PHIL 102: Place and Power

W2, January-April 2025

Canvas | Syllabus [links will be live when the course is running]

Day Moon Pulls Focus, Digital art by Carrie Jenkins

This course takes place on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəýəm (Musqueam) People.

All sections of PHIL 102 address basic problems and methods of philosophy. This section covers topics in ethics, epistemology, political philosophy, and aesthetics relating to local Indigenous societies in the context of settler colonialism. The course adopts a primary focus on Musqueam, extending its view outwards to Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh, as well as to the rest of BC and beyond. The principal areas addressed are:

  • The philosophy of art and storytelling, with emphases on:

    • Relationships between art and power,

    • Cultural appropriation,

    • Stereotyping and reclamation, and

    • Story-based knowledge;

  • Epistemologies of knowledge and ignorance;

  • Environmental ethics; and

  • Philosophies of power and oppression, in particular as applied to:

    • The marginalization of Indigenous peoples under Canadian colonialism,

    • Anti-Indigenous structural racism in North American contexts, and

    • UBC’s past and present position within the colonial power structure.