Updating Syllabi, Reimagining Assignments, and Embracing Error: Strategies for Retaining Marginalized Students in Philosophy Monique Whitaker Abstract: One of the significant problems for philosophy's development into a more diverse discipline is the familiar sharp reduction in the proportion of women and students of color after initial, introductory-level courses. This contributes to a lack in the breadth of perspective and experience that both upper-level students and faculty bring to philosophy, which in turn undermines the strength of the discipline as a whole. Much of the transformation of philosophy must necessarily happen at the departmental, and even university, level; but there are, nonetheless, a number of strategies available to individual teachers of philosophy to help to retain marginalized students-from the composition of course syllabi and assignment choices, to increased awareness of challenges within the discipline to students' success and embracing error as a learning tool. This variety of pedagogical tools provides a means to help to make philosophy more broadly inclusive. There is, as is well known, a precipitous drop-off in students of color and women after introductory-level philosophy classes, and the numbers continue to worsen the further along one goes. However, there are a number of strategies available to teachers of philosophy to help to address this phenomenon in their classrooms- from the composition of the course syllabus and assignment choices, to increased awareness of the challenges in the discipline to many students' success, to embracing error as a learning tool. As we will also see, increasing the diversity of students, and ultimately faculty is of benefit not only to students themselves but essential to the strength of our discipline. As Molly Paxton, Carrie Figdor, and Valerie Tiberius's research shows with respect to gender, women are already somewhat under-represented in introductory philosophy classes in the United States, constituting fewer than 40 percent of these ©2015 American Association of Philosophy Teachers pp. 3–16 ISSN 2380-4076 AAPT Studies in Pedagogy 1 (2015): Practices in Pedagogy DOI: 10.5840/aaptstudies20159161 Online First: 4 Practices in Pedagogy students, and the situation only worsens at every subsequent point in academia.1 A still smaller proportion of philosophy majors are women; that proportion shrinks again for female philosophy graduate students, and yet again when it comes to the proportion of female faculty in the discipline. When it comes to racial disparity, philosophy is in a state even more dire than as regards to gender. Once we consider that slightly more than 50 percent of the US is female2 but under 17 percent of fulltime philosophy faculty are,3 and that people of color made up close on 40 percent of the population but a vanishingly small percentage of our faculty, it becomes evident just how severely distorted philosophy's demographics are. Indeed, a majority of college students, in virtue of their race, gender, or both, belong to one or more groups that are grossly underrepresented in the subject. This is a problem not only of social injustice-that is, not merely an injustice against the students dissuaded from pursuing philosophy further-but, crucially, for the discipline itself, which is deeply impoverished by the loss of a majority of its potential members, and all of the insight, talent, and variety of perspective lost with them. Our discipline is, very clearly, in need of substantive change of the kind that has transformed the rest of the humanities over the course of the last half century or so, and much of which must be necessarily systemic in nature and far broader than is within the scope of this chapter. However, there are nonetheless significant and effective strategies available to individual teachers to promote change in their own classrooms, and which offer at least modest means to address the extraordinary disconnect between academic philosophy and society at large, even without support at the departmental level. In this chapter I share a number of strategies I've employed in my own teaching to try to address these sorts of concerns and retain more underrepresented students in philosophy. Updating Syllabi There are organizations that have begun to address the lack of equity within the discipline,4 but we, as individual teachers of philosophy, also address it within our own classrooms. There are many complex and interacting factors underlying the inequity of philosophy, and it's still far from clear precisely what these are-though there is evidence that changes at the faculty level can improve undergraduate diversity; Paxton et al. show that the proportion of female undergraduate philosophy majors is positively correlated with the proportion of female faculty.5 Of more immediate interest, Toni Adleberg, Morgan Thompson, and Eddy Nahmias's recent large-scale survey at Georgia State University demonstrated the positive effects of exposing students to a more representative selection of philosophers through introductory syllabi.6 Strategies for Retaining Marginalized Students 5 The