Teaching

Literature, Culture, & the Anthropocene

This seminar engaged with the expansive and complex topic of the Anthropocene from a humanities and specifically cultural studies perspective. To examine the profoundly inequitable effects of environmental degradation, the course centered the knowledge of Indigenous, Black, and other racialized communities, as well as queer, feminist, and rural perspectives. Students profiled complex relations of loss and endurance for the Field Guide to Lost Futures, a digital humanities project that is part time capsule, part memorial, and part speculative experiment.

Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University.

Visualizing the Future

In this elective MFA seminar in media studies, students explored various media genres that have been used to imagine and impose visions of the future, with emphasis on the politics of futurist texts and attention to Indigenous and Black/Afro futurisms. The course included site visits to galleries and museums and a group research creation project where they developed a proposal for a future-oriented monument in the city of Philadelphia, inspired by the work of Monument Lab.

Department of Cinema and Media Studies. University of Pennsylvania

Media & Indigenous Politics

This course introduced key issues in Indigenous politics in Canada through Indigenous- and settler-created media. Students learned about Indigenous peoples’ strategic use of mass media, film and visual media, and artwork to advance projects such as political organization, resurgence, and language reclamation. Students also examined how mass media—such as newspapers, television, and film—have reproduced harmful stereotypes, and how Indigenous artists and activists have disrupted such representational practices. Alongside this political and historical context, students were introduced to media theories of affordance, representation, and remediation.

Department of Political Science, University of Toronto.

Alternative Media

This course introduced students to historical and contemporary forms of alternative media, with particular attention to the role of media in building counter-publics. Informed by Black, queer, and feminist press histories, students identified under-reported issues in their communities and created zines in response, giving them hands-on experience with writing for social change and research creation.

Institute of Communication, Culture, and Information Technology, University of Toronto Mississauga.

Globalization & Indigenous Politics

This elective seminar connected critical Indigenous studies with comparative politics. Students examined globalization from the perspective of Indigenous politics with a focus on the Americas and extractive industry. Course activities included experiential engagements with Indigenous histories of a campus park now known as Philosopher’s Walk. Assignments included policy briefs and an extended research paper.

Department of Political Science, University of Toronto.

Race & Struggles for Racial Justice

This undergraduate seminar introduced the rich body of literature generated in response—and often in opposition to—the colonial circuits of bodies and goods central to the experiences, objects, and texts Cultural Studies seeks to analyze. From Franz Fanon and James Baldwin to Glen Coulthard and Lee Maracle, students engaged with theorists directly responding to the questions of racial justice in which their communities are ensnared. Reading theoretical and literary texts together, we considered how writing is not merely about politics, but constitutes political action.

Department of Cultural Studies, Trent University.