Phenomenology is a tradition concerned with how the world gives itself to appearances. It is also a method, committed to perpetual beginning as a way of apprehending the world and our place in it. This course is an introduction to this philosophy of continual introductions. We begin with Edmund Husserl, then consider how phenomenology transforms as it is articulated by Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger and Levinas. We explore the treatment of language and literature in this tradition, and in the latter half of the course read contemporary phenomenology engaging questions of gender and sexuality, race, environmental justice and mass incarceration.