Teaching

Teaching for me is a project of reimagining and reinterpreting the historical narrative through a feminist and people of color lens. This leads to experimenting with methods that are ethnographic and methodologies that analyze the relationship between identity and power. I am most interested in how the experiences and realities of Black women, poor people and queer individuals when centered in class discussions, deepens our understanding of current and historical events. 

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As a scholar of interdisciplinary studies, my teaching philosophy is rooted in Black feminist epistemology and praxis. This epistemological grounding—specifically lived experience as a criterion of meaning and the use of dialogue in assessing knowledge claims—instructs the way I design my courses and how I approach teaching. 

 

In all my courses, I design assignments that ask students to engage with reflexivity, qualitative methods and intersectionality. For example, I have asked students to keep a journal in which they record their observations on how race and gender is enacted in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Students then share their findings in class and in a reflections essay as a way to assess and share their knowledge in class community. I have found that the students who are both new to Milwaukee and have a mostly rural background, journey through indifference to inclusion as described by Leticia Neito and Margot Boyer. This movement was the basis for new cultural perspectives on race and gender, specifically as it plays out in the hypersegregated city of Milwaukee.

 

My teaching philosophy embraces a learner-focus approach, that allows students to become aware of their positionality and encourages them to be active participants in learning. 

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Classes Taught:

Black Feminisms: Black Women as Laborers, Leaders and Lovers 

Black Reality: Survey of African-American Society 

Introduction to African American History, 1865 to the Present 

Survey of African American Literature 

The Black Woman in America, Africa and the Caribbean 

Introduction to Africana Studies