CoursesFellows Proseminar I
COMM 025

Fellows Proseminar I

The SNF Paideia Fellows Proseminar I introduces sophomore Fellows to academic research and practice related to the civic engagement mission of the SNF Paideia program. We engage diverse perspectives on the purpose of higher education, the nature of citizenship, the value of civility, and the relationship between individual and community wellness.

Students will develop their personal civic identity and wellness goals through intentional course exercises and assignments. This includes identifying potential avenues for civic engagement within their academic discipline, selecting and practicing wellness strategies tailored for their lives and goals, and crafting concrete plans to cultivate civil dialogue and service at Penn and beyond. The goal of the course is to equip students with the knowledge, skills, experiences, and ethical frameworks for healthy, sustainable and robust civic leadership at Penn and in their local, national, and global communities. This course is open only to SNF Paideia Fellows, who are required to take it during the fall of their sophomore year.

Course sessions will address the following questions:

  • What is the purpose of a Penn education?
  • What is Paideia?
  • What is citizenship?
  • Is civility outdated?
  • What does civil discourse look like?
  • Wellness and civic engagement: A non-sequitur?
  • Strategies for wellness and civic engagement?

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Instructor(s)

  • Sukaina Hirji

Semester

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This is a course on philosophical topics surrounding love and sex. We will touch on issues in all areas of philosophy including ethics, political philosophy, metaphysics, philosophy of language, and epistemology. You will develop the sorts of skills fundamental to philosophy: understanding and reconstructing arguments, evaluating arguments, and developing your own argumentative abilities. You will also acquire theoretical tools that might be useful for thinking about your own love and sex lives, and the lives of those around you.

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PHIL 2991 - 302

Science Communication in Democracy

Instructor(s)

  • Vanessa Schipani
  • Vanessa Schipani

Semester

Fall 2023

With a pandemic still lingering and the worst effects of climate change looming, we need science to play an authoritative role in policymaking. Yet by giving science authority, we threaten the stability of democracy, our best means to a just and equitable society.

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