Teaching

IMG_1378Teaching Areas:

  • Women’s, Gender, and Feminist Theory
  • Cultural Studies
  • Popular Culture and Media Studies
  • Transnational Feminisms
  • Reproductive Justice
  • Critical Race Theory
  • Body and Health Studies
  • Sexuality Studies
  • Yoga as Social Justice
  • Feminist, Anti-Racist Pedagogy
  • Visual Culture Methodologies
  • Digital Humanities

Select Teaching Experience:

@ New Jersey City University (Jersey City, NJ)

  • Diversity and Difference
  • LGBTQ Social Change
  • Reproductive Justice
  • Senior Seminar

@ Keene State College (Keene, NH)

  • Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies
  • Feminist Practices (Service Learning course)
  • Feminist Theories
  • Feminist Media Theory
  • Reproductive Justice
  • Race, Sexuality, and Representation

@ Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA)IMG_1373

  • Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies
  • Transnational Feminisms
  • Gender and Health
  • Gender and Popular Culture
  • Reproductive Justice

@ Northern Arizona University (Flagstaff, AZ)

  • Women, Gender, and Ethnicity
  • Introduction to Transnational Feminisms
  • Women’s and Gender Studies Research – Capstone
  • Race/Sex/Body
  • Critical Media Literacy

@ Queen’s University (Kingston, ON)

  • Feminist Thought
  • Sociology of Gender, Race, and Class
  • Sociology of the Body
  • Sociology of Sex Diversity
  • Contemporary Issues in Human Sexuality

Teaching Methodologies:

Digital Humanities

This short article outlines my use of Plotagon software in WGST 202: Transnational Feminisms (Spring 2014).

Students analyze assigned documentaries in Transnational Feminisms using WordPress blogging infrastructure.  This is the “homepage” for the course.  Student blogs can be accessed through this site.

In fall 2014, I experimented with Twitter for Just-in-Time teaching in Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies.  Students created a hashtag for the course, and posted questions, analyses, and links that were used as discussion prompts during our class time. I’ve continued using Twitter to teach Reproductive Justice across institutions.

Student Centered-Learning via Small Group Discussions

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Though I may present information through a traditional lecture, I value learning that takes place through democratic knowledge production. To me, the classroom is not a static space; it is a vibrant collective of individual thinkers.  I want the class to view each other as peers working towards a common goal – a respectful environment in which we learn difficult concepts and talk about controversial ideas.  Small group discussions inspire students to share ideas in a “low-stress” environment:  they practice communicating with each other, becoming more confident in their analytical voice, before sharing with the larger class.

Contemplative Practice through In-Class Writing

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Engaged pedagogy encourages the experiential in conjunction with the theoretical, and promotes a link between thinking and feeling, or what Laura Rendón calls sentipensante pedagogy (2009). I use generative, in-class writing to operationalize these theories of education.  Low-stakes writing assignments motivate students to be thoughtful; through writing, students prepare, consider, or analyze the day’s topic.  Additionally, in-class writing is productively grounding:  taking time to sit, gather one’s thoughts, and write orients one towards the material.  Modifications are available for those with learning or embodied dis/abilities.

*Images from Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies, Spring 2014, Dickinson College