Taught by Perry Zurn
This course will offer students an introduction to the primary subfields of applied ethics: business ethics, biomedical ethics, research ethics, environmental ethics, and food ethics. Unconventionally, however, it will do so through the thematic of the prison. The course will analyze prison labor, mental and physical healthcare in prison, the aging prison population, the long tradition of research on prisoners, issues of prison ecology, as well as prison food and hunger strikes. In doing so, students will gain an appreciation of the wide variety of subjects addressed in applied ethics, but they will also ground that newfound knowledge in a critical assessment of incarceration practices in the U.S. Students will be required to write a series of short papers and one final paper.