composition of the syllabus is one of the clearest ways in which we signal to students whose voices matter in philosophy-what kind of people will be taken seriously in the discipline. Syllabi composed of readings almost entirely by white men give a very definite implicit indication to students of the characteristics required to do philosophy, and it is a message that they take to heart. Especially with a student body as thoroughly racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse as that which I've predominantly taught-students with first languages ranging from English and Spanish to Korean and Igbo-the incongruence and illogicality of presenting them with the thought of only a small sliver of humanity is obvious. Encouragingly, though, Adleberg et al.'s findings show that fewer women drop philosophy after their introductory course when there has been an increase in the representation of women on the syllabus. Developing a course with more broadly representative readings thus seems a promising strategy for increasing retention of female students, and potentially effective also at mitigating current rates of attrition among students of color. I reconsidered my own long-standing syllabus for Introduction to Philosophy in an attempt to apply the lessons of this research. Although I'd made various changes over the years, I hadn't specifically addressed the dearth of readings by female philosophers and philosophers of color. In adopting a selection of the texts that were the primary focus of my own undergraduate classes, I found that I had produced an exceptionally narrow syllabus in terms of both gender and race. Strikingly, so poor was the diversity of the material I had been assigning, that even after its first overhaul just under 20 percent of the readings were written by female philosophers, and it included the work of only a single philosopher of color. It is instructive, I think, to realize that even concerted effort may leave us in a position where we are presenting students with a still dramatically unrepresentative syllabus-which is a problem not only for students of color and women, but also for white, male students. The latter are deprived of that breadth of insight that can be gained only from being exposed to diversity in the philosophers they study; from the breadth of perspective provided when a wide variety of students feel comfortable engaging in class; and ultimately, should they become professional philosophers, from the greater philosophical rigor achieved in developing and defending one's arguments in a less homogenous group of peers, who are thus more likely to identify what are otherwise all but invisible shared assumptions. My own syllabus, though improved, is very much a work in progress. Yet, even with these relatively modest changes, I have noticed a striking difference in patterns of student engagement corresponding to the newly introduced material. My most recent Introduction to Philosophy class still began with a large number of all-white philosophers and I found that, despite my best attempts to coax them into class participation, a number of students continued to demur. However, when we got to the section on personal and social identity, and a selection from W.E.B. Du 6 Practices in Pedagogy Bois's The Souls of Black Folk7-suddenly a significant minority of those who had hardly spoken up to this point, disproportionately students of color, were actively arguing and debating the material. One women, in particular, who had said not a word to the class as a whole before, was now assuredly arguing many detailed points in lectures. It was clear from her and others' contributions, that this was the first material of the course that engaged them sufficiently that they felt moved to respond because of the ideas themselves and not simply because it was required. How then to create a pedagogically sound, diverse syllabus? As college teachers we typically face great time limitations, and the temptation to continue teaching what we have already prepared and know well can be irresistible. Fortunately, there are many useful online resources to help with diversifying syllabi.8 The American Philosophical Association (APA) maintains an excellent and extensive listing of Resources on Diversity and Inclusiveness, a Diversity in Philosophy page (under the auspices of its Committee on the Status of Women), including the Underrepresented Philosophers Database, a Diversity and Inclusiveness Syllabus Collection, and the Diversity Syllabi Project. Other helpful online resources are a shared document, to which many philosophers have contributed, "Core readings in philosophy by female authors for undergraduate curricula"; a list of some Works by Female Philosophers that may be used in introduction to philosophy classes, hosted by Tim O'Keefe at Georgia State University; the "Women philosophers books for courses" on the Women Philosophers site, created by Kate Lindemann, Emerita at Mount Saint Mary College; and the Re-Reading the Canon series. There are times, though, when one has specific syllabus requirements or difficulties that a general resource typically can't help