Independent Teaching
Race: History, Biology, Psychology, Philosophy. Spring 2017.
For examples of student work from this course, check out this page.
Morality & Medicine. Fall 2016.
For examples of student work from this course, check out this page.
- Syllabus.
- Course Description: The goal of this course is to help students gain a thorough understanding of the issues raised by races and racism. Such understanding can only be gained by bringing together several disciplines in an interdisciplinary manner. Thus, we will examine issues about race and racism that arise from biology, history, psychology, and philosophy. In particular, we will examine the following questions: How race is and ought to be represented in natural history museum exhibits? How has the concept of race influenced scientific theories? Do empirical findings of genetic differences between racial groups show that races are biologically real? Why are racial categories used in medicine? Why do we think and group people racially? Should we adopt color-blind policies? What is racism? Is some particular concept of race necessary for political and social opposition to racism? Prior acquaintance with the philosophy of race is not presupposed. The course will give you a sense of how philosophy can be brought to bear on topics important both in the scientific and social-political domains. It should in addition help give you a sense of how materials from other disciplines can be incorporated into a philosophical project. The course aims to provide you with the tools and concepts to think about race and racism in a nuanced and reflective way. Students with a variety of views on the topics such as realists, antirealists, agnostics, and “undecided” about the reality of race are equally welcome. The course aims to encourage the critical assessment of your prior understanding of ‘race’ and ‘racism’ as well as engaged and respectful discussion of issues relevant to our everyday lives.
- Participation Paper Instructions and Rubric
- Worksheet for Field Trip to the Carnegie Museum of Art and Natural History
- Creative Project Instructions and Rubric
- Creative Project Proposal Worksheet
Morality & Medicine. Fall 2016.
- Syllabus.
- Course description: Ethical dilemmas in the practice of health care continue to proliferate and receive increasing attention from members of the health care profession, ethicists, policy makers, and the general public as health care consumers. In this course we will examine a number of ethical issues that arise in the context of contemporary medical practice and research by analyzing articles and decision scenarios. Topics to be covered include the physician-patient relationship; informed consent; medical experimentation; termination of treatment; euthanasia; resource allocation; race-based medicine; disability and well-being; and health care reform. Students who successfully complete this course will be able to identify and analyze different philosophical approaches to selected issues in medical ethics; have gained insight into how to read and critically interpret philosophical arguments; and have developed skills that will enable them to think clearly about ethical questions as future or current health care providers, policy makers, and consumers.
- Sample Reading Response Prompts
- Argument Reconstruction In-Class Activity
- Philosophy Term Paper Instructions and Rubric
Teaching Assistant
Morality & Medicine. Fall 2014. Professor Peter Machamer.
- Sample Discussion Topic: On the first day of class, we discussed the Ebola outbreak and related bioethical issues. I asked students to describe what they knew about the outbreak from the news: that two Americans had been ill, flown back to the U.S., and given ZMapp, an experimental medication from a Canadian company that had never been tested on humans before. Students raised issues about whether or not non-FDA-approved experimental drugs should be given to humans in dire circumstances, the ethics of global distribution of medical resources, and whether or not there was prejudice in the decision not to give ZMapp to Sheik Umar Khan, an African doctor helping with the ebola outbreak. This topic introduced issues in the course and demonstrated to students that they are already thinking about current bioethical issues in their everyday lives.
- Guest Lecture: Race & Medicine. I discussed what doctors might mean by saying that "race is real," genetic attempts to distinguish the races, the use of race as a proxy, and race-based medicine. In particular, I described the insufficiency of race as a proxy based on (1) differing definitions of race through different data-collecting organizations and (2) in the case of sickle cell anemia (which had previously been used to argue white patients with sickle cell anemia "weren't really white" after all). In discussing race-based medicine, we considered the case of BiDil, which is the first medication prescribed by race. An initial study found BiDil not to be more effective than current congestive heart failure medications among all racial groups. It only became FDA approved for black patients after a subsequent study--with only black participants--found BiDil to be more effective than the previous accepted treatments.
- Sample Class Activity: After students completed a homework assignment applying their skills to pick Szasz's main argument out of his essay "Mental Illness is a Myth," I broke the class into small groups of 2-3 students. Each group received strips of paper with paraphrases of ideas expressed by Szasz in his paper. Each group was asked to rearrange the strips of paper to formulate Szasz's main argument. I advised students to start by identifying the conclusion and work their way back through the required premises. However, I warned them that some statements were irrelevant to the main argument and some statements were evidence or support for premises. Once groups felt confident in their answers, as a class we put together Szasz's argument that mental illness is not a disease in the descriptivist sense, but rather a "problem in living." I asked groups to explain their classification of various statements and any mistakes were discussed as a class with other groups explaining why the placement was a mistake. This assignment helped students learn how to separate the summary of an author's view and her main argument as well as how to determine whether a particular statement is a premise, conclusion, irrelevant statement, or piece of evidence.