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Learning how and when to say 'no'
This is a guest post by Kevin Timpe, Jellema Chair of Christian Philosophy at Calvin College My writing a post on how to say ‘no’ is roughly like my writing a post on how to drink less coffee. In some ways, I'm the last person that should do it given... Continue reading
Posted yesterday at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Leaving Academia: A Guide (guest post by Matt Drabek)
This is a guest post by Matt Drabek, which originally appeared here. Source: Dnalor 01 (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Dnalor_01) Some of you probably know I have some experience with leaving academia. It’s a gradual process. I started having doubts about an academic career around 2010 or 2011. When I went on the job... Continue reading
Posted Feb 6, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Etienne Vermeersch, the art of lecturing, and coming into your own
Posted Jan 24, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Unconventional teaching ideas that work: Asking your students to perform 90 minutes of kindness for no reward (Eric Schwitzgebel)
Guest post by Eric Schwizgebel, University of California, Riverside, reprinted from Eric's personal blog the splintered mind. Followers of this blog will recall my post from October 30, where I solicited ideas about a "Kindness Assignment" for my lower-division philosophy class "Evil". The assignment was to perform ninety minutes of... Continue reading
Posted Jan 19, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Should you just be yourself in a job interview?
Lots of graduate students and other people on the job market are advised to not be themselves in a job interview. Yourself? God, no. Please. The idea you could be yourself is a symptom of grad student naiveté, so the idea goes, quickly shed once you become more job market... Continue reading
Posted Jan 18, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Unconventional teaching ideas that work: Mindfulness meditation in the philosophy classroom (by Sara Protasi)
Guest post by Sara Protasi (Puget Sound) My use of meditation in teaching philosophy has gradually grown out of my own, alas still too sporadic and inconsistent, personal practice. I became acquainted with mindfulness meditation through both yoga and psychological therapy, and through a workshop that I attended as a... Continue reading
Posted Jan 16, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Unconventional teaching ideas that work: Skill-focused teaching through a philosophical service project (by Nathan Nobis)
Posted Jan 12, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Unconventional teaching ideas that work: close reading of Asian philosophical texts (by Ian James Kidd)
By Ian James Kidd, University of Nottingham In spring 2016, I taught an elective (optional) second-year undergraduate philosophy course at the University of Nottingham, ‘Topics in Asian Philosophy’. Generally, the class has about sixty students, since there’s always great enthusiasm for so-called ‘non-Western’ traditions. Although I’d lectured and led seminars... Continue reading
Posted Dec 28, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Unconventional teaching ideas that work: The curiosity project (Melissa Shew)
[UPDATE: comments now open!] By Melissa Shew, Marquette University There are only three requirements for the Curiosity Project. The Curiosity Project MUST: Engage and respond to a philosophical question, sincerely asked and pursued Use individual group members’ gifts and talents Be wildly creative At the beginning of a semester, when... Continue reading
Posted Dec 20, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Unconventional teaching ideas that work: Using monastic meditative reflection in the classroom (Jake Wright)
By Jake Wright, Senior Lecturer at the University of Minnesota Rochester In my introduction to philosophy class at the University of Minnesota Rochester, I begin each class with a fairly lengthy session of meditative reflection, based on the medieval monastic practice lectio divina. I’ve spelled the practice out for my... Continue reading
Posted Dec 18, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Teaching Statements: what are search committees looking for?
Guest post by Eric Steinhart, Professor of Philosophy at William Paterson University I work at a teaching university. It’s a mid-sized state university. Many, many jobs are at schools like mine. And if you want to join our faculty, if you’re applying for a job, I want to know about... Continue reading
Posted Dec 16, 2018 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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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 Dec 14, 2018 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 Dec 11, 2018 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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