Barry Lam is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College and executive producer of the Hi-Phi Nation podcast, the first and only narrative-driven show integrating journalism and philosophy.
What are you doing in your own classroom to diversify the philosophical canon?
I do searches every semester for syllabi of the kind of courses I’m teaching to see what it is people are doing that I’m not doing, and I also ask colleagues on Facebook for recommendations. For instance, based on these recommendations I’ve come to integrate a variety of work on speech-act theory and the gender and racial hate-speech literature in my introductory philosophy of language class. In my intro courses, I’m starting to incorporate longform journalism and narrative storytelling with philosophical angles as an entry point for more classical topics like free will, the ethics of killing, and retributive justice. I do this with podcasts, film, narrative journalism, and empirical research in the social sciences. I also think teaching outside of one’s department, either individual classes or team teaching, really helps with diversifying teaching in philosophy. It can be in multidisciplinary courses or even independent hobbies you might have that bring insight into your own teaching.
What’s your favorite piece to teach and why?
I really enjoyed using Samantha Broun’s episode on This American Life called “20 years later” as an entry point into Martha Nussbaum’s book Anger and Forgiveness to talk about the role of the reactive emotions in our practices of retributive justice. After her mother was viciously attacked in the 90s by a serial killer, Broun was partly responsible for the passage of severe laws in Pennsylvania preventing convicted murderers from being released on parole.. After 20 years, she has started to question the justice of retributive practices even for the harshest of crimes, and goes on a journey to figure out the repercussions of those laws. The episode is a perfect companion to the philosophical issues raised in Nussbaum and the students respond very well.
Which pieces do you find resonate most with students?
Students at the intro level seem to like the connection of philosophy with stories from life, public policy, criminal justice, and so forth. Its what drives me in making Hi-Phi Nation for the general public, but only recently did I think it would work with introductory students. For instance, there’s a classic This American Life episode called “Act V” about prisoner’s performing Hamlet, which connects to the issue of retributive versus utilitarian views of criminal justice, there are New Yorker pieces about the boundaries between life and death. In my philosophy of language class, students are very excited when they see how the rather pedantic distinctions in speech act-theory connect with issues in censorship and hate speech as you would find in Rae Langton and Mary Kate McGowan’s work. I’ve used Alfonso Cuaron’s film Children of Men together with Scheffler’s Death and the Afterlife, and Spielberg’s Minority Report together with the literature on free will.
What are the biggest challenges and rewards in teaching these?
Its challenging for someone trained in philosophy to have a rich and sophisticated discussion of narrative nonfiction because what I’m good at in the classroom is reconstructing and evaluating arguments. Its been a long time since I’ve led discussion in nonfiction narrative where more than just “the lesson” and “the issue” is of interest. But the reward is that students don’t ever see philosophy as divorced from human experiences.
What advice do you have for other philosophers interested in these pieces you’re recommending?
Learn about how people outside of your field teach and talk about these kinds of pieces so that your own teaching doesn’t just reduce to “here is a piece of law/journalism/documentary/film” here’s an argument in philosophy we’re going to talk about. Talk about a piece on its own terms by its own standards before connecting it with the philosophy.
What general advice do you have for other philosophers interested in diversifying their syllabi?
I think philosophers who have thought about diversifying their syllabi along strictly demographic lines can gain a lot by thinking about diversifying their syllabi along disciplinary lines. In literary nonfiction, narrative audio, film, and much of the human sciences, you will find connections to philosophical issues that engage the student who isn’t naturally inclined toward philosophy for its own sake. An added benefit is that such areas admit of more demographic diversity as well. For many issues in philosophy you choose to teach, there are stories from history, law, science, public policy, film or so forth that connect with it, and students are much more primed to react favorably to those stories and want a stake in solving a philosophical problem.
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This series of the APA Blog is dedicated to understanding what our fellow philosophers are doing in and out of the classroom to diversify the canon. If you would like to nominate yourself or someone else to write a post for this series, please contact us via the interview nomination form here.
Header image: Hamlet scene, by Eugene Delacroix, Wikimedia Commons
