Teaching Philosophy
I teach at Harvard and have taught at Purchase College, State University of New York. I have also mentored students at Yale University, as a Postdoctoral Associate at the Fox International Fellowship. My teaching philosophy is hands-on: Students learn sociology by doing sociology. Whether engaged in individual or group projects, whether working short-term or throughout the year, when students design, conduct, and present their own research they understand sociological concepts more deeply and feel a sense of ownership over their learning.
Recent Courses
Sociology of Consumption: Markets, Meaning, and Material Culture
Why do we buy the things we buy? From the clothes we wear to the food we eat to the guilty pleasures we hide, where do our tastes come from and how do they become symbols of belonging or exclusion? This class examines consumption, the act of shopping, buying, and using material culture. Consumption, we will see, is more than just a simple economic transaction; it helps us construct identities, signal status, navigate relationships, and reproduce inequalities. Over the course of the semester, we will explore the tension between consumer agency—the joy and creativity of self-expression—and the structural forces limiting that agency—mass marketing, global inequality, environmental destruction, and more. Key themes we will discuss include conspicuous consumption, cultural capital, symbolic boundaries, "prosumption," and the aestheticization of daily life.
Junior Tutorial: Stigma and Social Recognition
This class examines how stigma — how having a “spoiled identity” (Goffman 1963) — shapes the way people act, interact, and make sense of the world. We will ask questions like: how do individuals or groups become stigmatized? How do people experience, cope with, or resist this stigma? How is stigma tied to discrimination, or the unequal access to resources and opportunities? And how might we reduce or challenge stigma? How can we promote its opposite, social recognition? During the semester, students will conduct their own research on stigma and recognition. You will learn to use and apply qualitative methods, either ethnography, participant observation, in-depth interviews, textual analysis, or archival work. You will also receive individualized support as you prepare your final project. By the end of the course, you will have a clearer sense of the mechanisms by which stigma contributes to social inequalities.
Why do people invest so much time, money, effort, and emotion into sports? How can sports both reproduce social beliefs and inequalities and, at the same time, transform them? This course examines sport as a social institution with the power to move economies, impact politics, shape group identity, socialize children, and open a space for discovery and self-expression. We will discuss topics like class, race, gender, nationalism, and disability in sports, as well as celebrity, performance, bodies, materiality, activism, spectacle, and joy. This course is divided into two parts. In part one, “Sport as a window into society,” students will learn how sport illustrates and challenges larger social processes. We will explore the ways in which sport intersects with inequalities, capital, and power. In part two, “Sport as a cultural text,” we will discuss how sport is also a space for making meaning. To paraphrase Clifford Geertz, we will see how sport becomes a stage on which people tell themselves stories about themselves (1973: 429).
Championing Change: Children’s Rights, Youth Participation, and Social Movements
This course examines the origins, evolution, implementation, backlash, and transformation of the children’s rights movement. We will discuss rights violations like child labor or child marriage, as well as positive rights, like the right to education and free expression. Students will learn about the complex social, political, economic, and cultural structures underpinning the fight for children’s rights, as well as the ways children’s rights have transformed these structures around the world. And we will consider how young people themselves take ownership of their rights. Looking at the cases of Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai, and the children who defend child labor, we will discuss the opportunities and challenges of child and youth participation.
Junior Tutorial: Meaning, Morality, and Markets
This class is about how culture shapes economic practices, how shared ideas about right and wrong, fair and unfair, the sacred and the profane impact how we buy, sell, work, or give meaning to money, trades, or markets. While philosophers and economists debate morality and markets in theory – Are markets inherently good or evil? Are there certain things that shouldn’t be for sale? – sociologists examine these questions in practice – How do people decide what shouldn’t be for sale? How do we reproduce, challenge, or transgress moral boundaries in markets? In this class, students will learn how sociologists study boundary-making in action. And you will also study boundary-making yourself. You will design and conduct your own research project on the role of culture in economic arrangements.During the semester, you will conduct your own research on some aspect of culture and markets. We will discuss multiple methods, with a special focus on qualitative research – ethnography, participant observation, in-depth interviews, textual analysis, or archival work. You will receive individual support as you prepare your final paper.
The International Human Rights framework is one of the most important achievements of the 20th century. In the 21st, however, we still have a long way to go to put these ideals into practice. This class will examine the successes, failures, promises, and limitations of human rights. Students will take a close look at “human rights in action,” or the way ordinary people interpret, demand, mobilize around, or resist this moral framework. We will discuss cases like human rights organizations in Peru, campaigns against female genital cutting in Egypt, truth and reconciliation commissions in Argentina, and LGBTQ movements in Myanmar. We will debate questions like what is human rights relationship to violence and memory? How do we convert human rights into social justice? How do we translate human rights into different cultural contexts? How do national and transnational social movements mobilize and transform the discourse of human rights? And how do people respond to human rights campaigns – victims, perpetrators, and bystanders alike? What is the future of human rights in practice? During the semester, students will also conduct their own research project on some aspect of human rights. We will discuss multiple methods, with a special focus on qualitative research – interviews, ethnography, and textual analysis.
This course is designed to be a resource to you, our sociology thesis writers, as you progress through the research and writing process. We will meet throughout the fall and the beginning of the spring semesters to provide support, feedback, and tips and tricks. The course also features guest speakers who will share their advice, as well as stories of their own research-related setbacks and struggles. Research and writing are our collective challenges; the goal of this course is to aid you in conquering them.