with. This is where the judicious use of social media can be invaluable. Platforms such as Facebook offer an excellent way to solicit input and have questions answered by friends and colleagues particularly, while a broader medium such as Twitter can be very helpful for garnering feedback from a wider community of teachers. In seeking syllabus suggestions via social media, the usual commonsense guidelines apply-keep the request brief but specific, and appeal to your readers' skills and experience as teachers, rather than focusing exclusively on the request. Many of what have turned out to be my most effective readings are the result of soliciting help via social media. Developing an Accessible Syllabus The general lack of gender and racial diversity of introductory syllabi has the further very significant effect of increasing the overall difficulty of reading comprehension for many students. Dealing with texts that are written within and make reference to a cultural tradition one is unfamiliar with can be a marked barrier to student success. For those within the relevant culture this is an element that may easily be invisible-yet, as the work of Ismail Hakki Erten and Salim Razi,9 and many Strategies for Retaining Marginalized Students 7 others, makes clear, it has very material affects; simply put, "cultural familiarity facilitates comprehension."10 For students who do not share the same cultural (and often also linguistic) background as the philosophers whose works they study-or who share less in common with such writers than do their instructors, say-having to learn and develop new schema, to make sense of the context within which the relevant philosophical arguments are being made, entails significant extra intellectual labor. If instructors are unaware of this additional work that students lacking a certain cultural proficiency must perform, or if they discount it, this significantly disadvantages these students relative to those for whom the cultural context is more familiar. There are two approaches here that may mitigate this problem. The first is to re-evaluate the cultural focus of introductory philosophy so that it becomes more broadly representative of philosophical thought in general, globally. The second, more modest, approach is at least to mark the cultural and personal elements that produced the philosophy being studied; to explicitly label and present its constituents as the products of particular contexts and times, rather than present it as some sort of philosophy simpliciter. Why this matters for the retention of those typically marginalized students of other cultural backgrounds is that it makes clearer a vital part of the work needed to understand the material by bringing to students' attention the crucial contextual elements necessary to, in effect, "decode" a text and its arguments. We all draw upon these elements in the analysis of philosophy texts. For instance, to be able to make sense of David Lewis's example-concerning, "something that is part of this world: Hubert Humphrey, say"; someone who "might have won the presidency but didn't, [and] so [...] satisfies the modal formula 'possibly x wins' but not the formula 'x wins'11-I had to draw on my knowledge of when Lewis had written this and his nationality, what the most likely referent was of his allusion to "the presidency," and so forth. Being a foreigner, and not yet born when Humphrey was beaten by Nixon for the US presidency in the late 1960s, I had never heard of him. I was able to look up who he was and to confirm that it was indeed the US presidency that was being referenced, to better make sense of this example, but it was nonetheless a distraction, and one that prevented this illustration of Lewis's point from being nearly as clear and, indeed, immediately and obviously illustrative as it would be to someone for whom Humphrey's presidential run was common knowledge. This was, of course, merely a minor distraction, but for many students of philosophy these are not occasional, isolated incidents, but form the great bulk of the work they do in our classes, work necessary before they can even begin to engage more substantively with philosophical texts. By acknowledging the salience of context, this critical approach to the readings we assign can help increase student confidence by legitimizing their own views, 8 Practices in Pedagogy insofar as these may not as closely accord with those who enjoy more cultural commonality with the thinkers in question. Where students may be alienated by the limited number of readings by anyone like themselves, making explicit those factors that underlie this lack (explaining the cultural history of racism and sexism12 that has shaped our discipline and determined which philosophers have been remembered and cited, and which of these in turn are deemed most worthy of discussion) and that could contribute to feelings of alienation is a powerful way at least to acknowledge and legitimize this experience, as opposed to its being ignored and students finishing the class with the conviction that philosophy simply isn't for them. One of the reasons it matters for