Teaching Philosophy, In Brief
I view teaching as an opportunity to combat how, too often and easily, through habit or absentmindedness, the way things are become the way things ought to be. My goal in the classroom is to empower my students to recognize themselves as effective decision-makers capable of both understanding the present situation and improving upon it. My ideal courses focus on the unthought practices of everyday life and how we can unwittingly adopt routines or habits that obscure our relationship to others and the world we share. Emphasizing the mundane – and, in doing so, making the banal into something strange and worthy of study – promotes the critical thinking and questioning that I believe is so necessary today.
I am currently teaching PHIL/RELS 465: Ethics After the Holocaust. Next semester I will teach PHIL 251: Contemporary Moral Issues.
I have taught the following courses: Introduction to Logic, Contemporary Moral Issues, Ethics and Engineering, and Ethics in Society. See below for an overview of some courses I am prepared to teach.