Pedagogy

I have taught over twenty unique courses at the undergraduate and postgraduate level, in lecture and seminar settings, in person and online. As a teacher, my primary aims are to enable students to think with depth and dynamism. I endeavor to design my courses so that students develop skills in reasoning, effective writing, and ethical communication, as well as giving them ways to engage creatively with their culture and society. Recently taught courses include: Antiracist Thought, Feminism, Philosophy & Pop Culture, Philosophy in Literature, and 20th Century Continental Philosophy.

This page shows a selection of the assignments I have designed for my undergraduate courses.

Comics: I frequently use the creation of comics as a form of assessment. Reading and creating comics encourage visual literacy and multimodal thinking for students. In philosophy classrooms in particular, what better tool is there than one that “invites readers to dwell, to reflect, and to meditate inside a compositional space” (Howe)? Making comics also helps students to develop skills in planning, crafting succinct arguments, and in creative communication. The example below is from a section of my Introduction to Ancient Philosophy class and demonstrates the student’s understanding of Aristotle’s “great chain of being.” She’s made choices that clearly show the hierarchy of being laid out by Aristotle (i.e., plants<animals<women<men) and, through the juxtaposition of text and image, she has also deftly illustrated a feminist critique of that hierarchy. All within just four panels!

Learning Journals: I use this assignment frequently in my Feminism course to track learning progress and provide an outlet for creative and non-traditional academic work. The assignment description is as follows:

Each week you will make an entry in your Learning Journal reflecting on the philosophy we have read and on your own thoughts regarding each lesson. This is a space for personal reflection so it does not have to be written "academically," but it must demonstrate critical thinking and engagement with the course materials. You may include any images you like, and it can be kept in either a traditional manner (i.e. paper, notebooks, etc.) or on a computer. There will be three checks on the progress of your journal throughout the term.

Students were encouraged to interpret the method of journaling in whatever way they saw fit and the results were truly amazing. Journals ranged from zines, to sketchbooks, to actual sculptures. Below are a few examples of the more creative journals submitted (permission was given to make use of these images).

Playlists: In my Philosophy & Pop Culture class, we built a playlist as a class to correspond to our unit on Hip-Hop. The assignment was designed in order to produce something as a collective, but also to help students better connect our theoretical discussions with pop culture. Description:

Informed by our readings for the last section of our course, students searched for a Hip-Hop track and/or video that does the work of consciousness raising/activism. Students provided the title of the track and artist name (as well as video link if available) so that the class could compile a playlist. Students also wrote 350 words describing why they chose the particular track/video and why they believed it did the work that it does. These entries serve as the "liner notes" for our playlist (a link to the notes is accessible via the link below).

The playlist our class generated in the Fall 2018 session can be found at this link.

“Hope in the Dark”: In my Philosophy in Literature class, we have read several eco-horror novels, and spent a lot of time discussing climate change and the need for environmental justice. Because this kind of analysis can be disheartening, I designed an assignment to help keep hope in our framework.

Following from Rebecca Solnit's collection of essays, each Thursday we will spend some time recognizing the various ways people have worked to protect the environment. Students sign up for a day on which they are responsible for uploading a link to an article or video that focuses on climate activism successes. So, for example, students might post an article that explains how coral farming is being used to regrow dead reefs. The link is posted to the Discussion Board on our class Canvas page and will be paired with a brief summary of the post in class on the assigned day.

Some previous submissions for this assignment were the following:

• Bacteria genetically engineered to decompose plastic

• Solar panel successes

• Trees to stop climate crisis