philosophy that such students are retained in far greater numbers, is that they are better placed to be able to identify those aspects of Western philosophical argument that are unwittingly reliant on pervasive cultural assumptions;13 ones too deeply embedded to be readily evident to those without differing cultural perspectives, and too lacking in incongruity to prompt change. I've focused mainly on cultural background here, but naturally this applies equally to many other characteristics, such gender, race, class, gender identity, and sexual orientation. And an invaluable tool to help us discern the role of such factors in philosophy is to ensure that we, as teachers, explore our own privilege and how that informs the examples and language we use in class, as well as the particular readings we select. Very often the appearance of universality is simply the invisibility of commonality. Reimagining Assignments In addition to using a more inclusive syllabus, designing more creative and non-traditional assignments in your philosophy class can be a powerful way to circumvent already ingrained beliefs students have in their inability to successfully produce rigorously analytical writing and critical analyses of difficult texts. It's easy for philosophy instructors-who, after all, were typically the strongest students in their own undergraduate philosophy classes-to be unaware of just how intimidating exercises aimed at teaching the skills of the discipline can be. Often these assignments, in fact, presuppose a good deal of facility with these skills already, as well as the confidence to use them effectively. In my informal observation of my students over a number of years of teaching, I've noticed a definite correlation between students' confidence in their abilities- particularly in areas such as critical analysis of and engagement with texts-and whether or not they belong to groups typically marginalized in the discipline, and of course in academia and society more broadly. Stereotype threat is known to make even those who have significant skill under-perform in many academic situations.14 The problem is bigger than just lower grades; there are also the lasting effects of Strategies for Retaining Marginalized Students 9 the mechanism by which this occurs-through the undermining of students' faith in their own abilities. Good grades, on their own, may not have very much effect in bolstering self-confidence; indeed, many students who appear most comfortable in their abilities are quite unmoved by consistently lackluster grades. Often, too, those students least likely to continue with and major in philosophy come from significantly disadvantaged educational backgrounds that have inadequately prepared them for the specific sort of critical analysis demanded by philosophy, even at the introductory level. Of course, one way of approaching this is to assign less challenging readings, with the original texts predigested in the form of secondary sources, with simpler explanations of complex, historical material. This has the disadvantage, though, of keeping those students who already have less than ideal educational backgrounds from learning the sorts of difficult analytical skills they are most lacking. On the other hand, presenting them with texts they're unable to understand effectively can cause them simply to disengage, and can further entrench belief in their own lack of ability or intelligence. There are a variety of less traditional assignments than the standard reading summary or critical analysis of a text, though, that can bypass existing wariness and negative self-perception, yet still help students to develop and demonstrate the same essential philosophical skills.15 One approach I've had significant success with in my classes is that of asking students to write a series of short journal entries as the given text's author, answering a couple of questions concerning the material. This sort of assignment can be framed in a variety of ways; for instance, one might ask that they write as the philosopher in question when they were planning out the article and address the questions of what points they felt were most significant, and what arguments they worried might be misunderstood by the reader and in what way. To do this assignment, the student has to read the material carefully, discern the most important points, and work out what arguments the philosopher is trying to convey-essentially to give a summary of the work-but with the attempt to take on the mindset and even the writing style of the given philosopher, serving to help the student better identify what the author was getting at in the text. (And many students produce great, and often amusing imitations, which makes grading far more enjoyable.) The relative informality of the assignment format also serves to disarm students' preconceived notions about their own abilities. It's far more likely they will believe themselves able to write something as seemingly simple as a journal entry, as opposed to something presented as a textual analysis or critical summary. Another strategy I've found effective is to give a first