Personal Curriculum

Estimated time frame: December 2025–February 2026.

Course description/objective(s): Practice philosophy as an active art through reflection, creative projects, and applying theory to “lowbrow” topics.

Questions I hope to answer by the end of the course:

• How do Zen and Western philosophies agree or disagree in their pursuit of understanding things like reality, self, purpose, the “good” life, etc.?
• What are punk’s ethics and philosophies, and how do they stand up against other philosophical traditions?
• Bonus: How do feminist perspectives and female philosophers expand or critique the philosophies explored in the course?

Required Reading:

• Hardcore Zen: punk rock, monster movies, and the thruth about reality by Brad Warner. (Which ended up being more of an autobiography about how he got into and practices Zen, which wasn’t too bad, but I now realize that I probably would have gotten more out of Warner’s Letters to a Dead Friend About Zen or The Other Side of Nothing: The Zen Ethics of Time, Space, and Being. Oh, well. Live and learn.)
• Punk rock and philosophy: reseach and destroy edited by Joshua Heter Richard Greene.
• Tweetable Nietzsche: his essential ideas revealed and explained by C. Ivan Spencer.
• Just think: philosophy puzzles for children aged 9 to 90 by Philip West

Other resources:

• Crash Course Philosophy (videos)
• Overthink Podcast
• Philosophy Talk: Wise Women (Podcast) (Because my chosen resources are biased towards male philosophers and I wanna balance that.)
• Philosophize This! (Podcast)
• The tragic decline of the punk rock attitude (YouTube video essay)
• The paradox of punk fashion (YouTube video essay)
• The punk philosophy and lifestyle with punk rock DJ Pitter Pat (Podcast episode on YouTube)

Modern Riot Grrrl Bands (Because my sources are biased towards male bands with a few Riot Grrrl classics like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Sleater-Kinney sprinkled in)

• Bad cop/Bad cop
• Big Joanie
• Destroy Boys
• Die Spitz
• Doll Skin
• Dump Him
• Eteraz
• Meet me @ the altar (Pop-punk, but I do what I want)
• Sharp Violet
• Skinny Girl Diet
• The Slits
• X-Ray Specs
• Riot Grrrl Christmas (album)

Weekly Assignments:

• Doing ~3 thought exercises from Just Think.
• Listen to punk bands and analyze their lyrics through philosophical lens. Bonus: craft playlists matching the topics of the week’s thought exercises.

Final Project:

Personal Manifesto Zine: make a personal philosophical manifesto that sums up the insights gained throughout the course and articulates my own evolving philosophical framework, including practical applications for navigating daily life.

Extra credit:

• Reread/reference Introducing philosophy for everyday life: a practical guide by Trevor Curnow if I need a refresher in any given topic.
• Check out Brad Warner’s punk translation of the Shobogenzo: Don’t be a jerk and other practical advice from Dogen, Japan’s greatest Zen master and It came from beyond Zen! More practical advice from Dogen, Japan’s greatest Zen master.
• Materialist Analysis Approaches in Discourse Studies
• Casual rewatch of The Good Place
• Batman and philosophy: the Dark Knight of the soul edited by Mark D. White and Robert Arp. (Supervillains and Philosophy: Sometimes, Evil is its Own Reward looks really interesting too.) (Assignments: For each chapter, read/reread comic of choice and analyze the narrative through the philosophical lens/focus of the chapter.)
• K-Punk’s blog
• Fall Through: A Graphic Novel by Nate Powell (Recommended to me)