Overview
I focus my teaching on philosophy of science, political philosophy, and applied ethics.
At Penn, I received the School of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching by Graduate Students (2023) and the University’s Penn Prize for Excellence in Teaching by Graduate Students (2021).
Below are the classes for which I have been a primary instructor or graduate teaching assistant.
Environmental Ethics (University of Pennsylvania, 2023)
This course explores the domain of environmental philosophy, encompassing questions in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science, as well as normative questions about ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics.
Although the course will touch upon various philosophical dimensions of the environment, it primarily concentrates on normative questions and issues. Specifically, this course explores questions about the natural environment, animals, and climate change. For example, what rights do animals have? Do natural entities (e.g., forests, rivers, coral reefs, etc.) have rights? What actions are we permitted to take to mitigate the effects of climate change?
In addition to traditional environmental philosophy and nature writings from diverse authors, this course incorporates law, political science, religion, economics, history, and anthropology research.
Repairing the Planet: Tools for the Climate Emergency (University of Pennsylvania, 2023)
Climate change will be the defining challenge of the 21st century. This course is a comprehensive introduction to this challenge and the tools with which we can fight it. It will integrate natural science, social science, philosophy of science, history, ethics, and policy. The course opens with an overview of the historical discovery of global warming and our contemporary understanding of climate change. We then turn to the framework that the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has developed to study climate risks, focusing on both general issues and case studies throughout the world. The existence and severity of these risks raises questions of climate justice at many levels: individuals to individuals, countries to countries, and the present generation to future generations. We will study these issues in detail, and then examine the policy tools developed to address them. Although we will discuss national and sub-national policy and policy proposals such as Build Back Better and the European Green Deal, special attention will be given to global policy tools especially the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement. In addition to standard writing assignments, students will have a chance to develop policy proposals that address the core issues of the class.
Graduate teaching assistant for Michael Weisberg
The Social Contract (University of Pennsylvania, 2022)
This course is a survey of the history of Western modern political philosophy. The organizing theme of our study is the idea of the social contract. The social contract doctrine expresses the intuitive idea that individuals ought to accept a political order, and the rights and obligations that come with this, if this arrangement is one that they have (or would have) consented to. Political obligations, on this view, are justified by reference to the (hypothetical) agreement of individuals under some appropriate conditions. We will study the social contract idea as it is developed in Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, and we will contrast it with alternative accounts, such as utilitarianism as developed by Hume, Bentham, and Mill. We end the course with some contemporary debates on justice and the social contract.
While we are interested in gaining a systematic understanding of the works of these authors, we will pay special attention to some topics and questions introduced in these works that are of general and continuing interest in contemporary philosophical debates such as the idea of rational self-interest, natural rights and property rights, collective agency, gender justice and so on. Along the way, we will intersperse the historical readings with selected contemporary discussions to show how the history of ideas shape present debate.
Graduate teaching assistant for Kok-Chor Tan
Introduction to Philosophy (University of Pennsylvania, 2021)
The aim of this course is to introduce you to some of the major topics and methods of analytic philosophy. As the course goes on, the questions we consider will become progressively more explanatorily deep. It begins with questions about what we should do (Normative Ethics). We then move to questions about how we can even do anything at all (Free Will). We then consider how we might know about any of this (Epistemology). Finally we ask what we even are, what it means for us to be at all, and what kinds of things constitute us (Mind, Personal Identity, Race, and Gender).
This course will not assume any background in philosophy. But, for most students, it will be a challenging (though hopefully worthwhile) course. The course will push you to understand and communicate clearly about material that is often difficult to understand. Along with introducing you to analytic philosophy, this course will help students become better skilled in understanding and intelligently questioning sophisticated arguments, which can come in handy in a large number of pursuits.
Graduate teaching assistant for Daniel Singer
Global Human Rights (University of Pennsylvania, 2020)
What do we mean by “human rights”? What is the basis for saying something is a fundamental human right? This course will examine the theoretical, historical and political foundations of contemporary human rights debates. The course will cover not only broad conceptual debates, but also focus on specific issue areas (e.g., civil rights, economic rights, women’s rights, globalization and human rights), as well as the question of how new rights norms emerge and diffuse in international relations.
Graduate teaching assistant for Eileen Doherty-Sil