Tony Blair and Miroslav Volf Teach on Faith and Globalization

Much thanks to Open Culture for regularly pointing out good resources like this.

After he left office in 2007, Tony Blair went across the pond and spent time teaching at Yale. Exit Prime Minister Blair. Enter Professor Blair. During the 2008-09 academic year, Blair and Miroslav Volf co-taught “Faith and Globalization,” a course designed to help students understand the two intertwined forces shaping our world. In some ways, religion is the real focus here, and it is Blair’s argument (above, for example) that “If you cannot understand the world of faith, whether you are in business, or in public affairs, or in politics, then you actually cannot understand the world.” The full course can be accessed on Yale’s YouTube Channel, and we have also added it to our large collection of free courses from top universities. (Just look under the Politics and Religion sections.) For more information on this course, please visit Yale’s Faith and Globalization website and also be sure to access Yale’s Open Course initiative.

Seminary Scholarship Available from Logos Bible Software

I received this email from Ryan at Logos.  As we all know, seminarians need all the financial help they can get!

As a new seminary semester begins, I wanted to send you a quick note regarding a new seminary scholarship http://www.seminaryscholarship.com open to your students.

Three times a year we will be awarding one seminarian a $1,000.00 scholarship and a copy of Logos Bible Software Scholar’s Library, which contains over 330 titles that will aid them in their seminary studies.

The scholarship is open to all seminary students and I thought it would be something you’d like to pass along to them. Feel free to share this link with them in your syllabus, on your website, Twitter, facebook or email.

Working in Small Philosophy Departments

Andrew Mills blogs at Small Philosophy Departments and discusses issues related to teaching in that environment.

This blog is dedicated to issues arising for those faculty who teach in small philosophy departments. The first set of posts to the blog are the results of a survey conducted in 2008 which asked faculty working in small philosophy departments (defined as departments with three or fewer full-time philosophy faculty) to comment on the challenges and advantages of such a work environment.

He makes these interesting observations on the kind of instructor who tends to thrive in a small department.

If you want to succeed in a small department, you should be the kind of person who…

…is happy putting teaching ahead of scholarship on your priority list

…can handle a heavy teaching load

…is content to be in a department that may not enjoy prestige on campus

…is content to be a member of a “service” department–i.e., a dept. that serves other majors.

…enjoys forming close mentoring relationships with undergraduates

…can teach a wide variety of courses

…is content to be the only person on your campus who works in your field

…can be happy without much, if any, intellectual engagement with campus colleagues

…can find intellectual stimulation interacting with people from different disciplines

…is able to recruit majors, primarily through teaching engaging and interesting courses

…is willing to advise a philosophy club or honorary society

…is willing and able to serve on college committees and in other service capacities

…derives satisfaction from seeing students learn

…doesn’t require professional accolades or prominence in the discipline

…enjoys learning about areas of philosophy you’ve never studied before

…enjoys the freedom to create new courses

…enjoys seeing the same students in multiple courses

Get Textbooks on Your iPod

Image by Niels van Eck via Flickr

If you get your textbooks from CourseSmart, you can now access them on your iPhone or iPod.  U. S. News & World Report shares the details:

CourseSmart, a California company that has already made more than 7,000 digitized textbooks from 12 publishers available to its subscribers through their computers, recently added E-textbooks for the iPhone to its offerings. Users can download the application that allows them to read the new iPod-friendly texts for free through Apple’s App Store, but users are required to pay for the textbooks themselves at a fee that is about 60 to 75 percent of a traditional book’s cost.

PC World writer Todd Weiss points out that there are some drawbacks to this new offering:

First, we’re talking about reading a large textbook on a small iPhone or iPod Touch screen. It may be neat to imagine, but it may not be so easy to use, especially when you are looking for information and you just can’t seem to locate it on the device’s small screen. How likely is it that students will actually want to do this and will find it as productive as reading a traditional paper book? And what happens when your Internet connection is down and you can’t access your books? Believe me, this will happen sometimes. (Continue)

The Best Philosophy Textbooks

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Philosophy professor Jeremy Pierce at Parableman shares his experience with finding the best and least expensive philosophy textbooks, and makes some good recommendations.

I’m always trying to keep my students’ textbook prices down. Here are some of the lower-priced books I’ve found. I’d be glad to hear any other suggestions any other philosophy instructors have found helpful.

