A pop up class is a 1-2 credit academic experience that is offered on a specific topic, often outside of the regular academic schedule. Pop Up classes are designed to be flexible and responsive to current events, trends, or student interests.

Not at all. This is a highly interdisciplinary class that will introduce you to an area of philosophy known as “ethics”. You will learn how this important area of philosophy is applied to the real world, with real, actual examples that highlight how we apply ethical ideas to law and policy connected to our “memory duties”. For example, the laws governing Wills and Trusts (aka “estate law”) presume that the final wishes of someone matter – we cannot simply “forget” one’s last wishes. Why is that? We will discuss. We will also discuss how and why the United States, unlike many other countries, is committed to a full accounting of all soldiers who go missing and remained “unaccounted for”. Anyway, you do not need any philosophy or law classes to “get it”, though courses in those areas will not hurt. Fact is, this class will expose you to a very cool, under communicated interdisciplinary “narrative world” of great relevance and meaning.

This class is designed and taught by Dr. Hope Elizabeth May, a professor in the Department of Philosophy, Anthropology and Religion. Dr. May has taught in South Korea (at the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies), has lectured internationally, and works in an emerging interdisciplinary field which she calls “peace and justice history” or “positive history”. Peace and justice/Positive History is not just history, though. It also involves philosophy and other disciplines such as law, politics and even literature. Dr. May is also an attorney, and she started to develop “positive history” when she began learning about the history of Public International Law (aka “the history of Peace through Law”) in The Hague, Netherlands, over a decade ago.

There will be a couple of “field trips” (in Mt. Pleasant), as well as guest speakers. The text will be given to you as a gift, thanks to the generosity of Stephen “Van” Grubb, whose father went MIA in the Vietnam War in 1966. That event transformed Van’s mother, Evelyn Grubb (1931-2005), into a foremost activist. During a time when married women could not get a credit card without their husband’s consent, Evelyn taught herself about the Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and she labored with other families to remind the international community about these obligations. You will learn directly from Van and others connected to this issue.

We meet in the Fall 2024 semester, but only for part of it. We will meet on Monday evenings (5-6:15pm) and some (three to four) Friday afternoons (1-3pm). The course begins on September 9 and ends on October 21, 2024. This will be a “hybrid” course, so we will meet both in person and online. Think of our sometime Friday meetings as occasional “lab days” which will involve a local field trip or two, a zoom session with a guest speaker, etc.

This is a highly interdisciplinary Applied Ethics class that blends philosophy, history, psychology, forensic anthropology, politics and law.  You will learn how numerous disciplines are involved answering the question “who and what ought we remember, and why”? The class will highlight stories connected to the U.S. Department of Defense’s mission to recover and account for all U.S. soldiers. Not every country does this. Why does the U.S. do it, and how did it come about? You will learn the answers to these questions, among many others! Fact is, this class will expose you to a very cool, under communicated interdisciplinary “narrative world” of great relevance and meaning.