In bell hooks’ late autobiographical text, belonging, she articulates what it means to her to be a distinctly Appalachian feminist. She describes her relationship to the Kentucky hills both as a sacred resource for feminist, anti-racist, and class-based liberation, as well as a site of deep alienation due to Appalachia’s social bigotry, environmental degradation, and the prejudices that urban and academic communities often hold against rural communities. In this course, we will traverse a number of intersectional, interdisciplinary, feminist theories of place, including indigenous, Appalachian, Latina, pragmatist and contemporary feminisms, to consider how space can both be a source of oppression and opportunity for liberation. We will engage in creative modes of reflection, from art to policy analysis, and utilize place-based feminist pedagogies, to consider what it means to belong to a community, be responsible for a community, speak for a community, be oppressed by or find new freedom through a particular relationship to place. Each student will propose a creative project of their own design which helps them connect the themes of the course to their personal experiences of space and belonging and innovate possible liberatory community paths. This 3-credit course will meet once per week for 2.5 hours.

This course will introduce students to cross-cultural ancient and medieval perspectives on the nature and purpose of the human person. What is the soul? What constitutes our duties to ourselves, our community, or our global society? Is there a discernable meaning to our lives? Students will gain skills to connect historical reflections on these themes to their own lives and challenges faced by the present world. Traditions include Indigenous, Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist, Greek, Scholastic, and Feminist Mystic Philosophies. Completion of Philosophy of the Person I in the fall and Philosophy of the Person II in the spring fulfills the six-credit core requirement for philosophy for BC undergraduate students.

This course will introduce students to modern and contemporary perspectives on the nature and purpose of the human person. What shapes our identities and values? Personal experiences? Structural institutions? How do we balance personal autonomy and political power in a way that empowers the pursuit of meaning and purpose in human life? How do we navigate the ethical risks of defining systems of power and influence? Authors include Machiavelli, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Wollstonecraft, Douglass, Marx, Nietzsche, Mill, Arendt, Gandhi, Tich Nacht Hahn, Martin Luther King Jr., Jane Addams, Freire, Adorno and Horkheimer, MacKinnon, Lugones, Ella Baker, Wells, and Young. Completion of Philosophy of the Person I in the fall and Philosophy of the Person II in the spring fulfills the six-credit core requirement for philosophy for BC undergraduate students.