reading assignment that is as engaging and unintimidating as possible-typically this takes the form of an advertisement that I ask students to create, selling the main idea of the reading to prospective students.16 I give them free rein as to the style and format, and they have produced a range of flyers, posters, and pamphlets in response. What is striking about the submissions is not only their creativity, but the degree of understanding of 10 Practices in Pedagogy the assigned text that many of them demonstrate. I initially offered this assignment primarily as just a fun ice-breaker, but was surprised to find the work it produced actually evinced an engagement with the reading that made it an academically worthwhile assignment in its own right. A third example of the sort of assignment I use is to ask students to carefully read an article and think through the argument the philosopher is making, taking notes for themselves as they go, and then to find a willing friend or family member to whom to try to explain the philosopher's position and persuade of its truth (regardless of their own beliefs as to its veracity). I have them submit a brief write-up of their discussion, detailing how it went, whether they managed to convince their interlocutor, and any problems they may have encountered. The process of trying to convey the text's argument to another person is an excellent way for students to work out any gaps in their own understanding. Many students report back their surprise that, as soon as they began to try to teach the apparently straightforward reading to someone else, they found there were elements of it they hadn't fully understood. A number also ended up working with their interlocutors to collaboratively figure out the philosopher's argument. With any assignment of this kind, it's useful to provide a few guiding questions to help students to navigate and interrogate the reading, so that they have a starting point for their engagement with it. And these assignments serve not only to help them to gain critical reading skills through working with the texts in this way, but also crucial experience of their own capability to tackle challenging texts. When it comes to longer, traditional essay writing, these assignments can also be very helpful for purposes of review. Giving plenty of relatively low-pressure, non-traditional assignments-and ideally ones without a great deal of emphasis on grades (I make all of my reading assignments credit/no credit, rather than assigning a specific grade to them, for instance)-helps to build up crucial philosophical skills, and also helps to demonstrate to students the necessity of diligent, systematic work to develop these abilities. Making clear to students that this sort of hard work is the route to success in philosophy, turns out to be an essential part of retaining marginalized students in the discipline. Philosophy, much like a discipline such as mathematics, is seen as requiring an inherent (just have-the-brain-for-it-or-not) kind of intelligence and talent-far more so than any other discipline in the humanities, and this sort of presumption has been shown to be strongly predictive of less success on the part of women and minorities.17 When the assumption is that only certain people naturally have philosophical ability, far more of those students typically marginalized in philosophy are apt to reason from other social messages (that they are less capable and intelligent) to the conclusion that they are surely not one of these naturally gifted people. This undermines motivation, since-if the key factor is innate Strategies for Retaining Marginalized Students 11 ability-there is no point in trying to build one's skills when one doesn't have that inherent intelligence to begin with. Stereotype threat is another significant, related problem for student retention and success.18 This phenomenon is so pernicious that even the mere awareness of stereotypes that women or people of color aren't as smart or don't do as well at this type of work -whether or not this stereotype is even endorsed-is sufficient to markedly reduce the performance of students who identify as belonging to the stereotyped group.19 There are, fortunately, resources available to teachers to combat these sorts of challenges.20 And, there is evidence that even very simple interventions, such as merely having students complete an exercise focusing them on their core values, can have striking benefits.21 Of particular relevance here is the value of multiple, less traditional assignments, which both offer a format novel enough to be relatively free of strongly stereotyped associations with the sort of person who is good at them, and which also help to demonstrate to students how this sort of diligent work, in small units over a sustained period, can develop the skills they need to do philosophy. Numerous other scholars have detailed the closely related benefits of scaffolding assignments-breaking large assignments into smaller steps-and while this is not something I will discuss here, it is certainly a further useful means to address these issues.22 Assignments that build