Throughout COVID, I used to be a part of the 40% of the tenure-line school laid off by William Paterson College in New Jersey, after which I returned to my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, the place I turned an adjunct professor on the College of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB). Then final semester (fall 2023), the one everlasting school member whom UAB relied on to show the historical past of philosophy, feminist philosophy, non-western philosophy, and continental philosophy retired. In order that they provided me the chance to show Existentialism (along with my standard Bioethics). And since that’s squarely in my wheelhouse, from my undergraduate and graduate training (which emphasised continental philosophy) my publishing historical past (which incorporates articles on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Arendt, and Fanon), I jumped on the probability.
For the construction of the course, I used to be impressed by a mixture of programs I had taken on each canonical (European) existential philosophers and African philosophers, together with graduate seminars on Ralph Ellison and W. E. B. Du Bois with Dr. Lucius Outlaw, Jr. at Vanderbilt College. I developed two major pedagogical targets. First, from the outset, to discover the connections amongst what most undergraduates take into consideration once they hear “existentialism,” the Black existentialist custom and its southern U.S. precursors, and the leftist political activism of thinkers in each traditions, together with militant resistance to fascism and colonialism. And second, because the post-Oct. seventh occasions in Palestine unfolded in the course of our semester, I sought to use these existentialist insights to our struggles with questions of antisemitism, colonialism, and political engagement.
My total philosophical pedagogy takes inspiration from, amongst different thinkers and texts, Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Bell Hooks’ Instructing to Transgress. When utilized concretely on this course, that meant (a) exhorting college students to share the issues they have been going through of their lives, and their tentative options thereto (from Freire); and (b) difficult them, and myself, to experiment with new methods of studying and considering, bravely taking dangers and being weak within the course of, for instance by discussing the ethnic cleaning and genocide in Gaza (from hooks).
Probably the most rewarding components of the syllabus for me have been, as standard, a subset of the first texts which might be marginalized each on this topic space and in U.S. tutorial philosophy usually (on this case, these of Ellison, Wright, and Fanon). As for the scholars, throughout our customary “mid-semester evaluation” course of, they have been most constructive concerning the task construction, particularly their being empowered to decide on any eight of the 13 weekly readings on which to jot down a brief paper and to submit as many early drafts of these papers as they wished for suggestions and attainable revision previous to grading.
Lastly, since this was a brand-new course for me final semester, I’ve not had the chance to use something from it to different programs but. Whether or not I might change something, if given the chance to show it once more, would rely totally on the place and once I was educating it subsequent time, as I attempt to restructure programs in response to the distinctive challenges and alternatives confronted by every group of scholars in every semester. So in that spirit, as a parting provocation for my colleagues, I might encourage you to be as open and aware of your communities as you’ll be able to, and as courageous and principled in modeling your commitments to social justice as our establishments will permit. After which in the event that they don’t permit it, combat the great combat, and mindfully insurgent.
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Joshua M. Corridor
Joshua M. Corridor earned his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt College, and has revealed seventy-five peer-reviewed journal articles (together with in The Pluralist, Philosophy Compass, and Philosophy and Literature), two of which have just lately appeared in Spanish translation, and coedited Philosophy Imprisoned: The Love of Knowledge within the Age of Mass Incarceration: https://ua-birmingham.academia.edu/JoshuaHall.
