Teaching

Courses in anthropology, ethnic studies, and Native American studies at a Hispanic-Serving Institution.

Courses

Ethnic Studies & Native American Studies

  • Introduction to Ethnic Studies Cabrillo
  • Native American History and Literature I & II Cabrillo
  • Deep Historical Perspectives on Native North America Brandeis, Charleston, Agnes Scott
  • Indigenous Peoples, Settler Colonialism, and Decolonization Brandeis, Agnes Scott
  • Indigenous Ecologies Brandeis

Anthropology

  • Introduction to Anthropology Charleston, Agnes Scott
  • The Anthropology of Violence Agnes Scott
  • Anthropology of Religion UVA
  • Rethinking Museums: Critical Heritage Studies Agnes Scott
  • Worlds of Culture: Global Ethnography (Life in the Post-Apocalypse) Agnes Scott
  • Ethnography of the Weelaunee Forest Movement Agnes Scott
  • Afterlives of Empire Agnes Scott
  • Global Journeys: Social Memory and Politics of the Past Agnes Scott

Teaching Philosophy

My classes start with Module -1: community resources — local mutual aid, nonprofits, RoboBraille. Survival comes before learning.

Students have a source library they can choose from — agency over what they engage with. Once per week they can substitute a reading with an equivalency: embodied practice, interviewing an elder, community organizing, life experience reflection. The idea is to let students actually practice ethnic studies and get credit for it. Zines count as readings — community knowledge.

No late penalties, enabled by Autograder automation. I accept this may cause students to deprioritize my class relative to more rigid professors, but rigid deadlines are authoritarian pedagogy — habituating ourselves and our students into authoritarianism. The burnout pool model: any given week, individual students float in and out. Not everyone will do their readings all the time, but enough people will do them enough of the time to have good conversations. The goal: make the classroom survivable for everyone, including me.

If ethnic studies can't help us adapt and build more resilient communities in the transition to a police state, we're probably not doing ethnic studies right.

Ethnic Studies Is a Strike

Ethnic Studies was created by student strikes — the 1968–69 strikes at SF State and UC Berkeley. The pedagogy should honor that history. There is also a contradiction between the field I'm taught to teach and its implementation by state mandate — voluntary participation is my answer to that contradiction. I developed a consensus-based, student self-organized, horizontal model rooted in the discipline's origins in direct action. At first, students didn't know what to do with their own power. That was the point.

I sat in the back. It decentered their relationship to me as the authority at the center of the power structure. At one point, students literally had to look around the room and see who else was there. Because I was no longer responsible for making everything happen, I could observe — I am an anthropologist, this is what I do.

What students learned: intrinsic inquiry — to follow their own direction based on what they actually care about. They learned to work with others. And they didn't just learn ethnic studies in theory — they had to learn it in practice.