Teaching Philosophy- August 2024

As a critical cultural scholar, multi-media artist, and activist-practitioner, I connect learning goals to cultural and historical contexts with a social justice imperative and illustrate their cross-disciplinary applications. My critical commitments permeate my pedagogy by working against the grain of neoliberalism, white supremacy, settler colonialism, and cis-heteropatriarchy. To achieve these values, my primary aim is to foster students’ critical consciousness by focusing on reflexive thinking, creative expression, experiential learning, and communicating across difference.

Cross-disciplinary application is critical to my pedagogical praxis, and I stress the importance of reflexive thinking to elucidate the self as a site of inquiry. Many of my students are not Communication majors, so my class is possibly the only opportunity to expose them to a critical communication education and how developing communication skills has value in their professional and personal lives. To this end, I invite students to bring their interests, backgrounds, and experiences to the classroom. For example, in Public Speaking my students research a cultural group they identify with—such as a religious or ethnic identity or a personal interest like gaming—then perform a speech informing us of their cultural group situated within a historical and cultural context. Similarly, in Media & Society students curate a “Media Auto-Archeology” where they “dig up” media artifacts (photos, memes, gifs, videos) to tell a story about who they are today. Here, reflexive thinking and creative expression come together for students to understand how media shapes identity.

As an activist-practitioner, I make space for students to apply course concepts in experiential settings with social justice imperatives. For instance, in Public Speaking students’ research a social issue and pitch a non-profit organization to persuade their peers to invest in their project. Students are given a set amount of “money” to invest in their peers’ projects they think make the most persuasive arguments. While a friendly competition, this activity illustrates the capitalist consequences of persuasion and how social change often requires navigating the rules of capitalism. In Media & Society, students create “Visibility Campaigns” where they identify a social issue near-campus, then in groups create a series of media assets (social media posts, memes, short videos) to raise awareness, and develop a plan to enact change. Through coalition building, students employ technical and creative skills as experiential learning to become activist-practitioners.

Central to my classroom is students’ interests driving class discussion while I facilitate and prod their thinking and develop their critical consciousness. At the beginning of the semester, I advise them we will discuss potentially challenging topics and I remind them I am not interested in “what they think”, but how they think. I tell them some days will be rewarding, others challenging, and we will experience a range of emotions, from anger to curiosity to joy, during the semester. For example, in Media & Society discussions about representation allow students from historically marginalized communities to engage in critique, but also for more privileged students to negotiate their identities through an informed history of hegemonic media representation. While these discussions can be challenging, and sometimes I do not get the outcomes I hope for, they are often the beginnings of fostering critical consciousness.

Students leave my class able to engage in reflexive thinking, creatively express their ideas and identities, apply theory across disciplines, and communicate across difference. My hope is students view their world through a new lens attentive to power and social injustice and have the skills and critical consciousness to enact social change in their communities.