The blog of the American Philosophical Association has posted an interview with Ohio State Professor Julia Jorati about how philosophy courses might be revised to include readings outside the traditional canon, to increase demographic diversity but change how we approach the history of philosophy. She writes: “[T]his challenge is much easier to address than many people think, especially if one is looking to add only a few non-canonical authors. At least for the classes that I teach, it is easy to find non-canonical authors who fit brilliantly into traditional course narratives and who enrich the course in ways that go far beyond increasing demographic diversity.”  

She says we should not limit ourselves just to small changes: “[I]t is also worthwhile to consider changing the course narrative—not only in order to diversify the syllabus, but also to represent the breadth of early modern philosophy more accurately and to provide a path into early modern philosophy for students who are less interested in metaphysics and epistemology.”

Click here for the whole interview.