Brynn Welch is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She has received several teaching awards during her career, including the Excellence in Teaching Award at (Emory & Henry College), the Outstanding Faculty Award from Disability Support Services (UAB), and the Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award (UAB).
What are you working on right now?
I’m currently editing a book on teaching philosophy. The idea is to offer “bite-sized” reflections on teaching written by expert teachers in a way that allows others at any stage in their teaching career to reflect on their own values and the way those values are expressed (or not) in their own teaching. As we all know, the academy doesn’t offer much in the way of teaching training, and it doesn’t offer much in terms of incentives for investing heavily in developing one’s own teaching. But every philosopher I know cares about teaching, and every philosopher I know wants to do it well – not just because it’s our job but because we think we’re doing meaningful work when we teach students philosophy. I thought about how much I’ve learned from things like class observations or just hallway chats with people who are great teachers, and I decided to edit a collection that’s basically the written version of the hallway chat, and everyone in the hallway is an award-winning philosophy teacher.
What topic do you think is under explored in philosophy?
The relationship between the family as a social institution and other social institutions. I’ve always been fascinated by the relationship between the family and, say, education systems. I’m interested in questions about parental control over educational content, for instance, but I’m also interested in what happens in the lives of any particular family when we design a school day/schedule that’s fundamentally incompatible with most family days/schedules. Of course, my interest in this only heightened during the COVID pandemic. There’s plenty of interest in the education system, for instance, or the family. I’m interested specifically in the relationship between those systems and how the nature of that relationship shapes so much about how the individual systems function.
What do you consider your greatest accomplishment?
My family. I don’t know how we all found each other, and it certainly doesn’t feel like something I did, so maybe it’s not fair to call it an accomplishment. But sitting around the table listening to them talk, or seeing how joyful and confident my daughter is, is when I’m most likely to think “I must be getting something right.”
What is your favorite book of all time? (Or top 3). Why? To whom would you recommend them?
My favorite book is This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel. I’d recommend this book to parents everywhere, but I’d also recommend it to people who just know parents. On the surface, the book is a beautiful story about a family experiencing their youngest daughter’s transition. But really, the book captures the uncertainty that constantly looms in all parenting decisions: the need to balance a child’s safety with encouraging them to be themselves and have all the experiences they want, the pain of watching your child hurt and knowing you can’t solve it. In fact, the youngest daughter’s transition – while having a seismic impact on the family while it’s happening – quickly turns out to be just one in a long line of moments in parenting where, as the book says, you have to make decisions with incomplete information and deep uncertainty, and nothing but your child’s whole future happiness depends on you getting it right. Like the title says, this is how it always is. Given my professional interest in the family and my personal interest in parenting well, I find it to be a brilliant exploration of the utterly impossible task that is parenting.
What would your childhood self say if someone told you that you would grow up to be a philosopher?
What’s a philosopher?
What’s your favorite quote?
My grandmother wrote me a note when I was an infant. It’s my favorite quote. It reads, “Wishing you knowledge to do the best you want to do, to courageously limit the things you may not want to do, to cry without shame, to absorb all feelings of happiness, to be beautiful through all seasons of life, to never forget the power of dignity and to love beyond dimension.”
What’s your poison? (Favorite drink.)
Gin and tonic, ideally (but not exclusively) with Hendrick’s Midsummer Solstice gin.
This section of the APA Blog is designed to get to know our fellow philosophers a little better. We’re including profiles of APA members that spotlight what captures their interest not only inside the office, but also outside of it. We’d love for you to be a part of it, so please contact us via the interview nomination form here to nominate yourself or a friend.
Dr. Sabrina D. MisirHiralall is an editor at the Blog of the APA who currently teaches philosophy, religion, and education courses solely online for Montclair State University, Three Rivers Community College, and St. John’s University.
