Courses:
I have served as an instructor at UCSB on four occasions, teaching courses that have all been built from the "ground up." At UCSB I have received two teaching awards: the Excellence in Teaching Award in Education & the Social Sciences from the Graduate Students Association in 2008 ($1000), and an Outstanding Lecturer Award from the Residence Halls Association & Office of Residential Life in 2010. I also completed the Certificate in College & University Teaching (CCUT) through the office of Instructional Development at UCSB in 2010. In academic year 2011-2012 I'll be adding two new courses to my teaching repertoire while at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.
Courses Designed and Taught At Wesleyan:
Course: The Economy of Culture
Description: Why won’t Tiffany sell turquoise jewelry when they’re famous for putting jewelry in turquoise boxes? How do we makes sense of governments that use tax dollars to subsidize certain types of culture that wealthy people disproportionately enjoy? Why is it so hard to figure out how much something costs in an art gallery? What happens when economists stop using gross domestic product (GDP) to evaluate countries and start evaluating them based on happiness? If experts can’t tell the difference between cheap wine and expensive wine in blind taste tests, why are expensive wines so expensive, and how did these people become experts anyway? This is a course about the interplay between economics, society and culture, and these are just a few of the questions we’ll be answering. The course introduces an economic approach to the study of culture, and asks you to critically interrogate dominant economic perspectives on the meaning of value and worth.
Booklist:
Course Reader
The Gift (Mauss 1925)
The Purchase of Intimacy (Zelizer 2005)
Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model (Mears 2011)
Course: The Social Life of Organizations and Markets
Description: The study of organizations and markets exists at the intersection of Sociology and Economics. Traditionally, sociologists have argued that economists have treated individuals as unattached "free agents" who rationally calculate actions to maximize their own self interests (homo economicus), and organizations and markets as aggregated firms and industries engaged in optimization strategies. In turn, economists have argued that sociologists have treated individuals as agentless automaton whose actions are merely a reflection of their social surroundings (homo sociologicus), and organizations and markets as the manifested expression of ideologies. This course examines the fertile ground (e.g. the study of culture, meaning, networks, tastes, and power in organizations and markets) that has emerged at the intersection of these disciplines. The course provides a fuller picture on how humans both operate within the confines of organizations and markets, and also work to change them to suit their individual or collective goals.
Booklist:
Course Reader
The Labor of Luck: Casino Capitalism in the United States and South Africa (Sallaz 2009)
An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets (Mackenzie 2008)
Market Rebels: How Activists Make or Break Radical Innovations (Rao 2008)
Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Ho 2009)
Courses Designed and Taught at UCSB:
Introduction to Sociology: The course was designed by polling forty graduate students on the articles and book chapters that most inspired them to become sociology majors as undergraduates. These texts are interspersed with other classic and recent exemplary works, as well as documentaries and curriculum enriching examples from film, art, music, and literature. The course is oriented around Mills' discussion of "biography" and "history," and works to develop students' sociological imaginations. The course starts with selections from the "classics" (e.g. Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Goffman), and covers a wide array of topical areas (e.g. urban sociology, sociology of education, globalization, etc.). Issues of structural inequalities and resistance are central throughout the course (e.g. sex and gender, race and ethnicity, class and labor, intersectionality). As the course is designed to pique students' interests in sociological thinking and debate, students are asked in the culminating project to "follow up" on one of the topical areas covered, and to write a literature review or study prospectus on an area of their choosing.
Cultural Theory: The course provides a broad overview of three theoretical approaches to the study of culture: the American Sociology of Culture/Production of Culture approach, the American Cultural Sociology approach, and the international Cultural Studies tradition. Readings come from all three of these trajectories and from examples in the the popular press. While the course covers a variety of substantive topics (e.g. identity & subculture, culture & social movements, etc.), it is designed around the construction of a "theoretical trajectory" map, with students increasingly taking charge of its creation throughout the quarter. Students leave the course with the ability to identify these trajectories in new scholarly works through a meta-analysis of citations, methodologies, research questions, and (when applicable) findings.
Research Methods - Studying Populations: The course was team-taught and team-developed with Emily Tumpson Molina and Neda Maghbouleh. The course emerged out of a shared concern that students were frequently leaving methods courses with exceptional specialized knowledge but without a broad understanding of different methods and their relative benefits. In response to this concern, we collaborated in the teaching of three different methods throughout the quarter: statistics, social network analysis, and ethnography. The study of populations served as an "anchor" that connected units throughout the course, as did the sub-topicical issues of gender, race, and position in the study of populations from all three methodological perspectives. Students worked in various software packages, completed a research exercise for each methodological unit, and designed a mixed-methods research project as a captsone to the course.
