Teaching

My teaching style reflects the belief that we learn better when we learn in community, collaborating with one another in addressing substantive doubts, debating controversial positions, and questioning the self-conceptions that we brought to class. My teaching philosophy emphasizes critical thinking in form and in substance. In form, I prioritize a form of learning through dialogue, which provides an opportunity for interchange that interrogates rather than reasserts acquired knowledge. In substance because the subject matter of political theory and comparative politics (the foci of my teaching portfolio) involve the questioning of acquired wisdoms and existing political structures, so it is only fitting that the course approaches these topics accordingly.
 
At the undergraduate level, and in addition to teaching the canon, my courses provide students with access to texts and authors that are not commonly taught as part of the canon in political thought, such as Latino/a, Black, and postcolonial political thinkers. When teaching the political theory canon, this critical inclination translates into incorporating discussions about the construction of the idea of the canon as well as incorporating women, minority, and non-Western works in the syllabi. In the case of American and Modern Political Thought, this critical awareness involves the discussion of the intertwined character of Enlightenment ideas and ideologies of race and Empire.