Care is often invisible and undervalued, whether performed for free within the family or friend circles, or as waged work. The COVID-19 pandemic has made care more visible and sparked conversations about care. Yet, we (at least in Ontario) have not responded to multiple care crises by implementing widespread structural change needed to put care at the center of political, societal, and economic systems. Choosing texts I pitched an Ethics of Care seminar to my department in late 2019, and it … [Read more...]
Science fiction versus history in feminist classrooms
Teaching with science fiction I’m a fan of using science fiction in my teaching, probably because I’m a fan of science fiction. After all, Star Trek: The Next Generation was one of my earliest philosophical influences! Craig B. Jacobsen suggests that science fiction’s “generation of cognitive estrangement makes it perhaps uniquely qualified to provide college students with the critical distance necessary to recognize the complexity of the worlds that they must learn to navigate.” [1] By … [Read more...]
Philosophy, sex, and love
I am teaching the Philosophy of Sex and Love in the Fall 2018 term. I was motivated to construct a course that would speak to the philosophical dimensions of concerns that people actually have. Although love and sex are two areas where we might suspect that philosophers attend (more than usual) to embodied experience, twentieth century philosophizing on love and sex remains very abstract (read this review of the philosophy of love as an indication of this point). Philosophy, as I … [Read more...]