Courses Taught: 

* All course links below will take you to the latest semester schedule. 

George Mason University, Fairfax, VA:   

Cultural Studies - 2009-2010

• CULT 320 - Globalization and Culture (8 semesters): The term "globalization" has become ubiquitous, and is yet one of the least understood concepts. The accelerating cultural, economic, environmental, and political interconnections it attempts to describe are both powerful and controversial. For example, some suggest that globalization, particularly through the use of new media technologies, creates a "borderless" world and opens up new channels of communication and opportunities for collaboration; and yet the last few decades are significantly marked by a rise in warfare, terrorism, religious conflicts, and genocide. This course will critically explore many of these complex and often contradictory meanings and processes of globalization, paying close attention to the larger economic and political ideologies at play, but also how globalization is lived and experienced on a daily basis by different people across the globe. Additionally, we will examine not only how globalization impacts culture, but also seek to identify and examine the culture of globalization. 

New Century College - 2008-2010

• NCLC 391 - Introduction to Integrative Studies: This learning community is designed to familiarize students who have recently transferred into New Century College with the theory and practice of integrative learning as practiced in the New Century College. Both the curriculum and the teaching in the Integrative Studies degree program challenge you not only to learn but also to think deeply about what, why, how and for what purposes you learn. This learning community will explore how New Century College builds learning not around subjects or disciplines, but around a series of competencies, such as critical thinking, effective citizenship, valuing, and global perspective that nurtures lifelong learning and prepares students for living and working as active global citizens.   

• NCLC 491 - Senior Capstone: (3 semesters) This learning community helps graduating students develop a final graduation portfolio – the last major requirement needed to graduate with an Integrative Studies degree from New Century College. The portfolio is a synthesis of evidence and reflection illustrating what students have learned as an undergraduate and how this learning has prepared students to make a significant contribution to the world.  Another goal for this class is to help students connect their Integrative Studies concentration with future life goals and challenges, thinking about how this degree prepares students for work or further study after graduation. A final goal is to build students capacity to communicate through an oral senior exposition that creatively presents some aspect of their college learning.

• NCLC 103 - Human Creativity: Science and Art: This course will consider the nature of human creativity by exploring the essential role creativity plays in both the sciences and the arts. We will pay particular attention to the ways in which the creative work of scientists and artists helps us better understand the impact humans have had on Earth’s natural systems and the life forms—human and nonhuman—that depend on those systems. The course will cover the time period between the Industrial Revolution and the present day.  We will use a combination of scientific sources and works in various artistic media to introduce the two most pressing ecological crises facing the world today, climate change and the mass extinction of species.   

• NCLC 249 - Internet Literacy (2 semesters): This course investigates both critical and practical aspects of the internet and other digital formats and applications, including information literacy, mobile web, interactive media, social networking, microblogging, intellectual, political and civic collaborations, emerging digital cultures and art forms, digital aesthetics, gaming, and additional issues you, as participants, introduce to the learning community.  This course will therefore have both a theoretical and practical approach: we will examine issues around networked life presented by both popular and academic literature, as well as learn (and teach one another) practical applications of various digital programs and publishing tools.   

• NCLC 375 - Creative Ethos: This integrative learning community will survey how creativity has been historically defined, understood, and expressed. Students will specifically investigate how these historical concepts and practices of creativity have changed as a result of our increasing reliance on advanced technology. This course will challenge the notion of creativity as an inherent "gift" and explore the claim that creativity is becoming increasingly necessary for both personal and professional survival in today's world. Through interactive field studies and collaborative experiences, students will investigate the impact of creativity on our daily lives, what it means to build and maintain creative communities, and the social and political potential of creative conflicts.     

• NCLC 350 - Cyberculture: Virtual reality, avatars, cybernetics, anime, cyborgs, hacking, cyberpunk, and digital revolutions are all just a few of the elements studied within the burgeoning field of “cyberculture.” This course will investigate specific themes such as the social and political movements that take place within cyberspace, the formation of virtual communities, and cyber-identities and bodies. Additionally, we will explore digital and cyber-(re)presentations in everyday culture, such as within films, novels, websites, and video games. Through readings, in-class and online discussions, writing, a cyber-ethnographic/research project, and virtual experiential learning, students will gain a greater understanding of cyberspace, its culture/s, and the relationships that exist between machines/humans and society/technology.

• NCLC 398 - Art Transgressions (4 semesters) This two week winter interim learning community explores the ways in which art confronts or breaks one or more social taboos, insults or challenges traditional values, and creates scandal and shock, sometimes inadvertently, and other times in a deliberate attempt to subvert conventional mores. Additionally, this course explores how Transgressive art often re-appropriates conventional images in an effort to re-imagine or reinvent social experiences. Our investigation will necessarily examine a variety of controversial work, and students will engage in experiential learning outside classroom as part of course requirement.

