Teaching

Selected course below.


ARTS 130: Denial and the future of climate change

In this course, we study some strategies that will help us to take a thoughtful, critical, and charitable approach to learning about the social world. To do so, we focus on climate change and the many forms of denial associated with it.


ARTS140: The future of climate change

In this course, we study some strategies that will help us to conceptualize possible futures. We focus on climate change and especially on the Anthropocene, as the novel relationships between humans and their surroundings will produce new political and social arrangements.


MGMT2305: Ethics & social responsibility

Description TBA


SUST2000: Local governance, citizen engagement and sustainability

People make decisions that influence the ways the world changes and the ways in which it stays the same.  This course is about people—the actors—and their actions. We will focus on how the actions of people in natural and built environments affect the natural world. We will explore the roles and actions of individuals as consumers, activists, and members of families and societies.

We will also explore the roles of groups of people who are employed by government departments, regulatory bodies, legal systems, corporations, non-governmental organizations and those who voluntarily participate in sustainability efforts as members of local, community, and special-interest groups.  The course uses a Problem Based Learning (PBL) approach to help us to think critically as we explore the connections between people, their actions, and the complex issues associated with environmental and social sustainability.


PSCI225: Classics in political thought

What is justice? Why should I obey the state? What do I owe my fellow citizen? What is the good life?

In this course, we will discuss a range of classical answers to these (and similar) questions, beginning with Plato and finishing with St. Augustine. The texts discussed contain some of the earliest articulations of ideas that have become commonsensical features of Western political thought. This course will help students understand where there political views come from, as well as improve the quality of their thoughts about politics.

While this course is about historical ideas, it is not a history course, but a course in normative political theory. We will take ideas as they come to us and scrutinize them to the best of our ability, treating them as substantive political and philosophical claims rather than as historical artefacts.


PSCI390: Climate change justice

The argument of this course is that the relationship between humans and their physical context requires, to put it mildly, reconsideration and renewal. In this course, we will discuss some of the component parts of that relationship, subjecting them to normative scrutiny.


PSCI490: Ethics in war

Recent revisionist approaches to just war theory as spurred an explosion of theoretical work on the subject. In this seminar course, we discuss a proposed principles for governing resort to, conduct in, and exit from war, focusing on a close read of papers representing the breadth of the field.


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