Date

Topic

 Reading Assignments Note: all readings will be available online or emailed to students.)

Writing assignments due

Aug 28

Introductory Session

None

Sept.4

Sept. 11

Ian Hacking, "Making Up People"

Mikkel Flohr, "Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities"

Sept. 18

Sally Haslanger, Chapter 10 "A Social Contructionist Analysis of Race" from Resisting Reality: Social construction and Social Critique (available online through our library, requires Star ID login, click on the table of contents and go to chapter 10);

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Chapter 4 "Color" from The Lies That Bind

Response paper

Sept. 25

Queer theory and metaphysics

Tamsin Spargo, "Foucault and Queer Theory"

Optional: here's another overview with cartoons.

Response paper

Oct. 2

1. “Being-In-the-World”, which is Chapter 3 of Heidegger, by David E. Cooper
2. “Sartre”, which is the second half of Chapter 9, of Philosophy and Philosophers, by John Shand (Just read the part about Sartre which starts on page 229.)
3. Selection from Being and Time by Martin Heidegger

Response paper;

Oct. 9

1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "The Intertwining - The Chiasm" (from The Visible and the Invisible);

For help with this difficult text I suggest reading the introductory paragraphs of the Stanford Encyclopedia article on Merleau-Ponty and, then the brief summary of The Visible and the Invisible, which is section 5 of the article. If you have time for something longer, you could try "Chiasm and Flesh" by Fred Evans from Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts (available online throuhg our library)

2. Marquis Bey, Selections from Black Trans Feminism

Response paper

Oct. 16

Afropessimism as metaphysics

1. The editors’ introduction to the book Afro-pessimism: an Introduction
2. Patrice Douglass and Frank Wilderson, "The Violence of Presence: Metaphysics in a Blackened World"

Response paper;

Oct. 23

First Position Paper due Monday Oct. 28 by 10 am

Oct. 30

Nov. 6

Selections from Problems of Knowledge by Michael Williams
Chapter 5 "Agrippa's Trilemma"
Chapter 7 "Foundations"
Chapter 8 "The Problem of the Basis"

Response paper;

Nov. 13

Selections from Problems of Knowledge by Michael Williams
Chapter 13 “Evidence and Entitlement”
Chapter 14 “Knowledge in Context”
Chapter 19 “Relativism”

Response paper

Nov. 20

There is one thing I would like everyone to read:

“Postmodernism and Philosophy” by Stuart Sim. (Requires library login.) Chapter one of the Routledge Companion to Postmodernism

Then I would like you to pick (at least) one of the following

1. “Two Lectures” by Michel Foucault
2. “Truth and Power” by Michel Foucault
3. “Foucault’s Normative Epistemology” by Linda Alcoff

 Items 1 and 2 can be found here as Chapters 5 and 6 of Power/Knowledge

Item 3 is Chapter 9 of the book Companion to Foucault available through our library

Nov. 27

Feminism in Epistemology

1. Rae Langton, “Feminism in Epistemology: Exclusion and objectification” 

Response paper; second paper instructions handed out

Race, Disability, and the Epistemology of Ignorance

Just one required reading this week:

1. "Knowing Disability Differently" by Shelley Tremain

(It may help to read this summary of To Kill A Mockingbird, if you haven't read the novel or seen the film. The part most relevant to Tremain's discussion is the last few paragraphs, describing the trial of Tom Robinson.) 

Is the epistemology of ignorance itself a form of epistemic injustice?

Optional extra's:

1. a brief ‘explainer’ that gives you the gist of Fricker’s idea of 'epistemic injustice': https://1000wordphilosophy.com/2020/07/21/epistemic-injustice/

2. "White Ignorance" by Charles Mills;

 

 

2nd Position Paper due