Ithaca College

Are you interested in getting ICC diversity credit?  If so, you should consider taking PHIL 37500, Selected Topics in Philosophy: Language and Social Justice -- a new Spring 2019 course devoted to understanding the power of hate speech.

Below is the course description for the course. (Note: Prior to 11/09/2018, a Homerconnect error was preventing students from enrolling in this course. If you got denied entry by Homer into this course when attempting to register for it, please try registering again -- it now will work!)

PHIL 37510-01 Selected Topics in Philosophy: Language and Social Justice 

CRN (course registration number) = 42742

CLASS TIMES:  Tuesdays & Thursdays 4:00 – 5:15pm
INSTRUCTOR: Prof. Yuna Won (ywon@ithaca.edu)
PREREQUISITES: One 200-level course in philosophy 

COURSE DESCRIPTION: 

A principle of free speech is an integral part of our democratic society. However, certain ways of using language can do harm to underrepresented groups in our society. For example, racist hate speech not only permits and but also causes racial discrimination. In this course, we are going to study philosophical theories about how derogatory terms (racist, sexist, ethnic and homophobic epithets) work and how they get a force (over and above their semantic contents) that harms the targeted social group members. The semantic and pragmatic theories about derogatory terms and speech will equip students with the ability to critically analyze the role that language plays in historic and contemporary cases of injustice.

We are going to study speech act theories in philosophy of language and the constitutive and causal theories about the connections between speech and harm. The tension between a free speech principle and harmful speech, and the question of what counts as speech, will also be dealt in this course through the debate on whether pornography is speech and whether or not it should be protected by a free speech principle. This will allow us to think about how the production and distribution of certain speech contents could do harm to the members of our society, and on what ground such activities and hate speech could or should be regulated.

COURSE FORMAT: seminar, group-work, student presentations
COURSE REQUIREMENT: participation, reading response, two papers, group project/presentations.

For a list of course descriptions for all Spring 2019 courses in the Philosophy and Religion Department, please click here.