Teaching

My primary aim in the classroom is to empower my students to discover which ways of engaging with philosophical content work best for them. In addition to offering course information in a range of modalities, I also like to build incentives for students to experiment with different modalities and approaches right into the course structure (or extra credit opportunities). Here is my favorite way to encourage experimentation with note-taking. Here is an example of the kind of "student-guided" course I've recently been running, in which most class assignments can be completed in a range of formats (written papers, class presentations, individual meetings with me), and students are encouraged to choose the formats that work best for them. I've recently adopted a similar approach to getting my students to thoughtfully reflect on how best to use AI software like ChatGPT, which I am happy to chat about.

My approach to college-level philosophy instruction is informed by the wide range of students and topics I taught before starting grad school. Among other things, I spent time teaching English as a second language to kids and adults in Thailand, Italy, Greece, and the US; tutored incarcerated students hoping to pass the GED; offered creative writing instruction to elementary-, middle-, and high-schoolers; and taught clarinet players in music camps and individual lessons.

Courses taught/teaching at Stanford

179R/279R: Feminist Philosophy

Here is the syllabus for this mixed level (graduate/undergraduate) course.

This course is cross-listed with Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Are there distinctively feminist ways of thinking and theorizing? What does feminist theory contribute to our understanding of life’s deepest questions concerning personal identity, human action, objective knowledge, and ethical reasoning? In this course, we cover some of analytic feminist philosophy’s most transformative contributions to each of the major philosophical subdisciplines, from metaphysics and epistemology to political philosophy and aesthetics. Because feminist theorists often position themselves as reacting to oversights and missteps in mainstream, male-dominated analytic philosophy, students will cultivate a productive and charitable yet critical perspective on many traditional philosophical debates. And they will develop their own understanding of what it means to think like a feminist, historically and today.

COLLEGE101: Why College? Your Education and the Good Life

This course is taught as part of Stanford's first-year Civic, Liberal, and Global Education requirement.

Together we will explore the history, practice, and rationales for a liberal education by putting canonical texts in conversation with more recent works. We will consider the relevance of liberal education to all areas of study, from STEM to the arts, and its relations to future careers. And we will examine the central place that the idea of “the good life” has historically enjoyed in theories of liberal education.

Courses taught at University of Arizona

330: Feminist Philosophy

This course is cross-listed with Gender & Women's studies.

Here a recent syllabus & set of course documents.

Analytic feminist philosophy seeks to understand the social implications of sex and gender, as well as critique the accuracy and usefulness of mainstream philosophy when the values of feminism are overlooked. In this class, we critically evaluate what feminism is and what it ought to be, as well as explore the compatibility of different feminist schools of thought. We examine feminist arguments about oppression, knowledge and emotion, gendered labor, and more. Finally, we examine methods of action and resistance to sexism.

220: Philosophy of Happiness

Here is a syllabus for this asynchronous class.

This gives you an idea of how I integrate meditation exercises into the course.

In this class we ask what it means to be happy. Do you need to be a good person to be happy, or do you just need pleasant experiences? Does some objective criterion for happiness even exist? Is it possible or rational to be happy in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles like oppression and climate change? The course is structured around the following units: Hedonism; Desire-Fulfillment & Objective-List theories; Eudaimonism; Existentialism & Meaninglessness; Buddhism & Suffering; and Hope & Oppression. The first three units focus on prominent theories of happiness and the latter three work through philosophical responses to three important threats to happiness (namely, meaninglessness, suffering, and oppression).

321: Medical Ethics

Here is a recent syllabus.

This course is cross-listed with Public Administration & Policy.

This class is a survey of ethical issues in medicine. We discuss patient autonomy and paternalism, physician-assisted dying, abortion, disability, mental illness, and the significance of care in healthcare. The course offers critical perspectives on dominant paradigms in medicine and challenge students to form views on difficult ethical questions. We approach questions about these topics – on a policy and individual level – as ethicists, gaining comfort with criticizing and defending arguments about right and wrong.

210: Moral Thinking

This course examines a variety of competing moral theories, beginning with relativism and egoism before moving into consequentialism, Kantian deontology, and virtue ethics. Students come to understand the basic moral theories and to think critically about moral matters in light of those theories. The last unit encourages students to critically engage with moral theorizing itself by offering feminist critiques of the three dominant moral theoretic traditions discussed in the course. Students also learn to write like a philosopher and defend an original philosophical thesis.

347: Neuroethics

This course is cross-listed with Family Studies & Human Development.

Advances in psychopharmacology, brain imaging, and genetic selection present us with pressing ethical questions about the human condition and the good life. This course explores issues in responsibility, justice, consent, disability, and authenticity to self presented by emerging technologies. We compare various philosophical positions on these topics and cultivate the tools to propose solutions on the personal and policy levels.