Teaching

Teaching at a small liberal arts college means I get to teach a broad range of classes - including twenty or so courses abroad in the last fifteen years.  Most years I teach two courses abroad, one in Central America in January and a short one in Greece over our spring break. I have also taught monthlong nature-writing courses in Alaska for Augustana University and for Middlebury College.

It's a lot of work to prepare new classes on a regular basis, but teaching new classes means I get to continue to be a student, so I regularly add courses on new topics.

Here are some of my recent courses:

• How To Make Your Ideas Clear: Thinking Like Cicero And Plutarch  (Fall 2016)
• How To Begin To Solve "Wicked Problems" in Environmental Ethics and Policy (Spring 2017)
• Toolmaking, Tool-Design, and Problem-Solving
  

Here's some more of what I've taught:

General Philosophy and History of Philosophy:

• Ancient and Medieval Philosophy
• American Philosophies
• Asian Philosophies (focus on Classical China)
• Contemporary American Pragmatism  
• Critical Thinking (Informal Logic)
• Introduction to Philosophy
• Plato and Aristotle 

Philosophy of Religion:

• Philosophy of Religion 
• Philosophy and Theology in Dialogue
• Philosophy, Religion, and Literature: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien

Ecology and Environmental Philosophy:

• Environmental Philosophy
• Ecology  (team-taught)
  
• Tropical Ecology and Spanish Immersion (team-taught in Guatemala and Belize)
• Nature-writing: Trout, Salmon, and Char in Alaska (team-taught course for Middlebury College, summer 2015)

Classics:

• Classical Greek Language
• Ancient and Medieval Philosophy
• Plato and Aristotle

Ethics:

• The Question of Justice, From Plato to Genesis to Job
• Contemporary Moral Issues 
• Media Ethics
• Business Ethics

 

Aesthetics:

• Visual Culture and the Sacred: Creative Acts of Resistance and Redemption in Art, Film, and New Media (team-taught)

Courses Abroad:

• Greece: Tracing the Roots of Western Civilization (focusing on Parthenon and ethics of antiquities, often with stops in Rome or London) 
• Nicaragua: Globalization and Economics
• Guatemala and Belize: Tropical Ecology: Neotropical Forests and Barrier Reef
  
• Spain and Morocco: Islam, Judaism, and Christianity in Al-Andalus