Upcoming Offerings

FALL 2025

W. E. B. Du Bois

PHIL 5009 | Dr. Trevor Pearce | Mondays & Wednesdays 2:30–3:45pm

W. E. B. Du Bois is one of the most important public intellectuals 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 astonishing range, 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.

Approaches to the Study of Religion

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

This seminar will engage a number of representative, recent texts in the interdisciplinary field of religious studies to help students develop the skills of analyzing, evaluating, and crafting arguments and identifying the role of method and writing in the articulation and persuasiveness of arguments. Students will also work to develop their own research proposals in furtherance of their specific degree programs.

Philosophical Methods and Analysis

PHIL 6120 | Dr. Lisa Rasmussen | Tuesdays 1:00–3:45pm

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.

Theoretical Approaches to Gender

PHIL 6602 | Dr. Paula Landerreche Cardillo | Wednesdays 5:30–8:15pm

This course is an approach to the concept and the history of the concept of gender. It will tackle the question of how we are and become sexed, and critically explore the fluid boundary between the biological and the social. It will reflect on the intersection between sex, gender, and other identity categories, such as race, class, and sexuality, as well as on the differences in conceptual apparatuses used to understand the embodied experience of sex across national and linguistic paradigms. Topics may include the feminist critique of biological essentialism; gender as a continuum; the social construction of gender; gender performativity; historical changes in gender; masculinity studies.

Feminist Theory and Its Applications

PHIL 6627 | Dr. Emek Ergun | Mondays 5:30–8:15pm [online synchronous]

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 significant conversations and debates in contemporary feminist theory.

Master’s Research Paper

PHIL 6999 | Dr. Gordon Hull | Wednesdays 12:15–2:15pm

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.