Category Archives: philosophy

PHIL / RELS job applications workshop

philosophy
Some people go to college knowing (or thinking that they know) exactly what they want to study and exactly what kind of career they want to have. More power to them! My dad was like that – he once told me that in junior high, he already knew that he wanted to be an engineer, and sure enough, that is what he did for his whole working life as an adult – he even worked for the same company all those years!
But lots of people don’t have that experience. Lots of people change what they are studying or what job or career they are pursuing, often more than once. My mom was like that – she changed her college major relatively late in the game, and (compared to my dad, anyway) used her skills in more different employment contexts between college and retirement.
Despite their different paths, both my parents secured steady work that contributed to a financially stable family, and both used their talents to provide something of value to their community. Both were able to earn others’ respect for their work. Both had ups and downs in their careers. So my parents provide evidence that there isn’t a single path through college and into a career that everyone needs to follow. While studying philosophy (as many folks will tell you) may not be the surest route to a life like my dad’s, it can be a great route to a life more like my mom’s, which is something that many people don’t realize. And lives more like my mom’s are only becoming more and more common.
Studying philosophy gives you skills that easily transfer from one context to another – for example, thinking and communicating clearly, dealing with people who disagree with you, and solving problems independently are skills that are highly in demand across many career fields, and that are developed by studying philosophy. The key is to know how to explain what skills you’ve developed through your experiences studying philosophy and their relevance for a particular job to a particular employer.
On Wednesday, January 31st, from 5:15 to 6:50 p.m., some of my colleagues and I will be hosting the second of three events in our department’s career preparation series for this academic year. This time, we invite Philosophy & Religious Studies students to bring drafts of their resumes, cover letters, and/or job descriptions that they find appealing (if you have them), and we will have a workshop to help translate your specific skills and experiences into the language that employers want to see. (We’ll bring the pizza!)

Immersive Learning Project in Spring 2018

justice, philosophy

I’ve been looking forward to teaching a new course on Justice (Phil 380) for a while now. But now I have one more reason to look forward to teaching it in spring 2018.

One of the best parts of my two and a half years of living in Muncie has been my weekly involvement with a local non-profit that is dedicated to poverty alleviation. (When I first got involved, they were called TEAMWork for Quality Living, but they have merged with Second Harvest Food Bank, and are now undergoing a name change.) I’ve made some of my best friends in Muncie through this incredibly diverse group of wonderful people.

I’m thrilled that I’ve been able to arrange for my Justice class to do a project in collaboration with this non-profit. As a way of unifying and applying what we learn in our units about epistemic justice and economic justice, we’ll be participating in a poverty simulation, conducting a listening session with the participants in the poverty alleviation program, and using what we learn from their experiences and expertise to formulate proposed action plans for how to help eliminate some of the systematic barriers that keep people in poverty here in Delaware County.

Once we’ve formed relationships with and actively listened to the participants in the poverty alleviation program, we’ll be presenting our action plans to them for their feedback. And after hearing from my students, the program participants will have an opportunity to collectively decide to implement some components of the proposed action plans as part of their once monthly “Big View” sessions, which are set aside for work designed to positively impact everyone in our community who lives in poverty, not just those specifically and directly involved with our group.

Though this project is going to involve a lot a work, I have high hopes, and I can’t wait to share this opportunity with my students.

Career Preparation Event for Philosophy Students

philosophy

Philosophy students, whether they are majors, minors, or just interested students who have taken a few classes, are sure to have been asked, “What job can you get by studying that?” or “What use is a philosophy degree?” And in some cases, “asked” isn’t really the right word – in uttering those words, a fair number of people mean such questions as a challenge and a criticism, assuming the answer is “none.”

But that just isn’t so. Nor is it the case that the only jobs for philosophy students involve going to graduate school and becoming a philosophy professor.

So a few of my colleagues in the Philosophy & Religious Studies Department, along with a career coach from the Career Center, have planned a series of events for this academic year designed to help our students better (a) understand the range of jobs available to them, (b) narrow down their career goals, (c) formulate a specific plan of action, and (d) get to work on cover letters, resumes, interviews, and so on, by taking tangible steps in a supportive environment.

Our first event will focus on career exploration and discovery. We’ll be reflecting on the variety of kinds of jobs for which PHIL / RELS students are suited and identifying personal interests, talents, preferences, and skills that will help focus one’s career plans and goals. This first event will take place from 5:00 – 6:15 p.m. in North Quad 078 on Wednesday, November 15th. Please consider joining us!

Book recommendations about democracy & the workplace

book recommendations, justice, philosophy

Elizabeth Anderson’s new book, Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It), was even more of an eye-opener for me than her last one (The Imperative of Integration). In her latest book, Anderson defends answers two main questions: (a) “why do we talk as if workers are free at work, and that the only threats to individual liberty come from the state? (xx)” and (b) how could we talk differently about the ways that employers constrain workers, potentially helping restructure workplaces to better serve the interests of workers?

In answering those questions, Anderson critiques the ideology that undergirds the dictatorial control that many employers exert over their employees, both on and off the job. In doing so, she carefully analyzes the historical context in which that ideology arose and explains why that ideology (which appeared to be rational prior to the Industrial Revolution) cannot be defended in the world as we now know it.  The book also includes critical comments from two historians, a philosopher, and an economist, as well as Anderson’s responses to them, which I found very useful.

While reading it, I couldn’t help but think back on Richard Wolff’s Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism, another excellent book about how workers could have more say in their working conditions, and the many benefits that could be gained from structuring workplaces as democracies. I particularly appreciated the clarity with which Wolff explains distinctions between various kinds of capitalisms and socialisms, which are easy to mix up (and often are mixed up).

