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

Select Teaching Experience:

@ New Jersey City University (Jersey City, NJ)

  • Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies
  • Telling Women’s Lives
  • Diversity and Difference

@ 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.

I maintain a Delicious Bookmarks account titled Feminist Issues to archive stories that enhance in-class learning.

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.

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

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