As a teacher, I am committed to cultivating critical thinking and ethical growth. I have taught in private university, public university, and community college classrooms. This experience has given me the opportunity to mentor diverse students. I approach all my classes with a passion for intellectual rigor and collaborative learning, as I believe both to be essential to any college experience and crucial to students’ maturation more broadly. I challenge my students to question their assumptions and think deeply about a wide variety of ideas and positions. This approach not only helps them become thoughtful scholars, activists, artists, and professionals, but also enables them to build more just societies and cultures together. Here are a few of my recent syllabi:

Queer Cinema (Fall 2016)

Sexuality and Science Fiction (Spring 2017)

Film Theories (Fall 2017)

History Of Documentary (Fall 2017)

Gender and Film (Fall 2018)

I design assignments that enable dynamic approaches to course content through media production components. My “Queer Cinema” students adapted early short formal analysis papers into video essays, and this semester I updated this assignment and gave my “Film Theories” students an option to either write a final paper or create a final video essay. My “Sexuality and Science Fiction” students wrote scripts and treatments, created remix videos, and made short films for their final projects, while my “History of Documentary” students this semester wrote proposals for documentary films, series, and online projects they would like to make. While some students are more oriented toward criticism and others production, the hybrid assignments I design stimulate critical thinking and creativity and prepare students to navigate the digital age. Here are video essays made by three of my Fall 2017 “Film Theories” students: