Ethical Theory and Practice:  This is an undergraduate course.  It introduces students to several important normative theories (theories                   about what makes a right action right, or a just institution or social practice just, etc.) and then guides students through a 
                  critical, reflective examination of concrete and pressing issues of personal and social morality.  The focus is on issues 
                  related to work and economic life.

Ethical Theory:  This is an undergraduate course.  It introduces students to metaethics, normative ethics and applied ethics. Metaethics
                  is that branch of moral philosophy concerned with such questions as "can moral beliefs or judgments be true, and if so, 
                  can they be universally or objectively true?" and "what is meaning of the term 'ought' in such statements as 'Jane morally 
                  ought to do X'?".  Normative ethics is that branch of moral philosophy aimed at determining what makes a right action 
                  right, a just institution just, a virtuous character trait virtuous, and so on.  Applied ethics is the attempt to reach morally 
                  correct results in concrete cases encountered in everyday life.

History of Moral Philosophy:  This is a graduate level course open with permission to advanced undergraduates.  While texts may
                  vary, typically I teach Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (Books 2 and 3), Kant's
                  Groundwork and Sidgwick's The Methods of Ethics.  The aim of the course is two-fold:  first, to understand these
                  canonical primary texts within the context of their own historical circumstance, concerns, etc., and second, to gain some
                  understanding of the ways in which the history of moral philosophy have shaped 20th century moral thought.  

Contemporary Theories of Justice:  I've taught this as both a graduate and undergraduate course.  I've almost always focused on 
                   theories of distributive justice.  Theories of distributive justice aim to set out criteria by which may be determined the 
                   justice of social institutions which distribute various goods to persons or classes or groups of persons.  The market is 
                   obviously one such social institution.  But so to is the U.S.Constitution, since it distributes rights and liberties and powers 
                   to persons and groups of persons.  The family too is a distributive institution.  Philosophers closely studied in this course 
                   include John Rawls, Michael Walzer, Iris Marion Young, Susan Okin, Will Kymlicka, David Miller, Brian Barry and 
                   others.

Philosophy of Law:  This is an upper-division undergraduate course in analytic and normative jurisprudence.  The aim of analytic 
                   jurisprudence is to determine the nature of legal authority (and how it differs from other sorts of authority) and legal 
                   systems.  For example, a classic question of analytic jurisprudence is "Is there a necessary conceptual connection 
                   between the idea of  legal authority or a legal system and morality or morally true propositions?".   The aim of normative 
                   jurisprudence is to identify and apply the criteria, moral and otherwise, against which existing legal systems ought to be 
                   evaluated.  So, for example, a classic question of normative jurisprudence is "How important is it that a legal system 
                   achieve fairness (or efficiency, or stability, or the emancipation of the oppressed), and if it's very important, how well is 
                   this or that legal system doing in this regard?".  With respect to analytic jurisprudence the philosophers studied include 
                   Aquinas, Austin, Holmes, Hart, Fuller, and  Dworkin.  With respect to normative jurisprudence, they include a 
                   wide range of philosophers working under the banners of feminist jurisprudence, critical legal studies, critical race
                   theory, law and economics, liberal jurisprudence and the like.

Society and State in the Modern World:  This is an upper-division undergraduate course in social and political philosophy.  The aim is 
                   to introduce students to the philosophical debates that have framed our understanding of social and political life in the 
                   modern (as opposed to the classical or medieval) world.  The course usually begins with either Machiavelli or Hobbes, 
                   and continues through the likes of Locke, Rousseau, Bentham, Kant, Marx, Mill and Bakhunin.

History of Political Philosophy:  This is an upper-division undergraduate course in political philosophy.  The aim is to study carefully
                   the writings of key political philosophers throughout history.  Philosophers taught include Plato, Aristotle, Cicero,
                   Aquinas, Luther and Calvin, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Mill, Bakhunin, Lenin, Mao.

Introduction to Philosophy:  An undergraduate course tracing in broad strokes the development of Western Philosophy from Thales 
                   and the Pre-Socratics to Kant.  The focus is primarily on philosophical attempts to answer the question "What is reality, 
                   and what can we know, if anything, about it?".

Human Rights/Global Justice:  This course may be taught at either the graduate or advanced undergraduate level.  The course aims at
                   both a careful survey and critical examination of the dominant positions within political philosophy on central issues
                   concerning global justice and human rights.  Are there any such things as human rights?  If so, how are they like and
                   unlike other sorts of rights (e.g., civil or legal rights)?  Are they universal?  In what sense?  What is the relationship
                   between human rights and global justice?  Is the protection of human rights a  sufficient condition for global justice? 
                   Given all the various forms of global diversity, does it make any sense to talk of a  theory or principles of global justice? 
                   How would such a theory or principles be justified?  What would be its content?  Is global justice a matter of state to
                   state relations, or person to person relations across the globe?  What, if any, are the moral obligations owed by affluent 
                   first world states to developing states?  How ought global problems like pollution and environmental degredation and 
                   resource depletion be understood in moral terms?  These are among the  questions addressed in this course.  Authors 
                   include Rawls, Beitz, Walzer, Sen, Buchanan, Jones, Tan, Nickel, Barry, Shue, Donnelly, Singer and others. 

Rawls and His Critics:  This is a graduate level course aimed at bringing students to an understanding of the political philosophy of 
                   John Rawls in its final and most mature expression as well as the current critical literature surrounding it.