Loyola University, Chicago
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2014
Spokane, Washington, U.S.
Areas of Specialization
Biomedical Ethics
  •  8
    Lonely Deaths: Dying in Nursing Homes during COVID-19
    International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 15 (1): 135-137. 2022.
    Our 2021 article, "Dying Well in Nursing Homes During COVID-19 and Beyond: The Need for a Relational and Familial Ethic," addresses the response to the COVID-19 pandemic within nursing homes and the impact it had on the lives of residents, care providers, and families. We acknowledge that, at the height of the pandemic, when infection and death rates were soaring in these facilities, extreme "lockdown" measures may have been justified; but these measures resulted in significant relational costs.…Read more
  •  18
    This paper applies a relational and familial ethic to address concerns relating to nursing home deaths and advance care planning during Covid‐19 and beyond. The deaths of our elderly in nursing homes during this pandemic have been made more complicated by the restriction of visitors even at the end of life, a time when families would normally be present. While we must be vigilant about preventing unnecessary deaths caused by coronavirus outbreaks in nursing homes, some deaths of our elders are i…Read more
  •  336
    Re-envisioning the Philosophy Classroom through Metaphors
    Teaching Philosophy 44 (2): 121-144. 2021.
    What is a philosophy class like? What roles do teachers and students play? Questions like these have been answered time and again by philosophers using images and metaphors. As philosophers continue to develop pedagogical approaches in a more conscious way, it is worth evaluating traditional metaphors used to understand and structure philosophy classes. In this article, we examine two common metaphors—the sage on the stage, and philosophy as combat—and show why they fail pedagogically. Then we p…Read more
  •  21
    Countering the Rational Suicide Story
    International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 14 (1): 73-102. 2021.
    The literature on rational suicide (RS) holds that if a rational person wishes to suicide under circumstances deemed rational, there is no moral reason to prohibit a person from suiciding. There are forty years of literature dedicated to establishing what rational suicide is and demonstrating its moral permissibility. What is shocking is that in this literature, almost no attempts are made to include the perspectives of mental health users. Drawing from the work of Hilde Lindemann, I argue that …Read more