SIMON ROBERT COTTON
  • Home
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • Research
  • Teaching
  • Blog
  • Follow

In the second half of 2018, I will be teaching two courses. The first is a survey of mainstream Anglo-American political philosophy, albeit one that focuses on the concrete permissions, claim-rights, and obligations of existing governments and their citizens rather than abstract principles and structures. This is revised version of a class that I taught at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, which educates officer-cadets in the Australian Defence Force, in 2017.

The second class I will be teaching is an introductory class that draws explicit connections between politics, philosophy, and economics for students enrolled in that joint-degree program. This class, which was originally designed by Keith Dowding, starts by using collective action problems to highlight the distinctions and complementarities between the three disciplines. It then examines standards of normative assessment discussed in philosophy, as well as the electoral politics that concerns many political scientists, using an approach inspired by economics.

My teaching experience is broad. Besides contemporary political theory and the history of political thought, I have taught ethics, social-science methods, political science, international relations, strategic studies, public policy, and environmental studies to both undergraduate and graduate students at the ANU, Princeton and Cornell. In graduate school, I also taught writing seminars at the Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines, was a graduate fellow at Carl Becker House, administered Cornell's interdepartmental minor in international affairs, and, during 2011–12, supervised undergraduates while they completed 20,000-word research projects at Cornell-in-Washington.

For both pedagogical and methodological reasons, I teach political philosophy by using, and comparing, cases. For a statement of my teaching philosophy, please click here.

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • Research
  • Teaching
  • Blog
  • Follow