CUNY - Hunter College

There are approximately 21,000 students at Hunter College who come from over 142 nations, most are first-generation college students, many first-generation Americans. Since 2003, I have had the pleasure of teaching at the City University of New York-Hunter College (shown here is a Sping 2008 class at an event they organized). Prior to Hunter, I logged college classroom experience in a variety of institutions, including: University of Texas-Austin, University of Cincinnati, Florida Atlantic University and Hofstra University. Currently, I have a full-time (visiting) appointment in Urban Public Health at Hunter College; and, I also teach as an adjunct professor in Sociology and Women's Studies.

Race, Class, Gender & Sexuality through a Critical Media Literacy Lens

All the courses I teach, across several disciplinary boundaries, share a common thread. In every course I teach there is a focus on the intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality; and, I encourage students to explore this through a lens of critical media literacy. That means, all my courses employ the use of multimedia, particularly documentary films, to illustrate what can be difficult conceptual problems. Then, I connect these media to an assigned reading, usually from the peer-reviewed scholarly literature, to add complexity and rigor to the concepts explored in film. In addition, I offer students tools and skills for critically evaluating media presented in class. It's been my experience that documentary films in particular offer students from diverse backgrounds and skill levels an entry into the course material and provide a common language for participating in class discussions. I have written a paper about my innovative pedagogical approach,“Teaching Sociology through Documentary Films and Peer-Reviewed Literature,” which is currently under review. And, I maintain a compilation of the many documentary films I use in my classes, here.

Teaching with Blogs & Wikis

Increasingly, blogs and wikis are becoming part of the new media technology I use in the classroom. So far, I'd say this has met with mixed success in the classroom and I personally still find students somewhat resistant to it. However, I remain optimistic about the potential of this new media technology for transforming the classroom experience and making it more student-centered. At Hunter, there is a small group of faculty who have been involved in using wikis in the classroom, and you can find out more about that effort here.