Courses

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Instructor: Katy Fulfer

Although care is central to our lives, it is largely ignored by our social and political institutions. For many of us the COVID-19 pandemic brought this to the fore, though feminist scholars and social justice activists have long pointed to how care is devalued within Western societies.  This course provides an introduction to feminist care ethics. We will study the foundation of “care” as a distinct ethical approach in philosophy, examine the political and economic significance of care, and compare and contrast a Western feminist care approach with other philosophical traditions. We will also examine how philosophers, practitioners, and activists are re-imagining and centering care in their social justice work.

Instructor: Jacqueline Feke

This course explores the intersection of science and philosophy from antiquity to the early modern period.  Responding to their naked-eye observations of the world and divergent philosophical commitments, ancient Greek philosophers and mathematicians constructed competing theories of the cosmos’ composition and structure.  This course examines the variety of cosmological theories advanced by ancient Greek philosophers and mathematicians as well as their reception from the medieval Islamic tradition to early modern Europe.  Analyzing texts in translation by, for example, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and Ptolemy, students will familiarize themselves with the content and range of ancient Greek cosmologies as well as their relation to various epistemological and metaphysical theories.  In addition, students will examine these cosmologies’ reception by Ibn Tufayl, Copernicus, and Galileo, who responded to earlier cosmologies in light of their own philosophical commitments and, in the case of Galileo, the observation of phenomena inaccessible before the invention of the telescope.

Instructor: Matt Doucet

Details incoming.