Teaching
During my time at George Washington University as a PhD Candidate, I have served as Professor on Record for three courses: Anthropology of Africa, Anthropology of Development, and Speculative Anthropologies.
I’ve also served as a Graduate Teaching Assistant for classes including: Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology, Anthropology of Development, Psychological Anthropology, and Anthropology of Gender. I have pedagogical training in teaching writing from my time as Head Consultant at Vassar College’s Writing Center and I’ve taught anthropological theories and methods to high school students at School Without Walls (SWW) and Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, DC. I’ve also worked as a community educator for organizations like Philadelphia Spells Writing Lab, the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the Peace Corps, and DC Rape Crisis Center (DCRCC).
Courses
ANTH 3708: Anthropology of Africa—Medical Colonialism, Global Health and International Development
This course will focus on the African continent as a crucial site of intervention, and production of medical knowledge, a “living laboratory” in and through which colonial powers sought to expand their understanding of illness and the body, using medical intervention as a crucial site of control of African populations. Throughout this class, we will track the development of health and humanitarian assemblages in across Africa, paying special attention to which kinds of diseases, ailments and issues of population health are treated as political and scientific problems; the political-economy of aid and humanitarian care in certain “crisis” settings; and how the creation of Africa as a space of and for global health can help us to better understand the unequal distribution of health care resources and infrastructures across the continent. In so doing, we’ll ask what counts as global health; where does global health get practiced; what kinds of knowledge and expertise get leveraged in global health, development and humanitarian aid; and who gets to practice global health and “aid” in Africa. We’ll also explore the dimensions of international development and humanitarian aid that often get overlooked, to the detriment of “invisible” or underlying ailments, as well as the political struggles and forms of mobilization that occur in relation to diseases like HIV and AIDS, infertility, Ebola and COVID-19. Our readings with draw upon medical anthropology, public health, political science, and international affairs, with special attention to the ethnographic particularities and expertise scholars throughout the continent have to offer.
ANTH 3691: Speculative Anthropologies-Ethnography, Storytelling & Worldbuilding
Anthropology has historically been grounded in ideas of the encounter--how we hail the “Other,” how we construct theories of world-building via interactions with otherwise ways of being, how we position the scholar vis-a-vis particular fields of study. This course asks how the stories we engage with, the worldviews that we embody or embark upon, and the kinds of narratives we create as scholars with, by and through our subjects of research propose alternative ways of thinking about history and building a theory of both the past and the present. A speculative anthropology is therefore an engagement with theories and practices that undergird the discipline, while provoking students to reimagine how we study, construct, and write about difference. This class puts ethnographic texts in conversation with critical works of speculative fiction--including Octavia Butler’s “Bloodchild,” Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation, Donna Haraway’s chthulucene, and Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer--to consider the role of language in re-writing colonial encounters, non-human kinship entanglements, empathizing with medical conditions that are unseen and immeasurable, and technological captivity. This speculative practice also encompasses alternative approaches to analytic and creative writing, with assignments throughout the semester that terraform intellectual imagination and reinscribe how one writes an ethnography.
ANTH 3501: Anthropology of Development
We will explore the historical “development of development” as an ideological and cultural construct and its powerful role in recalibrating the aspirations and expectations of social groups in a highly unequal world. The second part of the course will shift towards a focus on how development assistance is actually practiced "on the ground" as a form of social interaction and how it is reacted to by different actors as a form of social experience. The last section of the course will take up several key and recent cutting edge issues and trends in contemporary development practice, including: the relationship between women in development (WID) and gender and development (GAD) in structuring how gender and “women’s empowerment” has been adopted into developmental practice; the role of global health and infectious diseases in structuring how aid is delivered and what kinds of suffering qualify for development assistance; human-rights based and indigenous development; and new configurations of concepts like capacity-building and sustainability. This course examines development as a major social process that profoundly shapes global affairs and local lives in the modern world; how it has emerged and functions as a dominant ideology; and why and how it persists and continues grow in scope and influence. We will be reviewing the role anthropology has played in shaping modern practices of development, while interrogating the gaps between what development says that it does, and how development is actually practiced.
Teaching Public Anthropology
As part of my role as Managing Editor of The Geek Anthropologist, we also encourage using geek and pop culture as teaching tools to engage with anthropological theories and concepts. Below is a sampling of how I’ve used The Geek Anthropologist to encourage mainstream, popular understandings of anthropological methods and approaches to studying social issues.
How does the Zombie apocalypse allow us to understand disasters and disease outbreaks? What does the gamification of Zombie scenarios teach our students about constructions of risk, preparedness and epidemiology?
Advice for undergraduates about how to write a critical analysis paper beyond the “five paragraph essay” format and the essential elements of an academic argument to consider.
Advice for undergraduate and graduate students about how to prepare a conference presentation, the importance of considering presentation format and technological support, and why your investment in your project is the most important element of a successful presentation.