I've designed and taught five courses as instructor of record, including both lectures and small seminar-style classes. I have been a TA for hundreds of students over seven semesters and many discussion sections, and I have experience with in-person, remote synchronous, and remote asynchronous instruction. As the department's Teaching Assistant Coordinator, I was responsible for the UNC philosophy teacher-training program for graduate students and for planning department-wide teaching workshops. Before teaching at the university level, I worked for several years as a writing tutor for ESL high school students, and for several years as a camp counselor before that.
I am most qualified and excited to teach courses in ethics (including history of ethics, metaethics, and applied topics) as well as PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics). I have also worked to develop a teaching competence in Latin American philosophy. Below is a list of courses I've taught with syllabi and a sample of anonymous student reviews of my teaching.
This course covers introductory topics, but with texts exclusively from Latin America. It was developed with funding from the Syllabus Diversification Initiative with the hope of eventually getting administrative approval for a new course code for Latin American philosophy. Topics include Aztec metaphysics, ethical and epistemological issues arising during the colonization of the Americas, issues in political philosophy related to the various independence movements, and contemporary discussion of race, ethnicity, and identity.
A course on business ethics that covers both theoretical issues and topics of direct interest to students in their professional lives. The material includes theories of corporate social responsibility, sweatshop labor, our responsibilities as consumers, the ethical dimensions of career choice, employer/employee relations, and political questions surrounding markets and regulation.
An applied ethics course on contemporary topics in the health and life sciences, such as abortion, euthanasia, patient autonomy and medical paternalism, animal research, and commercial surrogacy. Since many of the topics covered are controversial and politically salient, there is a strong emphasis on careful and charitable argument reconstruction.
A course devoted to learning to think well in a complicated world. Topics include argument reconstruction, informal logic, fallacies, introductory formal logic, and probabilistic reasoning.
A history class focusing on the writings of Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus. We also consider existentialist themes in literature (e.g. Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, de Unamuno) and film (e.g. Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal), as well as existentialist thought outside of Europe (e.g. Fanon and Du Bois).
Fall 2022: Virtue, Value, and Happiness: An Introduction to Moral Theory
With Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (2 sections)
Spring 2023: Gateway to Philosophy, Politics, and Economics
With Luc Bovens (2 sections)
Spring 2024: Practical Ethics: Moral Reasoning and How We Live [Honors]
With Adam Hollowell & Sydney Echols (no recitation)
Fall 2019: Introduction to Logic - Critical Reasoning
With Matthew Knachel (3 sections)
Spring 2020: Introduction to Logic - Critical Reasoning
With Matthew Knachel (4 sections)
Fall 2020: Introduction to Logic - Critical Reasoning (Remote Asynchronous)
With Matthew Knachel (equivalent of 4 sections)
Spring 2021: Introduction to Logic - Critical Reasoning (Remote Asynchronous)
With Matthew Knachel (equivalent of 4 sections)