While you are at it, or if you want something on the lighter side that engages with similar ideas, why not try The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki?

Book recommendation: Minimizing Marriage

book recommendations, justice, philosophy

Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law, by Elizabeth Brake, is a thoughtful, respectful investigation of the moral and legal status of marriage as it actually exists and as it could exist in a more ideal society.

Brake argues forcefully that current marriage practices privilege amatonormative relationships (those between monogamous sexual pairs) in ways that unjustly discriminate against other caring relationships (like friendships and relationships between people who live together without sexual/romantic intimacy) and thus that we ought to extend marriage rights to a wider range of voluntary relationships between consenting, caring adults.

I couldn’t agree more. I wish I had written this book, but thankfully Brake already has, and has done so more skillfully than I ever could. Now I just hope that more and more people read it.

Book recommendation: Beyond the Binary: Thinking about Sex and Gender

book recommendations, philosophy

I usually categorize the books I read into “for work” books and “for fun” books. That isn’t because the books I read for work are never fun (they often are), but because I generally read at a different pace and with a different set of purposes, depending on which kind of book I have before me. It is a rare book that I would say that I read simultaneously for work and for fun, but I recently read one that did a lovely job straddling that line for me. It was Shannon Dea’s Beyond the Binary: Thinking about Sex and Gender, and I strongly recommend it.

While most of the time that I spend thinking about sex, gender, and sexuality, I’m primarily concerned with ethical and political questions, Dea’s book brought to light a range of metaphysical issues relating to sex, gender, and sexuality in a way that unquestionably deepened my understanding, but would definitely be accessible to more novice readers as well. It is a real gem of a book – a great example of integrating empirical research, narratives, and philosophical argumentation to show that concepts relating to sex, gender, and sexuality aren’t nearly so simple as many people would like us to believe.

Can Emotions Have Abstract Objects? The Example of Awe

philosophy

As part of the annual conference of the European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotions in Athens last June, I gave a presentation that became a paper called “Can Emotions Have Abstract Objects? The Example of Awe.”

Now that paper has been published in the journal Philosophia, and is available for free to anyone via the link above (which takes you to a full text, read-only version). I welcome any questions or comments you may have about it!

Moral philosophy on network television!?!?

philosophy

I became a fan of Grey’s Anatomy when I spent six weeks in Argentina – reruns were on television just about every moment of every day, so whenever I got lonely, or missed Seattle, or wanted to hear some English, it was there for me. Since then, I’ve often imagined a show that, instead of following medical students through surgical internships and residencies and beyond, would follow graduate students getting their PhDs in the humanities. If you’ve been through it, you know that there is a lot of dramatic potential there (and if any tv execs are out there and want to hear a more detailed pitch – I’m ready)! Plus, who doesn’t enjoy seeing lives like their own represented in mass media, so long as it isn’t as the butt of a joke or a mere token or an offensively simplified caricature or something?

Well, part of my wish has been fulfilled. This fall, NBC is airing a new show called The Good Place; the title refers to a place kind of like heaven, which is where it takes place, and one of the main characters (Chidi) is a moral philosopher! I never thought I would see a major network television show where a character holds up a copy of Scanlon’s What We Owe to Each Other and starts giving a brief introduction to contractualism, or where the lead character reads some Kant and Aristotle and starts using what she’s learned in her life outside the classroom!

Is it a perfect portrayal of the life of an ethicist? Of course not – it does play up certain stereotypes (though it violates others), and we could easily get nit-picky about the content of Chidi’s lectures if we wanted to (it isn’t like there is no critical thinking to be done about any given product of mass media). Nevertheless, for now, I’m pretty stoked about the fact that lots of different people might be getting their first exposure to the possibility of real people earning a living by thinking about morality, and the idea that maybe we do make valuable contributions to society sometimes.

Book review: Love and Its Objects, edited by Christian Maurer, Tony Milligan, & Kamila Pacovská

book recommendations, philosophy

When it rains, it pours! This week I actually had two book reviews published – what a weird coincidence. The second was a review of Love and Its Objects: What Can We Care For?, a collection edited by Christian Maurer, Tony Milligan, & Kamila Pacovská. I was invited to write the review for the Hypatia special issue, “Feminist Love Studies in the 21st Century,” which was guest edited by Dr. Margaret Toye and Dr. Ann Ferguson. My book review is available for free here (as are 11 others to go with the special issue). The full special issue on love is not available yet, but that is something to look forward to.

In fact, in case you didn’t know, all new Hypatia book reviews are available for free, regardless of whether you have a subscription, by visiting Hypatia Reviews Online. I worked hard on the creation of this new website back when I was the editorial assistant for the journal, and it is great to see the archive really filling up with reviews of new feminist scholarship! Even better, the new editorial team is creating podcasts of the reviews, if listening is more your style!

Book review: How We Hope, by Adrienne Martin

book recommendations, philosophy

Just about one year ago, I started reading Adrienne Martin’s book, How We Hope: A Moral Psychology, which I had been asked to review for the journal Mind.  I really enjoyed reading it, especially Martin’s dualist theory of motivation, and the book review was a good project to work on during my stay in Seattle that summer. Over these last months, I had nearly forgotten about my book review, but then I got an email this week saying that it is now available via advance access. You can read the full text here, or a pdf here. You don’t have to be a Mind subscriber to access the review for free via these links (thank you, Mind)!