Diversity Reading List

Comment: This book raises interesting issues regarding imagination and how far we can imagine experiences, as well as ethics and decision making. It could be the basis for a whole module on the topic, or particular chapters could be discussed e.g. in relation to decision-making.

Comment: The subject of human rights in a pluralistic world is critical. Drawing on the vast traditions of India and the West, this volume is unique in providing interdisciplinary essays that range from theoretical, philosophical, normative, social, legal, and olitical issues in the conceptualization and application of a truly global understanding of human rights. While previous literature stops short at asking how Western understandings may be articulated in non-Western cultures, the essays here urthermore examine what the West may have to learn from Indian understandings.

Comment: Peng gives an account of the development of Chinese drama according to a contrast between Confucian moralism, in which morality controls aesthetics, and Daoist autonomism, in which aesthetics are autonomous from morality. He argues for an understanding of Li Yu’s theory of drama as a moderate moralism that evaluates drama according to a possible, yet contingent and unnecessary relation between moral and aesthetic virtue. This text is appropriate for a course on aesthetics and/or Chinese philosophy. It is particularly useful in discussions of the relationship between ethics and aesthetics.

Comment (from this Blueprint): This article offers an interesting and accessible argument for a novel conception of remuneration. In doing so, Penner challenges one of the most foundational premises of a modern system of work - the idea that work and employment are synonymous - in a unique and original way. Therefore, this article can be used to prompt students to think about alternate models of remuneration, and to consider whether those models might offer a more humane system of paid work.

Comment (from this Blueprint): This link will take you to a free virtual exhibition offered by the People's History Museum in Manchester, which features ten of the most significant pieces in their collection. Together they illustrate what it is to collect, preserve, contextualise, and display the cultural artefacts of the working classes in the UK, all in a accessible and inclusive manner. It also illustrates particularly well how class issues intersect with LGBTQ+, gender, and race issues, precisely because this intersectionality can be materially experienced in these objects.

Comment: This text connects three topics in philosophy of mind in a clear way: representationalism (especially Fodor's LOT), consciousness, and mind-reading. It serves as an example of how to integrate different problems while proposing a provocative claim about them.

Comment (from this Blueprint): Pérez’s analysis is interesting for the aims of the blueprint for three reasons. First, it is interesting to see the role she grants to spirituality in the fight for social justice, particularly when it comes to gender, race, and ethnicity in the U.S. Second, it is interesting to see whether the emphasis on the connection between aesthetic practices and spirituality might help avoid mestiza aesthetics falling into appropriative practices. Finally, it is important to analyse mestiza culture in the U.S. to see whether it might offer any lessons for mestizo cultures in Latin America.

Comment (from this Blueprint): Moral distress is, roughly, when a healthcare worker is institutionally constrained to act against their best moral judgement. A typical example is a nurse being prevented from giving care they deem morally required because they are hierarchically constrained by the orders of a physician. Moral distress has been much discussed in nursing ethics, but is almost entirely absent from broader bioethics syllabi and conversations. This paper examines moral distress through a lens of feminist care ethics. In doing so, it draws lessons that apply very broadly throughout professional ethics.

Comment: An introduction to a traditional concept of God accepted by many theistic religions.

Comment (from this Blueprint): By showing body movements of love and sexual desire, this clip would provide an representation of the embodied dimension of Proust’s emotional and sexual rumination. We can learn from it that it will be partial understanding if we only describe, analyse and debate sex topics in a dryly manner within academia.