MARK SCHROEDER

I am a professor in the School of Philosophy at USC, where I have taught since 2006. At the undergraduate level I have taught mostly ethics courses, including Phil 166: Current Moral and Social Issues, Phil 340: Ethics, and Phil 440: Contemporary Ethical Theory, but I have also taught GE seminars, including GESM 120: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse and GESM 120: The Gifts of Ilúvatar - Death and Immortality. This is my first time teaching Phil 270, but I hope to teach it regularly in the future.

In addition to my undergraduate teaching, I also regularly teach graduate seminars and supervise a number of PhD dissertations. Twenty-one of my former PhD students have completed their degrees and gone on to teach at universities in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America, and twenty of them still teach philosophy. They teach and do research on a wide variety of topics within philosophy.

It is also part of my job as a university professor - as with all tenured faculty at a research university like USC - to conduct original research. My own research is not about either current moral issues or about immortality, but it is about metaethics, and much of my current research concerns what it means to be a person and what light that sheds on the dynamics of interpersonal conflict. If you are interested, you can read a little bit more about it on my professional webpage.

I am currently working on writing a book about what philosophy can teach us about interpersonal conflict, and have recently founded a working group at USC called the Conceptual Foundations of Conflict Project. Among other activities, the CFCP also organizes a public lecture on campus each semester intended to be of interest to students. You can read more about the CFCP’s work here.

It is always appropriate to address your university teachers as ‘Professor [lastname]’, so you can call me ‘Professor Schroeder’. I personally also do not mind, if you are enrolled in my class or were in a previous semeser, if you call me ‘Mark’. The best way to contact me directly is by e-mail; I do not generally respond to e-mails outside of working hours, but I make a point to try to respond to all student e-mails within 24 hours. The ‘contact’ link at the top right of the course webpage allows you to e-mail me anonymously if you ever feel the need.