A fascinating experiment this next week: live like a stoic. Having taught a course, “Philosophy as a Way of Life,” that included a five-day practical exercise at the end (living for those five days as inspired by Seneca was one option; the Analects and Zhuangzi were other options), I am intrigued! (Here is a link to some discussion on our blog here prior to my teaching that class. I keep meaning to post some follow-up thoughts, but haven’t yet gotten around to it….) There is a lot of interesting material available at the website linked above, including specific exercises!
Category Archives: Pedagogy
Panel on Buddhism and Liberal Arts this Thursday in NYC
Thursday, October 4 from 6:00-8:00pm, there will be an open panel discussion entitled “Buddhism and the Future of the Liberal Arts” held at Eugene Lang College in New York. The location is Room 510, 66 West 12th St. Continue reading →
DeBary at Oct 5 Neo-Confucianism Seminar
Wm. Theodore de Bary, among the most influential scholars of Confucianism in the United States, will be discussing a paper titled “Neo-Confucianism and the Core Curriculum” at the Columbia Neo-Confucianism Seminar on Friday, October 5. These seminars are open to any interested parties; contact the organizers for a copy of the paper (which should be read in advance). Details follow. (Also, note that the organizers are soliciting ideas for future sessions this year.) Continue reading →
Wikipedia and Modern Chinese Philosophy
Like many of you, I suspect, I regularly use Wikipedia as a first-stop when looking something up on the internet. It has many limitations, of course, but often enough it proves useful. It is only as useful as its contributors make it, though. Since I have been struck by the paucity of informaton in Wikipedia concerning topics in 20th-century Chinese philosophy, I decided to see what would happen if I made improving a Wikipedia page one of the assignments in my Modern Chinese Philosophy course this semester. Continue reading →
New Scholarship on 20th Century Chinese Philosophy
As the semester winds toward its end, and with it, my class on Modern Chinese Philosophy,I find myself reflecting on how much new scholarship has become available on 20th- and 21st-century Chinese philosophy in just the last 18 months. Most of these books are, alas, quite expensive, but the quality is very high. This slew of excellent books makes me feel that the field of modern Chinese philosophy has suddenly come of age — and, at the same time, become eminently teachable. Reflect with me on this list:
Columbia Comp. Phil. Seminar: Introducing Asian Philosophy: A Discussion of Texts and Strategies
May 4, 2012: “Introducing Asian Philosophy: A Discussion of Texts and Strategies”
5:45-7:45 pm, Rm. 101 in the Department of Religion 80 Claremont Avenue
Several members of the seminar will circulate and present (for around 10 minutes) a short, philosophically interesting passage from a classical Asian text that he has found an effective way of teaching to undergraduates.
Results of Survey on teaching Chinese Philosophy
Back in 2009 and 2010, Minh Nguyen surveyed a wide range of instructors of course on Chinese philosophy to learn about the challenges they faced and about resources they found particularly useful. He has now published the survery data in the Fall 2011 Newsletter of the APA Committee on Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies. He and Manyul Im are working on an essay extracting lessons from the survey, but in the meantime, discussion of its results are welcome here.
Teaching Chinese Thought: Observations on Pedagogy
Regular blog reader Joel Dietz offers his thoughts, in this guest post, on teaching Chinese thought—mainly as viewed from the “consumer” or student end of the interaction. In the comments, please respond to Joel.
Despite the recent interest in China from an economic perspective, relatively few colleges offer courses which attempt to offer an “Introduction to Chinese Thought” or, perhaps more ambitiously, an “Introduction to Chinese Philosophy.” Indeed, in a recent course providing an introduction to Chinese classical thought at the University of Pennsylvania, it was unclear what if any, Ivy League institutions, besides the University of Pennsylvania and Brown University offer such a course (presumably others do, and it would be delightful to know the details). As an undergraduate at Brown studying with Henry Rosemont and Harold Roth, graduate student at Penn, and reviewer of other related syllabi, especially those for a comparative philosophy class offered by Chris Fraser at Hong Kong University, I make some preliminary pedagogical observations extrapolated from my experience, including related benefits and challenges. Continue reading →
Philosophy at Yale NUS College
I have just finished taking part in a two-day planning session for the liberal arts college that Yale University and the National University of Singapore (NUS) are collaboratively designing, called Yale NUS College (or YNC). It is scheduled to open in Singapore, adjacent to the main NUS campus, in Fall 2013, and the first wave of faculty recruitment will take place this fall. A great deal about the structure of the college and its curriculum is still in flux; teams of faculty and administrators from Yale and NUS, and more recently some invited faculty from colleges and universities in the US, are continuing to debate many aspects. But Chinese and/or comparative philosophy is likely to play a role, so I thought I’d report a bit here. Continue reading →
New Project: Collecting Teaching Resources
It’s the middle of the summer in the US, but a new academic year will be on us soon enough, and we have decided to devote a new section of the blog to teaching Chinese philosophy, including Comparative courses (broadly speaking–i.e., combining significant amounts of Chinese and non-Chinese philosophical content in a single course). The new page is here.
Our goal is to collect syllabi, links to reviews of teaching-related resources, and anything else that our community thinks might be helpful. Anyone can also use the comments area on that page to make suggestions, ask questions about pedogogy, and so on. We still encourage blog contributors to post their thoughts on teaching in the normal fashion; search the category “pedagogy” for recent posts on this theme.
If you have a resource you would like shared here, please email it to Steve Angle or Manyul Im. Either a PDF or a link to stable on-line materials is preferred. For syllabi, please include: (1) Coverage (i.e., time period, main figures/texts, or main topics), and (2) Notes & Special Features (e.g., designed for large lecture-style introduction; assumes prior course in Pre-Qin Philosophy; upper-division seminar; etc.).
Comments or suggestions here on how to make this initiative maximally useful are hereby encouraged!
