Wonder and curiosity are powerful learning motivators.

As a university instructor and lifelong learner, my goal is to spark wonder and curiosity about our social world. My teaching praxis is motivated by three core principles: creative through connection, empowerment, and joyful learning.

  • I encourage creative thinking by building connections across concepts and through real-world application.

  • I empower students to be collaborators in teaching and learning, bringing their own expertise and unique perspectives.

  • I aim to create a fun, entertaining, and surprising environment for students to learn.

I am qualified to teach at the undergraduate and graduate level in course topics related to media, social theory, technology, popular culture, communications, and video production, including in sociology, communications, journalism, or media studies.

Below are courses I have recently designed and taught.

SOC 3709

Media & Society

This course begins with a simple but powerful premise: all media are social. And in modern society, nearly all aspects of everyday life are mediated by media, making it essential to understand this dynamic interrelationship. Through four key approaches—representation, the cultural industries, feminist and queer theory, and digital sociology—we will critically engage with a wide range of media forms, including podcasts, TikTok, Hollywood films, video games, reality television, artificial intelligence, and NFTs. Emphasizing both theory and practice, this course encourages students to connect sociological frameworks with real-world media examples and their own lived experiences as media consumers and producers. Guest speakers from media-related fields will further enrich our exploration. Along the way, we will also engage foundational sociological themes such as race, class, labor, gender, sexuality, and inequality. Our ultimate goal is to better understand how media are socially-constructed cultural texts, with critical implications for how we think about and engage with media in our social world.

SOC 3701

Social Theory

This course offers an introduction to the major theoretical traditions of sociology, with an emphasis on understanding, analyzing, comparing, and critiquing different theoretical lineages. We begin by exploring what social theory is and why it matters, challenging the notion that theory is abstract, elite, or disconnected from everyday life. Instead, we will approach theory as something that should be simple, elegant, and useful for making sense of the social world. Each week, we will pair classic theoretical texts with contemporary empirical or applied works that engage with, extend, or critique the theories under discussion. This approach will allow us to see how theory and empiricism inform one another and contribute to the development of new sociological insights. We will also trace the “meta-story” of social theory: how theories evolve over time, how they are shaped by historical context and biography, and how they exert influence in the world. Our class will manifest in a series of friendly group debates over the usefulness of various theories to approach four different real world social pheonomena, from artificial intelligence to social media influencers. By then, you will be able to not only identify and explain the major theories of sociology but be able to think critically about how theories themselves socially construct—and are constructed by—the social world.

JOUR 3006

Visual Communications

We live in a visual culture. This course offers a critical introduction to the field of visual communication, exploring how images shape and reflect cultural meanings in everyday life. We will examine a broad range of media—from advertisements, documentaries, and reality television to video games, TikTok, and internet memes—through the lenses of visual perception, semiotics, and cultural studies. Students will learn to decode visual cues such as form, color, and movement, and to analyze how media represent race, class, gender, and power. Readings include foundational theorists such as Stuart Hall, Michel Foucault, and Susan Sontag alongside contemporary case studies and visual texts. Through guest speakers, in-class activities, and hands-on projects like a digital ethnography, students will connect theory to practice while investigating how visual media construct our understanding of truth, identity, and social life. By the end of the course, students will be equipped with the critical tools to analyze the visual culture that surrounds us and participate more thoughtfully in today’s media landscape.