• NCLC 130 - The Social World: Course taught in collaboration with four other faculty. Course is designed to focus on the social world across cultures and history. Students will investigate how the world is both model and mirror of social behavior and are encouraged to model interdisciplinary thinking, analysis and synthesis, and explanation and understanding. Topics: Borders - How do we organize spaces and establish borders? Spaces - What is nature and what is natural? Community and Identity - What constitutes identity, community? Belief, Ideas, and Values - What are our underlying beliefs about how society should be organized? Performance and Interpretation - How does performance [concert, theatre, film, video, dance, performance art, etc.] express a view and offer an interpretation of society?

Art & Visual Technology - 2009-2010

• AVT 395 - Writing for Artists (3 semesters): In addition to statements, manifestos, resumes, and grants, artists are now often expected to write extensive and critical analyses about colleagues and contemporary issues, for the web (i.e. artist blogs and websites), and even compose writing within paintings and drawings, providing additional meaning to the content of the work. This course is intended to introduce students to writing as a technique for critical analysis of art artifacts, explore writing as a necessary skill for working artists, and help enrich your creative (and descriptive) writing skills. This course will also explore the use of language as visual/artistic material.  

Department of English - Fall, 2008  

• Eng 101 - Composition: Intensive practice in drafting, revising, and editing expository essays of some length and complexity. Study of the logical, rhetorical, and linguistic structure of expository prose. Methods and conventions of preparing research papers.

• Eng 201 - Reading and Writing About Texts: Close analysis of literary texts, including but not limited to poetry, fiction, and drama. Emphasis on reading and writing exercises to develop basic interpretive skills. Examination of figurative language, central ideas, relationship between structure and meaning, narrative point of view, etc.  

Harold Washington College, Humanities Department, Chicago, IL - 2008

• Popular Cultures:Interdisciplinary investigation of relationships between American life and popular culture; includes defining popular culture and high culture; roles of formulating popular culture in films; role of advertising in popular culture; stereotypes of the sexes and ethnic groups; role of sports in American life; popular music and its audience; and television.

Columbia College Chicago, Chicago, IL (2005-2008)

Cultural Studies, Liberal Education Department (2007-2008)

• Introduction to Cultural Studies (2 semesters) Course introduces students to the terms, analytical techniques, and interpretive strategies commonly employed in Cultural Studies. Emphasis is on interdisciplinary approaches to exploring how cultural processes and artifacts are produced, shaped, distributed, consumed and responded to in diverse ways.  

• Cybercultures: Theory: Seminar course explores cyberspace, the most powerful and frequently inhabited site within contemporary culture. Students will explore specific themes such as, identity, community, bodies, virtuality, and sexuality through the lens of post-structuralist, postmodern, cyberfeminist, cyborg, and digital culture theories.  

English Department- 2005-2008)

• Reviewing the Arts (7 semesters) Course in applied critical writing about arts and culture, with an emphasis on “re-viewing” in which students combine both theory and practice of re-viewing and writing about arts and culture by examining and discussing important issues, controversies, and theories around how we view and re-view arts and culture. 

• Literature and the Culture of Cyberspace (2 semesters) Course explores literature through the lens of cyberspace culture and engages issues such as virtual and shifting realities, the (re) construction of identities, and the fluidity of space/time inherent in the literature of cyberspace. Students identify and discuss a broad array of themes, tropes, and figures of cyberspace literature. Authors studied include, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Jorge Luis Borges, Ursula LeGuin, Neal Stephenson, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, William Gibson, Shelley Jackson, Jeanette Winterson, and Stuart Moulthrop.   

• Introduction to Literature: Course introduces students to the genres (literary forms) of fiction, drama, nonfiction, and poetry, specifically geared towards establishing connections between literature and other areas of arts and communications by thoughtful and careful reading, analysis, and interpretation of narratives from a variety of writers from a number of culturally diverse backgrounds. 

• Composition I (2 semesters): Course designed to help students explore the process of writing through stages: brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading. Students practice and develop critical thinking skills and effective strategies through journals and engaging creative writing exercises; while more formal written assignments help students emphasize expressive and persuasive writing and reading skills. 

Fiction Writing Department - 2007

• Writer's Portfolio: Capstone course that assists students in developing their body of written work (whether written in or out of class, published or non-published) into a portfolio aimed towards showcasing strong examples of their writing.