Teaching

For me, teaching cultural anthropology is about making the familiar strange and the strange familiar. Through ethnography, students can learn about the practices and beliefs of others and, in turn, question their own deeply held values--of which they are often unaware. In what follows, I provide short descriptions of courses I have taught or that I am prepared to teach.

Sample Courses

Ethnographic Theory and Methods

This course begins with an overview of key debates within the field of anthropology over questions of ethnographic voice, representation, form, and experimentation. The second half of the course includes workshopping students' own mini-ethnographic projects. We explore how to design an ethnographic research project, the tools it provides you as a researcher, and how students might apply these skills to careers outside anthropology.

Anthropology of Education

In this course we investigate both formal and informal education—from early childhood socialization to the role of formal schools in a variety of cultural and geographic. Throughout our discussions we engage topics of culture and socialization, identity and meaning, racial and gendered disparities, class reproduction and performance, and religious learning.

Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Gender, sex, and sexuality are fundamental aspects of the human experience. The course examines the ways individuals and societies imagine, experience, perform, and challenge gender and sexuality systems in a diversity of social-cultural settings, including those in the United States, India, Thailand, Egypt, New Guinea, China, Mexico, and Japan.

Cultures of Southeast Asia

Home to thousands of languages and a staggering multitude of religious and cultural traditions, Southeast Asia has long been known for its diversity and plurality. This course is an introductory exploration of this vibrant region with a particular focus on the themes of gender, sexuality, popular culture, and religion.

Piety, Pop Culture, and New Media in the Muslim World

Although it is often mistakenly characterized in terms of a uniform and all-pervasive Islamic revival, the Muslim-majority world is today being as much transformed by new media and popular cultural formations as it is religious awakening. This course examines the refiguration of religious and popular media, imaginaries, and authority in the contemporary Muslim world through the lens of new media and sites of popular culture.

Gender and Intimacy in the Muslim World

Taking a broad, anthropological perspective on the study of gender and sexuality, this course examines the many forms and understandings of masculinity, femininity, and intimacy in different parts of the Muslim world. Among the questions raised in this course are: Is there a Muslim sexuality? Do Muslim women really need saving? What does the Qur’an say about homosexuality? Is feminism compatible with Islam?

Dance, Gender, and Embodiment Across Cultures

This is an interdisciplinary course on gender, dance, and embodiment that draws on insights from anthropology, performance theory, women’s and gender studies, and religious studies. It offers students new perspectives on how to understand and analyze the role of the body in performance – as aesthetic, gendered, religious, and political.

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