I teach courses in New College and the Department of Gender and Race Studies at the University of Alabama. 
Befitting these two departments, my classes are fundamentally interdisciplinary, focused on issues of social justice, and often involve community engagement.

FA 200 – Introduction to the Arts: Experiencing the Arts   (3 credit hours, in-person & on-line)

• An introduction to the fine arts, drawing especially on on-campus and community cultural events, this course is to designed introduce students to the function, value, and character of the arts in our everyday lives. Students in the course are asked to consider the value of the arts in their own development as a person, a student, and a community member. In this pursuit, students will be asked to experience different art forms and organizations, pushing out of the classroom and into various art communities–campus-based and local, formal and informal, professional and student.

NEW 420 – Cultural Studies: Youth Culture  (3 credit hours, Writing core)

• This interdisciplinary seminar provides an introduction to the key concepts, methodologies, and practice of Cultural Studies, by focusing primarily on youth cultures to debate issues of cultural power and consumption, identity, representation, audience, and everyday life. Adolescence is a time of constructing a personal identity and solidifying one’s beliefs, values, and selfhood. Yet, as a collective, the choices made by youth have had an incredible influence on American culture at large. In this course, we will consider historical accounts of and psychological and sociological studies of youth, as well as popular texts, to critique the nature and significance of youth cultures for the larger cultures from which they emerge.

NEW 420 – Cultural Studies: Popular Culture  (3 credit hours, Writing core)

• This interdisciplinary seminar provides an introduction to the key concepts, methodologies, and practice of Cultural Studies, by focusing on the many forms that our popular culture can take and the various ways that writers and theorists have critiqued American popular culture —from debates about who gets to define “culture” and what counts as “culture” to questions of audience, fans, authorship, and social inequality. Each week we will take up a new example of pop culture, predominantly produced in the United States, to help us define “culture” and consider how “value” (or worth) and audience become central concerns as we consider popular culture’s influence.

NEW 422 – Girls’ Culture  (3 credit hours, Writing core)

• This interdisciplinary seminar introduces students to the key debates, concepts, and questions raised by the emerging field of Girls’ Studies. The course examines the history and social construction of girlhood in the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as draws on girls’ lived experiences, activism, and cultural productions in order to challenge established definitions of “girls” and “girlhood.” Students will begin the semester asking central questions about girlhood, such as how do we define “girlhood” and who gets to be a “girl” in the West, and then explore various topics related to girls’ culture including the history of girlhoods since the Industrial Revolution, media representations of girls, girls as activists, and girls as creative producers. 

NEW 445 – Humans and Technology  (3 credit hours, Writing core)

• This interdisciplinary seminar provides an introduction to the central debates and questions raised by the increasingly close relationship between humans and advanced technologies. The course will draw on critical works, as well as narrative fiction and popular culture texts, to examine how a dependence on technology might change the very definition of “human” and what subsequent ethical, psychological, and philosophical dilemmas result from this close relationship. Topics will include examinations of social media influence and smartphone usage, artificial intelligence and robotics, “posthuman” philosophies, reproductive technologies, and the future of work and social relationships.

NEW 490 – Social Justice on Film  (3 credit hours)

• When Solanas and Getino announced in their manifesto “Towards a Third Cinema” that filmmaking could (or should) be the political act of a community, their idea of a “guerrilla cinema” was only one instance in a long history of film as a documenter of and tool for issues of social justice. Both fiction and nonfiction modes of filmmaking have addressed issues ranging from unfair labor practices and poverty to racism, violent conflict, and colonial or environmental exploitation. In this course, we will examine the ways that film can function as a form of activist art, a political document, or a means for raising awareness, and we will explore how different traditions of filmmaking represent social justice issues and, at times, enact a call to action.

NEW 490 – Youth Media Makers  (3 credit hours, service learning course)

• Are you ever too young to learn to make media? Are you ever too young to be influenced by the media? This interdisciplinary seminar will work with young people to try to answer these questions. We will start by investigating the goals, methods, and challenges for creating media production and media literacy classes for youth in our local community—asking what are the aims for this kind of community engagement focused on artistic expression, voice, and media literacy. Finally, we will create our own lessons and start teaching digital media and media literacy skills to kids in an after-school program in Tuscaloosa, with the goal of having equal gender distribution in all of our classes. This is a project-based, service learning course.

WS 440 – Seminar in Women’s Studies  (3 credit hours, Writing core)

• The Seminar in Women’s Studies is designed to investigate a particular subject supplemental to regular course offerings. Students in this senior seminar will develop advanced undergraduate research skills and gain a substantial foundation for further study, including graduate work in this area. Writing proficiency is required for a passing grade in this course. A student who does not write with the skill normally required of an upper-division student will not earn a passing grade, no matter how well the student performs in other areas of the course.