in the incremental development of philosophical skills, therefore play a central role in conveying to students the necessity of sustained, careful work rather than some sort of inherent smartness. And this message can do a great deal to support the work of women and students of color. Embracing Error A significant barrier to doing well in philosophy, which I've found in looking at both my students' writing and my own, is the notion that one should be producing perfectly finished and flawless work right from the beginning. This is a very ingrained and widely held belief, and one that's especially daunting and discouraging for those students already facing the undermining effects of stereotype threat and related challenges when doing philosophy. While it's of great importance to foster students' confidence in their skills alongside the development of the skills themselves, another key to the success of students typically marginalized in the philosophy classroom is to embrace, and even celebrate, error. This may run counter to the intuitive impulse of the dedicated teacher-who aims to help students do well in their courses-and certainly doesn't come naturally to students. But error is inevitable, and embracing and using it when it arises may turn it into a great learning tool. Allowing for and encouraging error has had very positive effects in my classroom, in helping more students to 12 Practices in Pedagogy ask questions and suggest answers, and in making it easier for them to tackle the difficult and often very unfamiliar type of work required in our discipline. This shift has been reflected in my student evaluations, a number of which now remark on the "comfortable," "safe and positive," and "welcoming" learning environment. Many students who tend to have difficulty with philosophy are multilingual learners, for whom English may not be their first language. A focus on accuracy and correctness throughout the learning process, rather than primarily in the final product (such as the final version of an essay), can be a considerable hindrance to such students' achievement. Part of the explanation for this lies in cognitive load theory, which explains that when students are working on acquiring new skills-such the critical analysis and advanced reading comprehension needed in philosophy-their performance of already acquired skills will worsen.23 In other words, students' existing level of proficiency in the language of instruction may well not be accurately reflected in their assignments. We all have limited cognitive resources, particularly in terms of working memory. When we concentrate on work requiring the development of new skills and involving difficult and unfamiliar material, we have less attention and cognitive processing power available for other tasks, and so language and other errors are very likely to creep in. Of course, this applies also to aspects of native speakers' language skills-and, indeed, to any ability that requires intensive cognitive processing. Fortunately, there are multiple strategies available to us as teachers to support our students in acquiring the skills they need to do philosophy. One essential component of this is to provide plenty of opportunities for revision. This lets students concentrate initially on analyzing and responding to a philosopher's arguments, say; then to address any gaps in or problems with their own arguments in a revised version; and, finally, to pay closer attention to correcting errors in their use of language. If students are required to produce flawlessly written, grammatically perfect papers from the start, the result is more fluent writing but less rigorous philosophy. For students' revised work to build on the existing strengths of their work and improve on less developed aspects, constructive and supportive grading is key. There are exceedingly few of us who can received a manuscript riddled with red pen marks and see it as an exciting opportunity for improvement. The most common response is feelings of unhappiness and shame at how much one has "gotten wrong," and the typical impulse is to hide the offending document and try to think of it as little as possible. Avoiding revising the assignment can then become a means of coping, but one that is likely to be interpreted as laziness or a genuine lack of necessary ability. Being a former copy editor, I spent many years as a teacher with red pen in hand, correcting almost every error I saw and giving grades that reflected all these myriad student mistakes-in everything from grammar to logical structure. Strategies for Retaining Marginalized Students 13 Remarkably, though, since I've shifted to grading almost everything in my courses as simply credit/no credit, and to highlighting what students have gotten right, as well as offering them suggestions of what practical things they could do to improve their work-they have been submitting far better, more engaged writing. The amount of effort they put into their assignments has, if anything, increased, despite the significantly decreased emphasis on grades. Credit/no credit grading means that they are penalized for not