Fall 2021
Aesthetics
PHIL 5050.002 | Dr. Michael Kelly | (100% online, asynchronous learning)
‘Aesthetics’ is as old as philosophy, though its modern disciplinary form emerged in the 18th century. After discussing some classical modern texts, we’ll focus on Black Aesthetics, which has a long history but which has taken on a new vibrancy and relevance in the last few years. What is Black Aesthetics, a question that philosophers, artists, and others answer in many different, mostly complementary ways? Black Aesthetics entails a critique of modern aesthetics because of the racism (colonialism and sexism) in its conceptual foundations. Is it also a new form or mode of doing aesthetics? Might this new form also be an invitation and a challenge to the rest of contemporary aesthetics to rethink what it’s doing and thinking? We’ll read Hume, Kant, Gikandi, Douglass, Du Bois, Davis, Morrison, Baraka, Lorde, Taylor, and more.
Biopsychosocial Health
PHIL 6050.091 | Dr. Shannon Sullivan | Tuesday 12:15-3:00PM (face-to-face)
How is human health transactionally constituted by biological, psychological, and social factors? "Transactional" here means that the bio, the psycho, and the social of biopsychosocial health are not separate and additive, but instead co-constitute each other in dynamic ways. This course will examine these questions both philosophically and empirically/psychologically. It will be team-taught (with Dr. Jeanette Bennett of the Department of Psychological Science) and cross-listed with the PhD program in Health Psychology. The course will examine empirical and applied research pertaining to the promotion and maintenance of health, the prevention and treatment of illness, and the examination of health behaviors. We will focus particularly on the impact of stress on health. Throughout the course, we also will ask meta-questions about what counts as "good health" and how, for example, that concept often is implicitly shaped by social dynamics related to white privilege, male privilege, and class privilege. While the empirical readings will emphasize the biological underpinnings of health, students in PHIL 6050 are not expected to be or to become experts in analyzing or conducting empirical studies on health, as Health Psychology students might be. The assignments for PHIL 6050 students will include an in-class presentation and leading discussion on the day’s readings, plus a final term paper in which each student researches philosophically a health-related topic with the benefit of their new understanding of empirical studies related to biopsychosocial health.
Caribbean Philosophy
PHIL 5050.001| Dr. Eddy Souffrant | Monday 2:30-5:15PM (100% online, including some synchronous learning)
We shall consider the nature of Caribbean Philosophy and explore its critical and expansive aspects with the works of Aimé Césaire, Maryse Condé, Frantz Fanon, Édouard Glissant, Jean Price-Mars, David Scott, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, and Sylvia Wynter.
Master's Research Paper
PHIL 6999.001|Dr. Gordon Hull | Wednesday 12:30-3:15PM (100% online, including some synchronous learning)
Students begin with a previously submitted course paper and spend the semester revising it. The goal is for each student to produce a polished, professional paper worthy of submission to a philosophical journal. Additional reading and research on the topic is conducted, and multiple steps of revision and presentation of work in progress to the class are included.
Philosophical Methods & Analysis
PHIL 6120.001 | Dr. Ruth Groenhout | Thursday 2:30-5:15PM (face-to-face / hybrid [100% online option available])
This course is an introduction to the various methods of doing philosophy, examining both the various philosophical traditions as well as the reading and writing skills necessary for success in a philosophy graduate program. Because the MA program at UNC Charlotte is an Applied Philosophy program, the focus of this class will be on significantly different approaches to various applied issues in philosophy, beginning with historical approaches, the analytic/continental divide, and concluding with alternative approaches that fall outside these three major categories. Members of the department will also visit the class, to introduce their approaches to these various methods as well as their analysis of specific issues in topics such as health care ethics, feminist theory, Africana philosophy and other prominent approaches.
Religious Experience
PHIL 5050.090| Dr. Will Sherman | Monday 5:30-8:15PM (100% online, including some synchronous learning)
How are we to understand accounts of extraordinary dreams, visions of angels, out of body sensations, and other religious experiences that may seem bizarre and impossible? This question has motivated a number of philosophers and scholars of religion, and the concept of “religious experience” has been central to a debate about how we define and think about religion. This course will introduce us to a number of approaches to religious experience: William James’s pragmatism, phenomenology from Merleau-Ponty to Sara Ahmed, literary approaches, neuroscientific explanations, and historical critiques of the very notion of experience. Along the way, we will encounter a wide array of narratives of religious experiences, ranging from medieval mystical visions to contemporary sightings of UFOs.
Theories of Resistance
PHIL 6050.002 | Dr. Elisabeth Paquette | Tuesday 5:30-8:15PM (100% online, including some synchronous learning)
Taking as its starting point the conception of “being human” developed in the work of decolonial theorist Sylvia Wynter, we examine the relation between dominant conceptions of the political subject-human and structures of knowledge production, as well as the impact such conceptions have in the contemporary context. Doing so provides a framework for theorizing the tools necessary for resisting dominant and oppressive structures that operate through a process of dehumanization. We will also consider the ways in which cartography and archives broadly construed operate either as perpetuating dominant structures, or as creating resistant terrains in the works of Katherine McKittrick, C. Riley Snorton, and Tiffany Lethabo King respectively. The course culminates in the development of a collective and nuanced account of Wynter's conception of ceremony, as the foundation for liberation in the 21st century.