My approach draws upon training in experiential learning, service learning, problem-based learning, and reflective activities that encourage students to evaluate critically and adapt and extend concepts in light of their own interests, background and contexts. I reflected on teaching the millennium generation in this alumni magazine profile, “Are We Reading?” Milton Magazine. Spring 2009.
Teaching
Courses Taught
CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies
Labor and Immigration
Labor and Intersectionality
Identity politics, intersectionality, and inclusion address oppression and privilege in society and at the workplace. This course examines similarities and divergences between these three frameworks, especially in relation to the changing nature of work. We will examine the origins of these terms in Black feminism and Critical Race Theory and explore their relationship to workers. For some, intersectionality is a transformative paradigm that offers a persuasive description of compounding oppressions and serves as a guide to achieving positive change and justice. We will examine historical documents that are significant in the field’s development, case studies that illustrate lived conditions and experiences, and analytical theories that pursue alternative approaches. We will consider how these concepts advance and hinder worker solidarity, coalition building, and the management of labor organizations. Examples include dynamics around gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, and caste. Our primary focus is the United States while understanding that structures and strategies often have a global dimension.
Issues in Organizing
Social Movements (with Deepak Bhargava)
This course explores the crucial role that social movements play in achieving change in the United States. We will consider fundamental principles that apply to all successful social movements. We will also discuss how movements of “underdogs” sometimes prevail against “overdogs,” by drawing on five different kinds of power including disruptive power, solidarity power, political power, economic power, and ideological power. We will conclude the term by examining the challenges that progressive social movements face today,
International Honors Program/World Learning – Cities in the 21st Century Program (overseas in Brazil, South Africa, Vietnam)
Culture and Society of World Cities
Contemporary Urban Issues
University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY)
Inequality and Public Policy
Politics and Policy
Immigrant Integration: Politics and Policy
Politics of Migration and Membership
Social Capital and Public Policy
Introduction to Bureaucratic Politics
Introduction to Policy Analysis
Research and Writing I & II
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Mount Holyoke College
Immigrant Niches, Networks and Public Policy
Yale University (Teaching Assistant)
Introduction to U.S. Government
Politics and the Black American
New Haven: The Problem of Change in the American City
Resources
Institute for Teaching, Learning and Academic Leadership, University at Albany
Difficult Dialogues (a Ford Foundation project on teaching public controversies)