Teaching

I am dedicated to my students leaving my courses with a greater ability to analyze and critique arguments from a variety of perspectives, and to be well-versed in the diversity of methods that sociologists use to research, theorize, and present information.  My pedagogy is rooted in the belief that a course is a collective project in which students are agentic actors-- I aim to facilitate students’ recognition of insights stemming from a variety of sources, from their fellow classmates, to social media, mainstream media, and contemporary events on campus, and to help equip them to analyze those sources with the tools that sociologists use to consider positionality, power, and structured inequalities that help shape all viewpoints. 

In all subjects, my goal is for students to be able to critically interrogate the sources they encounter by understanding the overlapping historical economic and epistemic markets that influence the production and dissemination of knowledge.  My teaching centers relations of power and authority as the historically-bound cores of social life, and encourages students to be able to trace the ways that thinking through these relationships has developed over centuries of political and social theory.  

Courses

Race, Class and Crime

        Violence

        The Legal History of Policing

   Gender and Society

Introduction to Sociology

Sociological Theory 

Introduction to Criminology

Social Problems

Additional Syllabi Available on Request

Racial Construction and the State

Race, Violence, and Interpretation

Language, Violence, and the Law 

Power, Authority, and Legitimacy