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Helen De Cruz
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Unconventional teaching ideas that work: Feeling it first (Brendan Larvor)
By Brendan Larvor, Reader in Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire I was teaching philosophy of science to second year undergraduates at the University of Hertfordshire. At first, I taught philosophy of science the usual way, with a lecture followed by a seminar. The approach was to illustrate philosophical points... Continue reading
Posted 2 days ago at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Unconventional teaching ideas that work: On writing fun, strange, and open ended exams (C. Thi Nguyen)
Guest post by C. Thi Nguyen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Utah Valley University. His first book, Games: Agency as Art, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. I try to write exam questions that are funny, startling, and open-ended. My goal is to give students a lovely note to... Continue reading
Posted 5 days ago at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Unconventional teaching ideas that work: Teaching about personhood without mentioning abortion (E.M. Dadlez)
Guest post by E.M. Dadlez, Professor at the Department of Humanities & Philosophy, University of Central Oklahoma I am teaching Contemporary Moral Problems, a freshman core course, in central Oklahoma. Many, MANY students are pro-life. It is hard to motivate a discussion without religious overtones. It is hard to talk... Continue reading
Posted Dec 6, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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New series: Unconventional teaching ideas that work
It's that time of year that many of us are bogged down with grading, but it's also often the time we reflect on the past semester, what went well, and what could improve. Some of us have really cool, unconventional ideas in our teaching that work. Those ideas engage students,... Continue reading
Posted Dec 6, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Inclusive citations and editorial word count policy
As executive editor of the Journal of Analytic Theology, I've been working with the other editors on a document to spell out our editorial practices and procedures. Having such a document will, we hope, inspire confidence in authors who submit to our journal and in our referees, improve transparency of... Continue reading
Posted Nov 21, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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What kind of colleague do you want? (Or, why we don't want passionate teachers and kind people as academic colleagues)
Posted Nov 12, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Sustaining Activism
This is a guest post by Mark Lance, Professor at the Philosophy Department and Justice and Peace Studies Program at Georgetown University: Early in my activist career, I had a mentor, Molly Rush. Molly has done an enormous amount in her life, but was most famous as a member of... Continue reading
Posted Nov 9, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Success stories - what you love about academic philosophy and why you decided to stay put
The exploitation of academics in precarious positions, particularly adjuncts but also graduate students, has given rise to a remarkable literary non-fiction subgenre: the quit lit. Quit lit are heartfelt pieces where academics vent their frustration. I find these pieces very useful. They help us critically evaluate some of the assumptions... Continue reading
Posted Oct 26, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Jumping ship: how to move from a tenure-track or tenured position to another
When I was an innocent postdoc I could never understand why people, after finally resting from their labours and anxieties of the job market, would actually want to move jobs. Sure, there are offers you can't refuse (but few of us get those!), but why would you try to find... Continue reading
Posted Sep 21, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Approaching the job market: not a lottery or about philosophical worthiness
(UPDATE: comments now open!) This is a guest post by Meghan Sullivan. She is Professor of Philosophy and the Rev. John A. O’Brien Collegiate Chair at University of Notre Dame, and has lots of experience with job searches. Jonathan Kramnick's observations about changes in the MLA job market transfer to... Continue reading
Posted Sep 11, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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You should never, ever, edit a volume and other blanket early career advice
Regularly, I see well-meaning and evidence-based advice for early-career people along the following lines Don't ever edit a volume. It's a lot more trouble than it's worth. It hardly counts for tenure/finding a job. Don't ever write a book review. Okay, perhaps if you really wanted to read this book... Continue reading
Posted Aug 17, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Reflections on my upcoming 40th birthday, hitting targets, and our relevance in the profession
In less than a month, I will be 40 years old. In my early 30s, I took away my date of birth from social media and from my CV. The reason behind this was that I worried about being regarded as "past my prime", especially for hiring committees. It took... Continue reading
Posted Aug 12, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Why analytic philosophers of religion might want to be a little less orthodox
I recently accepted to be an executive editor for the Journal of Analytic Theology, and will be joining the team with Mike Rea and Oliver Crisp (senior editors) and Kevin Diller (executive editor). JAT is an open-access, interdisciplinary journal that fosters analytic approaches to theological topics, including analytic philosophy of... Continue reading
Posted Aug 11, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Knowing what you now know, would you go to graduate school?