For the ancient and medieval historical intro class that I’ve taught a number of times, there have been two books that I’ve liked. I had settled into Julia Annas’ Voices of Ancient Philosophy at one point, since it organized the material by topics (which is arguably better suited for an intro class in some ways than working through the material chronologically, which admittedly does have other advantages), and I love a number of her more idiosyncratic choices of texts. Amazon sells it for $52, though, and I still had to provide some medieval sources. The college bookstore always jacks the price up noticeably above list price, too. I’ve used Penguin’s edition of Augustine’s City of God, and I’ve tried a few different Aquinas anthologies, one from Oxford World Classics and the other from Hackett (Aquinas: A Summary of Philosophy). Along the way, I discovered Nicholas Smith’s (et.al.) Ancient Philosophy: Essential Readings with Commentary, which contains a pretty large amount of material for only $35.

I should say that the best inexpensive texts for historical sources are from Hackett, Penguin, and Oxford World Classics. The two things I look for are readability (at least in intro courses) and whether they include marginal page numbers and such markers, since some of the texts for ancient and medieval sources don’t, and it’s much harder to find a passage if you don’t have those. I’ve looked at Amazon’s preview function to compare translations for a number of these books. Sometimes one translation is much harder to introductory students to grasp.

For early modern texts, I usually use Jonathan Bennett’s online translations. Those are free, and they’re much more readable than anything you can buy. For an advanced history of philosophy class, I might hesitate to use these, although I’d probably do it for a 300-level survey. I don’t hesitate at all with intro courses.

Other books I’ve used include Greg Ganssle’s Thinking About God, which is an excellent introduction to philosophy of religion. It’s the most readable introductory book I’ve ever seen. It’s fun and funny. But it seriously looks at the issues, and while I don’t agree with Ganssle on every point I think he’s especially fair on some pretty controversial questions. (Continue)

New Online Directory of Christian Scholars

Here’s a great new resource for finding Christian scholars across a variety of academic disciplines.  The site describes its project this way:

The Christian Scholars Directory endeavours to include Christian sociologists, historians, economists, literary critics, and other scholars it seems apparent is a Christian Scholar. I am not the judge of who is or is not Christian, by apparent I mean they say so. You can read the background of the directory in this introductory post which also provides an index to all the posts separated into alphabetical segments. I’m open to comments and suggestions, especially for additional blogs and sites.

Here are the A’s, and the author welcomes additional suggestions.

Paul Adams – Former Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Estrella Mountain Community College, Avondale AZ. Wide array of materials (which the author has used in classes), on bible books, philosophy amd theological issues. His Blog on Biblical Worldview can be found here.

Daniel Akin – President of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Materials from Dr. Akin on many theological issues. Akin wrote his PhD on the Soteriology of Bernard of Clairvaux.

Dan Anderson – M.Div Student at Moore Theological College, Sydney. This blog often explores the philisophical, the theological and the whimsical.

Kent C. Anderson – Dean of Northwest Baptist Seminary and the Associated Canadian Theological Schools (ACTS) of Trinity Western University in Langley, BC. Blog provides a wide range of materials on homiletics. Anderson is particularly interested in the intersections between preaching and culture.

Clinton Arnold – Chairman, Department of New Testament, Talbot School of Theology, La Mirada, CA. Dr Arnold’s page has links to several articles, and some materials for new Christians as well as a list of links to Free Electronic Resources for Biblical Studies.

(Thanks to Faith and Theology)

On the Job Market in Philosophy

It’s apparently a tough job market out there in academia.  Philosopher Eric Silverman answers this question on the job prospects for teaching philosophy at Ask Philosophers.

Question: Imagine I have a phD in philosophy; nothing special, just your run-of-the-mill doctorate in philosophy from a University with a decent philosophy program. How difficult would I find it to land any lectureship at any University, even if I am willing to move to anywhere in North America or Europe?
I would like the same question with regard to community colleges and liberal arts colleges (whatever they are???) as well. For instance, is it a lot easier to get a professorship at a Community College than a University?

Response from: Eric Silverman

If you come out of an ‘average’ decent Ph.D. program, there is no guarantee that you would receive a professorship anywhere. Remember, your application will probably be in a stack of 100+ applications representing similarly qualified applicants. The critical step to getting a job (which many Ph.D. students fail to realize) is to distinguish yourself in some way during graduate school beyond simply getting a Ph.D. Graduating from a top program is one way to distinguish yourself… studying with a top professor within a specialty is another way (even if not at a top program)… producing a couple of articles for good journals is a third way…. impressing your professors in grad school so much that they say you are their best student in years is another way… getting good teaching credentials and experience might be another way… some combination of distinctions from this list is probably the ideal. Just remember that you need to focus on more than merely graduating from the Ph.D. program….you have to be able to provide search committees with a compelling reason to hire you rather than the other 100 applicants to the position.

