I’ve been the instructor and built syllabi for four general education classes at Penn State: Introduction to Feminist Philosophy; Gender Matters;  Social & Political Philosophy; Ethical Life. Here are my approaches to teaching non-majors and people with little to no experience in philosophy.

Most students come to feminist philosophy classes already acquainted with important concepts from the tradition, such as intersectionality, social construction, patriarchy, gender norms, and ideology.  This presents an opportunity to hook into students' discursive resources, and deepen their knowledge of the social issues and philosophical arguments that gave rise to them. It also presents a challenge: how can concepts and terminology that has been made familiar be reinvigorated in classroom discussion? My approach is two-pronged: stay close to the texts where these concepts arise, and encourage the critique of these concepts.

In any feminist philosophy class, I center gaps and conflict in feminist knowledge-making, and agency within oppressive structures. I follow bell hooks's conviction that everybody can and should be a a feminist. I follow Audre Lorde's position that feminist solidarity grows through conflict, and one recurrent conflict concerns how to recognize our differences. I return to Saba Mahmood's and María Lugones's provocations to examine agency within both resistant and reproductive acts. I look to Talia Mae Bettcher to spotlight gender and sex norms restrict intimacy and agency.

When I teach ethics, my primary aim is to furnish students with a toolbox of moral concepts and approaches, and to make explicit the historical origins and justifications of those they already use. I draw up case studies of cultural trends, laws, and politics, aiming to encourage students to take note of the moral issues that imbue their lives. This produces a deeper understanding of good and right action in a dialectic with applied and theoretical ethics. I foreground the assumptions made about what humans are like and in what the exercise of practical reason consists in classic approaches to normative ethics, including virtue ethics, deontology, consequentialism, and moral sense theorists. I pair canonical texts with newer developments in these theories or applications of them.  For instance, I explore moral relativism through the classical nonobjectivist account of Zhuangzi and the contemporary account of David Wong. I consider the sentimentalism of Hutcheson, Smith, and Hume in dialogue with the 20th century feminist ethics of care, and contemporary disability ethics.

Of the major problems of social and political philosophy, I center relationality and cooperation. The primary reason is that this focus helps students understand public discourse about oppression and responsibility. The second reason is that this focus spotlights the ideal aims and omissions of liberal political philosophy.

I aim to denaturalize relationships that we take for granted, to make them a problem for thought. Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality is a favorite text for this purpose. I draw out the significance of recognition for the affirmation of subjectivity and the achievement of autonomy in the Hegelian tradition, while probing and expanding who is and who is not a recognizer/recognizee. I examine how and why Locke tightens the connection between property in oneself and material property, and disrupt this connection through Marxian alienation. Feminist care theory allows the class to consider the ambivalence of interdependency under conditions of oppression, which also sets the stage for a deeper understanding of the aspirations of political liberalism, and its notable critics.