At a conference dinner recently, a non-academic spouse to one of the keynote speakers asked us the following question: if you had to do it all over again, would you go to graduate school? I subsequently posted the question on FaceBook where it generated an interesting range of responses among... Continue reading
Posted Jun 7, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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On not putting your life on hold on the job market
Suppose you are--perhaps you are--someone in your thirties or beyond, and on a temporary contract. Examples include a postdoc, a Visiting Assistant Professor position, a fixed-term lectureship, an adjunct position. In my experience, and in the experience of many people I know, it becomes progressively more psychologically difficult to be... Continue reading
Posted May 21, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Indeed it was, but I did not see the added value of putting the acrimonious phrase in my obituary. You may be right. I think there is a place for all sorts of things in philosophy of religion (blogosphere and elsewhere), sociological and other stuff, and it was a pity the main bloggers stopped blogging on it. I had conversations with several of them after your remarks, but sadly, they said they did not have the time to write for Prosblogion anymore. And the guest posts weren't sustainable either. A pity.
Commented Apr 7, 2018 on Obituary for the Prosblogion - and what public philosophy might look like after FaceBook at The Philosophers' Cocoon
Obituary for the Prosblogion - and what public philosophy might look like after FaceBook
After nearly 15 years, the Prosblogion, a philosophy of religion blog is no more (the link does not work). The blog's owner let me know yesterday that he had the blog expire. Posting had become less frequent, a fate similar to other group blogs. 15 years in blog terms is a long time. Let me tell...
Obituary for the Prosblogion - and what public philosophy might look like after FaceBook
After nearly 15 years, the Prosblogion, a philosophy of religion blog is no more (the link does not work). The blog's owner let me know yesterday that he had the blog expire. Posting had become less frequent, a fate similar to other group blogs. 15 years in blog terms is... Continue reading
Posted Apr 5, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Teaching Intro Courses Series - Part 1: Stacey Goguen's Introduction to Ethics
by Stacey Goguen Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU), lower-division gen. ed. course: “Ethics” The Context I teach at a medium-sized public university (7,000-8,000 students) which caters to a racially and socio-economically diverse population of mostly Chicago-area residents, especially (a) students looking to transfer, either from more expensive nearby schools or community... Continue reading
Posted Jan 20, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Call for papers: Evolutionary ethics: The nuts and bolts approach
I'd like to draw Cocoon readers' attention to this call for papers of a conference I am co-organizing at Oxford Brookes University, 20-21 July 2018. A growing body of evidence from the sciences suggests that our moral beliefs have an evolutionary basis. To explain how human morality evolved, some philosophers... Continue reading
Posted Jan 19, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Interview with Zachary Ernst: the philosopher who became a data engineer
Zachary Ernst left a tenured position as a philosophy professor to work in the start up Narrative Science. Now, Ernst works for the company Civis Analytics as a data engineer. Given the increasing role of data science in lots of domains, I thought it would be interesting to interview him... Continue reading
Posted Dec 23, 2017 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Thoughts About Emotional Investment in the Philosophy Job Market
By Andrew Moon, assistant professor of philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. An important practice I learned while on the job market was to manage my degree of emotional investment. If you are too emotionally invested in getting some job, and you do this for many jobs, then the job market... Continue reading
Posted Nov 25, 2017 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Friendship and being an academic
Posted Nov 15, 2017 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Cocoon mentoring program - brief update
Our Cocoon mentoring program is in full swing! We have matched up a good number of mentors and mentees, but we have some unmatched mentees (as well as mentors who don't fit well with our current pool of mentees). If you are a tenure-track/tenured professor or equivalent position and you... Continue reading
Posted Jun 29, 2017 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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What if your philosophical idea is the wrong length to work out properly?
I've just organized the British Society of Aesthetics Fiction Writing Workshop for Philosophers. We learned how to write stories and how to publish them. My motivation for this workshop is the suspicion, voiced by Martha Nussbaum and others, and embodied in the work of writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and... Continue reading
Posted Jun 5, 2017 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Open Letter of support for Rachel McKinnon
Public philosophy is an important part of what we do, and how we can make a difference. It is thankless work that is not weighted as much as is should in tenure and promotion dossiers. Yet, through it, we can provide a valuable voice in debates and offer our expertise.... Continue reading
Posted May 23, 2017 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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