completing the work of the course, but that they have the freedom to try out things they're not yet good at, or to explore a novel approach and perhaps fail spectacularly-without any need to worry that they'll damage their overall grade. Nothing kills off real student learning more effectively than trying to make as few mistakes as possible. Another means of using error to enhance student work, is to put a good deal of emphasis on the need for messy, rough first drafts that contain numerous mistakes and require much revision. In the same way philosophy is seen to be something that one either inherently has a gift for or just can't do, so too many students (and I suspect graduate students and faculty as well) believe that good writers are able to sit down and produce a near-perfect first draft, straight off. Many of the students typically marginalized in philosophy lack confidence in their work because they perceive good work as something produced by those with innate talent-as something that those with philosophical ability can produce largely without effort, and certainly without multiple revisions. Part of undermining the myth of innate ability and explaining the need for effort and consistent hard work to be successful in philosophy, is stressing the need for messiness and error in developing good philosophical work. Not only is error, and often confusion, a part of this process that cannot be avoided; it's a desirable part, and one to be welcomed. Making errors, getting confused, putting together a rough, messy first draft-these are the building blocks of good writing, and good philosophy. Indeed, finding out that we must mess up along the way to get anywhere really worthwhile, can be the key to doing philosophy. Transforming our upper-level philosophy classes into ones that genuinely reflect the demographics of the society in which they are located will not be a quick or simple process. The present inequity in our discipline is deep-rooted and will not be easily changed. But we, as teachers of philosophy, are in the fortunate position of nonetheless being able to do a great deal to diversify our discipline, and thereby immeasurably enrich it for us all. Notes This paper owes a great debt to my experience as a Writing Fellow with the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program at Bronx Community College, City University of New York. My great thanks to our WAC Coordinator Julia Miele Rodas and Co-Coordinator Kathrynn 14 Practices in Pedagogy Ditommaso for their inspiring passion and expertise; and to the other 2013–2014 Writing Fellows, Johanna Braff, Jennifer Chancellor, Mark Drury, Svetlana Jović, and Tristan Striker for sharing their experience and insights. My sincere thanks, also, to all my students, both at the University of Cape Town and at Hunter College, City University of New York. I owe the bulk of what I've learnt about teaching (and a good deal of what I know about philosophy) to them. I'm grateful, too, for their feedback to the participants in the workshops on which this chapter is based, at the 2014 American Association of Philosophy Teachers' 20th Biennial International WorkshopConference on Teaching Philosophy, and at a presentation for Minorities and Philosophy in New York. 1. Paxton, Figdor, and Tiberius, "Quantifying the Gender Gap." 2. U.S. Census Bureau, "State and County QuickFacts." 3. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, "1999 and 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty." 4. Most notably by organizations such as Minorities and Philosophy (MAP, http://www. mapforthegap.com), and the American Philosophical Association (APA, http://www. apaonline.org), in particular by means of their diversity committees and Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion. 5. Paxton, Figdor, and Tiberius, "Quantifying the Gender Gap." 6. Flaherty, "The 20% Experiment." 7. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk. 8. Links to all of these sites can be found on the Minorities in Philosophy New York site, http://opencuny.org/nycmap/resources-for-syllabus-diversity. 9. Erten and Razi, "The Effects of Cultural Familiarity on Reading Comprehension." 10. Ibid., 71. 11. Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds, 9. 12. I have found Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia a very useful guide to the strictures that have prevented many women from pursuing philosophy to the extent they would like, remarking as she does that, "the life that I am constrained to lead doesn't let me free up enough time to acquire a habit of meditation in accordance with your rules. The interests of my house (which I must not neglect) and conversations and social obligations (which I can't avoid), inflict so much annoyance and boredom on this weak mind of mine that it is useless for anything else for a long time afterward" (Nye, The Princess and the Philosopher). 13. I am thinking, here, of such beliefs underpinning much Western philosophical argument and theory as those in a unitary Judeo-Christian god; in a fundamentally individualistic conception of the social and the psychological; in a decisive split between reason and emotion, mind and body, the rational and the intuited. 