Generally, the jobs at Community Colleges and liberal arts colleges are easier to get than research university jobs, but none of them are easy to get. If you distinguish yourself during graduate school (especially through publications and presentations at selective conferences) and position yourself wisely on the market (by writing your dissertation with the best professors you have access to, writing on an interesting topic, and getting a specialization that is less flooded than others) you will maximize your chances of landing a good (or any) job when you are on the market.

So, studying at an average Ph.D. program neither guarantees nor destroys your chances of landing any of those professorships (though you would have to be very successful at publishing to land a professorship at a research university).

Ancient History on Mp3

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Open Culture compiles a nice list of university lectures on ancient Greek and Roman history.

Last fall, Yale University introduced a new round of open courses that included Donald Kagan’s Introduction to Ancient Greek History. A leading figure in the field, Kagan takes students from the Greek Dark Ages, through the rise of Sparta and Athens, The Peloponnesian War, and beyond. You’ll cover more than a millennium in 24 lectures. As I’ve noted elsewhere, Yale’s courses are high touch. And what’s particularly nice is that the course can be downloaded in one of five formats (text, audio, flash video, low bandwidth quicktime video, and high bandwidth quicktime video). Simply choose the format that works for you, and you’re good to go.

When you’ve completed the arc of Greek history, you can move next to the UC Berkeley course, The Roman Empire. The course taught by Isabelle Pafford moves from Julius Caesar to Constantine (roughly 40 BC to 300 AD) in 42 lectures. And the audio comes straight from the classroom, which means that you’ll get solid information but you’ll also have to endure some extraneous talk about homework assignments and exams. (It’s free, so don’t complain.) You can download this course in one of three ways: iTunes or  streamed audio. Lastly, I should note that Pafford has taught another related course at Berkeley – The Ancient Mediterranean World (iTunes – Feed - MP3s).

Once you have the big survey courses under your belt, you can switch to some more focused courses coming out of Stanford. Let’s start with Patrick Hunt’s course Hannibal (iTunes). As I’ve noted in a previous post, this podcasted course takes you inside the life and adventures of Hannibal, the great Carthaginian military tactician who maneuvered his way across the Alps and stunned Roman armies in 218 BC. The course also gives you glimpses into cutting-edge trends in modern archaeology. Because Hannibal still remains a figure of intense historical interest, it’s not surprising that this course has ranked as one of the more popular courses on iTunesU. (more)

Dr. Doug Geivett’s Recommendations for Learning Epistemology

Here’s a fine blog post by Doug Geivett on books he recommends for gaining a good grasp of contemporary epistemology (theory of knowledge).  In his own courses, Dr. Geivett prefers

• Robert Audi, Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction
• Richard Feldman, Epistemology
• Laurence Bon Jour, Epistemology: Classic Problems and Contemporary Responses

He explains:

These books complement each other nicely. The book by Robert Audi will require a tutor for most who are new to the subject. It is rich and comprehensive, and, most important, very sensible about the topics it addresses. Better than any other book I know of, this book presents the subject in a natural order that is conducive to proper progress through to thorny issues it addresses.

To anchor a course in epistemology, I’ve found that the books by Feldman and Bon Jour complement each other neatly. They are concise and readable surveys of major topics. Laurence Bon Jour adopts a method of presentation that he explains clearly at the outset. While I think the method he adopts is unfortunate, it does give readers a sense of the rootedness of trends in contemporary epistemology in the influential work of the great 17th-century philosopher René Descartes. Of special value is Bon Jour’s treatment of the contest between foundationalists and coherentists in epistemology. A convert from coherentism to foundationalism, Bon Jour excels in his exposition of this debate; yet he is also realistic about the persistent philosophical challenges raised by foundationalism . . . (continue reading)

New Kindle Aims to Replace Textbooks

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GalleyCat reports on this interesting development with the Kindle.

Six universities will join in a new digital textbook experiment with Amazon.com Inc., including: Case Western Reserve, Pace, Princeton, Reed, Darden School at the University of Virginia, and Arizona State. The Wall Street Journal reports that the program will utilize large-screen Amazon Kindles, a device that many speculate will be revealed at a press conference.

GalleyCat will report live from that Amazon event tomorrow. In the meantime, the University of Michigan Press recently announced they will publish primary digital editions of at least 50 of the more than 60 monographs they produce each year–a shift that will become more common in the publishing recession.

Here’s more from the WSJ: “Beginning this fall, some students at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland will be given large-screen Kindles with textbooks for chemistry, computer science and a freshman seminar already installed, said Lev Gonick, the school’s chief information officer.” (Via Publishers Lunch)