revision and presentation of work in progress to the class will be included. May be repeated for credit with new material. (Pre-requisites: Completion of 15 credit hours in philosophy graduate courses prior to enrollment; permission of the department.)

Spring 2016

Twentieth-Century Philosophy

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Michael Kelly · Monday, 6:30-9:15

The twentieth century was as rich in philosophy as it was in art, science, and history: phenomenology, existentialism, analytic philosophy, logical positivism, pragmatism, ordinary-language philosophy, feminism, critical theory, hermeneutics, critical race theory, deconstruction, queer theory, etc. One way to introduce you to as many of these types of philosophy as possible is to focus on texts that highlight the similarities as well as differences among them. This course will complement many other courses in the department, including the required ones—Knowledge & Reality, Ethical Theory, Modern Philosophy, and Social Political Philosophy—and electives: Aesthetics, Feminism, Philosophy of Language, etc.

Language and Thought

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Daniel Boisvert · Wednesday, 6:30-9:15

What, precisely, are we doing when we say ‘Stealing is wrong’? According to cognitivism, we are attributing some kind of property or characteristic to acts of stealing, much as we attribute the property circularity when we say ‘This table is circular.” And given the intimate connections between language and thought, cognitivism also typically holds that to think that stealing is wrong is to believe, or represent, acts of stealing as having that property. But according to expressivism, saying ‘Stealing is wrong’ is more like expressing an attitude, much as we do when we say ‘Down with stealing!’, or like prescribing behavior, much as we do when we say, ‘Let’s not steal.’ Accordingly, expressivists also typically hold that to think that stealing is wrong is like disapproving of stealing, or deciding not to steal, or to be in some other type of mental state that can generally be described as being against stealing. This course will investigate the controversy between cognitivism and expressivism and, thereby, the controversy concerning the nature of moral language and thought.

Queer Theory

PHIL 5050 · Dr. Kent Brintnall · Wednesday, 6:30-9:15

An examination of the ways the social order shapes our sense of gender and sexual identity, and imposes norms regarding gender behavior and sexual desire. This course will also think about how gender and sexuality inform our experience of subjectivity and the political costs that relate to conforming to or deviating from social norms. It will give close and careful attention to works by central authors in the field-for example, Gayle Rubin, Michel Foucault, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, Leo Bersani, Tim Dean, and Lee Edelman-as well as works that are important for understanding those authors-for example, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and George Bataille.

Ethical Theory

PHIL 6110 · Dr. Eddy Souffrant · Tuesday, 12:00-2:45

This course will draw from the student’s undergraduate familiarity with, and understanding of, the major ethical theories of moral philosophy. It will reinforce that understanding and familiarity by exploring some issues relevant to meta-ethics and feminism by way of Moore, Quinton, Smart, Williams and Held.

Ethics of Public Policy

PHIL 6250 · Dr. Gordon Hull · Wednesday, 2:00-4:45

Policy decisions are often considered to be technical, economic, or otherwise free of values. In this course, we will examine the ways that policies always embed ethical decisions, and how to be more intentional about that process. To that end, we will examine topics such as the ways policy and technical systems can be seen to embed or preference value, the ethical theory behind economic and efficiency considerations, and the ways that different ethical theories can be used to justify policy processes and outcomes.

Feminist Theory and Its Applications

PHIL 6320 · Dr. Andrea Pitts · Tuesday, 5:30-8:15

This course will focus on the writings of several prominent women of color theorists whose critical work has addressed both contemporary social justice issues and philosophical debates in academia. The three main figures for the course are Angela Y. Davis, María Lugones, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Themes we will discuss include: Marxist and materialist feminisms, subalterity and the politics of representation, intersectional theorizing (including challenges to feminism such as womanism and mujerista theology), decolonial/postcolonial thought and praxis, neoliberalism and pedagogies of resistance, mass incarceration and prison abolition, eroticisms and sexualities, and the relationship between activism and intellectualism.