teaching philosophy
Philosophy has the potential to profoundly impact students’ lives. It can alter the way they think about the history of the traditions they inherit, transforming their capacity to perceive the patterns that meaningfully structure their worlds. My primary goal is to actualize this potential by moving students to connect the abstractions of theory to personal experience.
A core strategy for achieving this goal involves bringing the historically remote closer to home. In several of my courses, I promote discussion through etymological deconstruction. For instance, in Women’s Lives: Race, Class, Sex, one foundational exercise philosophically deconstructs genealogy, situating the logos of genēsis (the study of origins) in the context of the human quest for self-understanding that links origins to outcomes. Utilizing a phenomenological methodology that proceeds from the everyday to interrogate the structures that give shape to lived experience, I invite students to explore the connection between etymology and everyday usage of genealogy through the family tree. I draw the basic structure of the tree on the board. In response, students relate past generations and self-knowledge in the present by commenting on their own experiences of ancestral narrative – though first comments almost invariably take the form of nostalgic remembrance. Re-introducing the assigned reading, Michelle Rowley’s “The Idea of Ancestry,” we pivot to consider the negative affect of the uncanny in the face of origins lost to history. I invite students to comment on their experiences of belonging or alienation, and they deepen discussion of ancestral narrative by either acknowledging the privilege of belonging or addressing narratives of alienation emergent from the struggle to self-understand, having been emboldened by the exercise to do so.
Overall, the genealogy exercise has two positive outcomes: first, by exemplifying the relevance of history it justifies emphasis on the cultivation of critical reading practice, which, especially in the case of philosophy, truncates time and space to connect readers to the distant past. Second, when the time comes for assessment, students recall this lesson to explain in short essay form the strategic denial of access to history as a political tool of disempowerment. Among the most successful essays was one student’s exploration of her own lost ancestry. She excelled not only by connecting the text to the lacuna in her family history that dated back to the erasures of the transatlantic slave trade, but also by portraying the particular ways revisionist history has impacted her self-esteem and thereby her belief in the efficacy of resistance.
A related strategy involves variance of textual form to include contemporary media and works of art. For example, in Honors Phenomenology, after an in-class screening, students connect their impressions of the genesis of embodied cognition in The Phenomenological Mind (Gallagher & Zahavi) to its occurrence in the film Ex Machina (Garland, 2012). Having been collectively affected by the screening, students spontaneously relate to theory by talking through their sensory impressions of the filmic “argument.” Since students feel more qualified to comment on film than on theory, participation increases, mounting a critical challenge to students’ expectation of philosophy as an outdated matter of long dead words.
The success of these strategies in the classroom are predicated on carefully designed lectures that achieve requisite conceptual fluency to facilitate discussion as well as successful ventures into written expression. Taken together, they link theory to experience and philosophy to life.
A core strategy for achieving this goal involves bringing the historically remote closer to home. In several of my courses, I promote discussion through etymological deconstruction. For instance, in Women’s Lives: Race, Class, Sex, one foundational exercise philosophically deconstructs genealogy, situating the logos of genēsis (the study of origins) in the context of the human quest for self-understanding that links origins to outcomes. Utilizing a phenomenological methodology that proceeds from the everyday to interrogate the structures that give shape to lived experience, I invite students to explore the connection between etymology and everyday usage of genealogy through the family tree. I draw the basic structure of the tree on the board. In response, students relate past generations and self-knowledge in the present by commenting on their own experiences of ancestral narrative – though first comments almost invariably take the form of nostalgic remembrance. Re-introducing the assigned reading, Michelle Rowley’s “The Idea of Ancestry,” we pivot to consider the negative affect of the uncanny in the face of origins lost to history. I invite students to comment on their experiences of belonging or alienation, and they deepen discussion of ancestral narrative by either acknowledging the privilege of belonging or addressing narratives of alienation emergent from the struggle to self-understand, having been emboldened by the exercise to do so.
Overall, the genealogy exercise has two positive outcomes: first, by exemplifying the relevance of history it justifies emphasis on the cultivation of critical reading practice, which, especially in the case of philosophy, truncates time and space to connect readers to the distant past. Second, when the time comes for assessment, students recall this lesson to explain in short essay form the strategic denial of access to history as a political tool of disempowerment. Among the most successful essays was one student’s exploration of her own lost ancestry. She excelled not only by connecting the text to the lacuna in her family history that dated back to the erasures of the transatlantic slave trade, but also by portraying the particular ways revisionist history has impacted her self-esteem and thereby her belief in the efficacy of resistance.
A related strategy involves variance of textual form to include contemporary media and works of art. For example, in Honors Phenomenology, after an in-class screening, students connect their impressions of the genesis of embodied cognition in The Phenomenological Mind (Gallagher & Zahavi) to its occurrence in the film Ex Machina (Garland, 2012). Having been collectively affected by the screening, students spontaneously relate to theory by talking through their sensory impressions of the filmic “argument.” Since students feel more qualified to comment on film than on theory, participation increases, mounting a critical challenge to students’ expectation of philosophy as an outdated matter of long dead words.
The success of these strategies in the classroom are predicated on carefully designed lectures that achieve requisite conceptual fluency to facilitate discussion as well as successful ventures into written expression. Taken together, they link theory to experience and philosophy to life.