14. Saul, "Implicit Bias." 15. My use of creative assignments of the sort I discuss are in large part inspired and informed by John Bean's classic pedagogical work, Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. 16. I owe this assignment idea to Julie Miele Rodas. Strategies for Retaining Marginalized Students 15 17. Leslie, "How Language Shapes our Perception of the Social World"; Leslie, Cimpian, Meyer, and Freeland, "Expectations of Brilliance Underlie Gender Distributions Across Academic Disciplines." 18. Aronson, Quinn, and Spencer, "Stereotype Threat and the Academic Underperformance of Minorities and Women"; Saul, "Implicit Bias." 19. Gendler, "On the Epistemic Costs of Implicit Bias." 20. A variety of resources to tackle stereotype threat are available at http:// reducingstereotypethreat.org. Last accessed November 21, 2014. 21. Cohen, Garcia, Apfel, and Master, "Reducing the Racial Achievement Gap." 22. Bean, Engaging Ideas. 23. Kalyuga, Ayres, Chandler, and Sweller, "The Expertise Reversal Effect." References American Philosophical Association. n.d. "Resources on Diversity and Inclusiveness." Accessed March 4, 2015, http://www.apaonline.org/?page=diversity_resources. American Philosophical Association Committee on the Status of Women. n.d. "Diversity in Philosophy Courses." Accessed March 4, 2015, http://www.apaonlinecsw.org/resources. American Philosophical Association Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion. Accessed February 13, 2015, http://www.apaonline.org. Aronson, Joshua, Diane M. Quinn, and Steven J. Spencer. "Stereotype Threat and the Academic Underperformance of Minorities and Women." In Prejudice: The target's perspective, edited by Janet K. Swim and Charles Stangor, 83–103. Academic Press: San Diego, 1998. Bean, John. Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, 1996. Cohen, Geoffrey L., Julio Garcia, Nancy Apfel, and Allison Master. "Reducing the Racial Achievement Gap: A Social-Psychological Intervention." Science 313 (2006): 1307–1310. "Core Readings in Philosophy by Female Authors for Undergraduate Curricula". Accessed March 4, 2015, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgJqzL_YyKKxdEwyd1 o5c1lubFp2TGpiSlkyTE5jOXc#gid=0. Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. John Wilson and Son: Cambridge, U.S.A., 1903. Erten, İsmail Hakki, and Salim Razi. "The effects of cultural familiarity on reading comprehension." Reading in a Foreign Language, 21 (2009): 60–77. Flaherty, Colleen. "The 20% Experiment: Georgia State tries new approach to attract more female students to philosophy." Inside Higher Ed., February 7, 2014. Gendler, Tamar Szabó. "On the Epistemic Costs of Implicit Bias." Philosophical Studies, 156 (2011): 33–63. Kalyuga, Slava, Paul Ayres, Paul Chandler, and John Sweller. "The Expertise Reversal Effect." Educational Psychologist, 38 (2003): 23–31. 16 Practices in Pedagogy Leslie, Sarah-Jane. ''How Language Shapes our Perception of the Social World." Talk for Brooklyn Public Philosophers, June 24, 2014. Leslie, Sarah-Jane, Andrei Cimpian, Meredith Meyer, and Edward Freeland. "Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines." In Science 347 (2015): 262–265. Lewis, David. On the Plurality of Worlds. Blackwell: Oxford, 1986. Lindemann, Kate (ed.). "Women philosophers' books for courses", on Women Philosophers. Accessed March 4, 2015, http://www.women-philosophers.com/Women-philosophersbooks.html. Minorities and Philosophy. Accessed February 13, 2015, http://www.mapforthegap.com. Minorities in Philosophy New York. Accessed March 1, http://opencuny.org/nycmap/ resources-for-syllabus-diversity. Nye, Andrea. The Princess and the Philosopher: Letters of Elisabeth of the Palatine to René Descartes. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. O'Keefe, Tim, ed. "Works by Female Philosophers". Accessed March 4, 2015, http://philosophy.syr.edu/graduate/_pdfs/Works%20by%20Female%20Philosophers.pdf. Paxton, Molly, Carrie Figdor, and Valerie Tiberius. "Quantifying the Gender Gap: An Empirical Study of the Underrepresentation of Women in Philosophy." Hypatia, 27 (2012): 949–957. Reducing Stereotype Threat. Accessed November 21, 2014, http://reducingstereotypethreat. org. Saul, Jennifer. "Implicit Bias, Stereotype Threat and Women in Philosophy." In Women in Philosophy: What Needs to Change?, edited by F. Jenkins and K. Hutchison. Oxford University Press: New York, 2013. Tuana, Nancy. Re-Reading the Canon series. Penn State University Press U.S. Census Bureau. "State and County QuickFacts. Data derived from Population Estimates, American Community Survey, Census of Population and Housing, State and County Housing Unit Estimates, County Business Patterns, Nonemployer Statistics, Economic Census, Survey of Business Owners, Building Permits." Accessed October 24, 2014, http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/index.html. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. "1999 and 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty." Accessed November 20, 2014, http://nces. ed.gov/surveys/nsopf/.