Talia Welsh

Engaged Philosophy and the Public Philosophy Network are partnering to present a special interview series that highlights the work of public philosophers who will be presenting at the 2019 PPN Conference Oct 17-19, 2019.

• 

Talia Welsh is the UC Foundation Professor in Philosophy and the Interim Director of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She encourages students to examine their lives and political spheres philosophically, and she does so, too, in her work on public health care policies and the paradigms of wellness. 

• 

• 

• 

• 

1. What aspects of your teaching do you think of as public philosophy? What is your role?

I am looking to help develop two capacities in my students. First, the skill of careful reading and critical examination of material. Second, the ability to use material and one’s experiences to form one’s own critical approach to an issue or problem.  I see this process as hermeneutic—in that after forming a view, one then returns to research and further refines one’s viewpoint.

How this is public philosophy is that I want to help develop civic-minded students who see life in general as a philosophical puzzle to engage with and not one where there is a static answer—this would include giving them skills to form thoughtful views on issues that they may vote on, provide them skills to see how their own experience may help inform them or may blind them, and to consider how things that aren’t typically “political” are in fact formed by political and social processes (such as norms around gender or a life well led). In addition, I hope to encourage students to see public engagement as not just something some students do to build their résumés, but an important part of any well-lived life.

2. Give an example of a successful project.

In my Feminist Theory class, I ask students in groups to research a challenge for women in the global South. I then ask them to find out to what degree the global North contributed to this problem. I ask them what current solutions exist (such as in the form of proposals in academic research, NGO work, government interventions, or other kinds of organized engagement). Finally, I ask them to evaluate current solutions and make a proposal themselves. I would like them to not only think about issues that do not immediately concern them and thus to adopt a more global perspective, but also to try to think of the complexity of what can often be presented as simply victimization. 

3. What benefits does your public philosophical pedagogy offer to students? What benefits does it offer wider communities?

We live in an era where doubt is read as weakness. Instead, I would like us to encourage the positive role of developing doubt and uncertainty to encourage a healthy skepticism toward dogmatism and a willingness to consider marginalized, less well-propagandized views. Phenomenologists call our “common sense” view that we are just neutrally interacting with the world the “natural attitude” and in order to do philosophy one must put this way of experiencing into brackets to thoughtfully examine how we might be prejudiced without seeing it as prejudice. I follow Merleau-Ponty’s work in this field—where this work is never accomplished fully, but is part of a lifelong practice of hyper-reflection on experience.

• 

• 

4. What role does the PPN play in your philosophical work? What role do you play in the PPN?

I’m supportive because—as I like to say to my students—we are all doing philosophy: The natural attitude is a kind of worldview that can be dangerous because it seems non-philosophical. I think the PPN not only provides depth to public discussions, but helps encourage people to not see philosophy as some particular hobby but as what we are all engaged with daily.

5. How does your department or institution support your students’ public philosophical work? What support would you like them to offer students?

One part of the strategic plan of our university is to make sure each student has an experiential learning component of their education. This could be a service-learning course, an internship, travel abroad, or experiential learning in which one goes beyond the classroom to the greater public. Experiential learning could be working with a group on campus, spending time outside classrooms as part of the class, or learning skills not typically associated with academic learning. In Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies we have a class on Women and Textiles where students learn to weave, and in Religious Studies we offer a course on spirituality and fly fishing. UTC has devoted funds to this goal and has courses and a coordinator of experiential learning. These resources aid faculty in figuring out how to develop courses that go beyond the classroom. What I would like is to see more explicit focus on civic-mindedness and perhaps ways in which to combine resources and integrate within the larger community.

6. How does this work connect to your research?

My current work is on public health care policies and the paradigms of wellness that permeate our society. These are obviously public and political issues and ones that are not typically read as philosophical, because we assume health studies are politically neutral and “scientific.” One part of our contemporary natural attitude I would argue is scientism, that is the unquestioned belief that science holds all answers about things like the human body and that scientists are themselves immune from human error. In this way I follow not just phenomenology, but thinkers like Michel Foucault who argues that all knowledges, such as health care research, are also intertwined with apparatuses of power and we cannot think of science as a “pure” discipline unmuddied by political influence.

7. What gets you out of bed in the morning? What is your passion?

The promise of coffee. A creative writer once said to me that she would find awkward or painful experiences a little exciting since she would think after the initial bad effect—oh, this might make for some really interesting material. While I wouldn’t define this as a passion, I think one of the aspects of a philosophical life I love the most is the way in which almost every experience is compelling to examine. It allows life to never be boring (well, except in meetings perhaps).

EngagedPhilosophy readers: If you’d like to nominate yourself or someone else for an interview, email us at info@engagedphilosophy.com.

Do you want to find out when we post more interviews like this? Subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Facebook.