• Philosophical Stages featured in the George Lucas Educational Foundation's Jan/Feb 2007 issue of Edutopia: "Acting Up: Higher philosophical thinking through drama" and "How To: Use Performance-Based Learning in the Classroom"
• Philosophical Stages lead story in the Stanford Report, August 2006: "Drama brings philosophy to life in Humanities Lab summer research projects"

Directed by James Collins and Corby Kelly

Philosophical Stages is a multi-disciplinary research project supported by the Stanford Humanities Lab and the Wallenberg Global Learning Network. We develop new strategies for using the dramatic arts to teach philosophy to pre-college and early-college students, thereby fostering skills in critical thinking, problem-solving, and effective self-presentation. Through the sustained and systematic modulation of voice, body, and thought, an attentive person can deliberately condition and refashion her life into a different character. We also investigate how emerging technologies in the humanities (e.g. collaborative web-based authoring environments) can be used to promote not only 'communities of inquiry', but performative spaces for collaborative and creative artistic projects which make philosophy not only more exciting but more immediately relevant to the lives of young students. Philosophy can be a functional and practical activity, and action-oriented, dramatic exercises have traditionally provided and can now provide an excellent outlet for young adults to explore and articulate their ideas with confidence.

Philosophical Stages works from the basic premises that (1) philosophy as an art of living aims to examine, evaluate, and transform our most basic assumptions and ways of thinking, our use of everyday words and ideas, our everyday habits and actions; (2) highly performative, experimental, and collaborative learning environments provide the best opportunities for this art which (3) is something we all can do and naturally want to do. Young adults are especially hungry for it.

In the summer of 2007 the principal investigators of the Philosophical Stages project worked with pre-college students and Stages alumni from the summers of 2005 and 2006, and five new instructors in Wallenberg Hall in a four-week intensive workshop which used techniques drawn from the dramatic arts and ancient philosophical exercises to teach and do philosophy. The investigators worked in collaboration with faculty and graduate students from the departments of Education, Drama, Classics, and Philosophy at several participating institutions as well as a number of local theater professionals.

An Introduction to our Objectives: historical background, trends in education, and examples of program logistics.

• PHILOSOPHICAL STAGES 2007: July 2-27, Final Performances Saturday, July 28th, 11:00 AM, The Learning Theatre in Wallenberg Hall.
• Philosophical Stages receives additional 2006-07 support through grant from the Wallenberg Global Learning Network for work with Metamedia and Göteborg University on the Co-creating Cultural Heritage project.
• The Examined Life Project, Winter-Spring 2007: Performance project for Bay area students of (1) how they make everyday decisions, and (2) how recording, scripting, and thinking about these everyday events changes the ways they are performed.
• CLASSGEN 10 Acting Socratic: Philosophical experiments in modern spaces of performance: A new experimental lab seminar at Stanford
• SUMMER PHILOSOPHICAL STAGES 2006
• DIALOGUES ON VIRTUE, Working with Socratic Tools, Winter 2005-06
• THE NECESSITY OF THEATER? Workshop with Paul Woodruff and PS Players, March 9th, 2006, 5-7pm, Building 200, Room 107
• PHILOSOPHICAL STAGES 2006, 7/10-29, Quicktime Video of 2006 Final Performance: Many Wonders, Many Terrors
• PAST PHILOSOPHICAL STAGES 2005 (Site archived)
• Quicktime Video of 2005 Final Performance: Antigone Reflected

Other Spaces for Practical Ethics?

Agenda for Graduate Student Colloquium, 2/8

Using and Experiencing Wikis: What collaborative authoring software can do

Check out other experimental theater and drama programs for better learning

Posted at Nov 08/2005 11:59PM:
Our workshop abstract for the New Directions in the Humanities conference, summer 2006.