Courses in Preparation:
Inequalities in Creative Industries from Creation through Consumption: Popular discussions of inequalities in media and creative industries all too frequently hinge on unequal representations in content (e.g. fashion advertisements, television shows, “literary” novels). While this is one valuable lens to look through when studying inequalities in creative industries, the "how" of the process is frequently overlooked, and the "so what?" is frequently dependent on unstated but implied disregard for consumers and their reception practices. This course opens the "black box" of media representations by focusing on inequalities in artistic creation and careers, industry processes of production and dissemination, and the practices of audiences and consumers of creative goods (including the counting or non-counting of those practices by creative industries). Readings are drawn from economic, organizational, and cultural sociology, and accounts from popular and trade presses on inequalities within creative industries. Students leave the course with an informed, critical perspective on both how creative industries "work" and how creative industries "don’t work" when it comes to equal access, participation, cultivation, and representation.
Additional Courses Qualified to Teach: Social Network Analysis Theory/Methods, Quantitative/Qualitative Data Analysis, Media Economics, Sociology of Art & Literature.
Courses Designed and Taught At Wesleyan:
Course: The Economy of Culture
Description: Why won’t Tiffany sell turquoise jewelry when they’re famous for putting jewelry in turquoise boxes? How do we makes sense of governments that use tax dollars to subsidize certain types of culture that wealthy people disproportionately enjoy? Why is it so hard to figure out how much something costs in an art gallery? What happens when economists stop using gross domestic product (GDP) to evaluate countries and start evaluating them based on happiness? If experts can’t tell the difference between cheap wine and expensive wine in blind taste tests, why are expensive wines so expensive, and how did these people become experts anyway? This is a course about the interplay between economics, society and culture, and these are just a few of the questions we’ll be answering. The course introduces an economic approach to the study of culture, and asks you to critically interrogate dominant economic perspectives on the meaning of value and worth.
Booklist:
Course Reader
The Gift (Mauss 1925)
The Purchase of Intimacy (Zelizer 2005)
Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model (Mears 2011)
Course: The Social Life of Organizations and Markets
Description: The study of organizations and markets exists at the intersection of Sociology and Economics. Traditionally, sociologists have argued that economists have treated individuals as unattached "free agents" who rationally calculate actions to maximize their own self interests (homo economicus), and organizations and markets as aggregated firms and industries engaged in optimization strategies. In turn, economists have argued that sociologists have treated individuals as agentless automaton whose actions are merely a reflection of their social surroundings (homo sociologicus), and organizations and markets as the manifested expression of ideologies. This course examines the fertile ground (e.g. the study of culture, meaning, networks, tastes, and power in organizations and markets) that has emerged at the intersection of these disciplines. The course provides a fuller picture on how humans both operate within the confines of organizations and markets, and also work to change them to suit their individual or collective goals.
Booklist:
Course Reader
The Labor of Luck: Casino Capitalism in the United States and South Africa (Sallaz 2009)
An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets (Mackenzie 2008)
Market Rebels: How Activists Make or Break Radical Innovations (Rao 2008)
Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Ho 2009)
Courses Designed and Taught at UCSB:
Introduction to Sociology: The course was designed by polling forty graduate students on the articles and book chapters that most inspired them to become sociology majors as undergraduates. These texts are interspersed with other classic and recent exemplary works, as well as documentaries and curriculum enriching examples from film, art, music, and literature. The course is oriented around Mills' discussion of "biography" and "history," and works to develop students' sociological imaginations. The course starts with selections from the "classics" (e.g. Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Goffman), and covers a wide array of topical areas (e.g. urban sociology, sociology of education, globalization, etc.). Issues of structural inequalities and resistance are central throughout the course (e.g. sex and gender, race and ethnicity, class and labor, intersectionality). As the course is designed to pique students' interests in sociological thinking and debate, students are asked in the culminating project to "follow up" on one of the topical areas covered, and to write a literature review or study prospectus on an area of their choosing.
Cultural Theory: The course provides a broad overview of three theoretical approaches to the study of culture: the American Sociology of Culture/Production of Culture approach, the American Cultural Sociology approach, and the international Cultural Studies tradition. Readings come from all three of these trajectories and from examples in the the popular press. While the course covers a variety of substantive topics (e.g. identity & subculture, culture & social movements, etc.), it is designed around the construction of a "theoretical trajectory" map, with students increasingly taking charge of its creation throughout the quarter. Students leave the course with the ability to identify these trajectories in new scholarly works through a meta-analysis of citations, methodologies, research questions, and (when applicable) findings.
Research Methods - Studying Populations: The course was team-taught and team-developed with Emily Tumpson Molina and Neda Maghbouleh. The course emerged out of a shared concern that students were frequently leaving methods courses with exceptional specialized knowledge but without a broad understanding of different methods and their relative benefits. In response to this concern, we collaborated in the teaching of three different methods throughout the quarter: statistics, social network analysis, and ethnography. The study of populations served as an "anchor" that connected units throughout the course, as did the sub-topicical issues of gender, race, and position in the study of populations from all three methodological perspectives. Students worked in various software packages, completed a research exercise for each methodological unit, and designed a mixed-methods research project as a captsone to the course.
Courses in Preparation:
Inequalities in Creative Industries from Creation through Consumption: Popular discussions of inequalities in media and creative industries all too frequently hinge on unequal representations in content (e.g. fashion advertisements, television shows, “literary” novels). While this is one valuable lens to look through when studying inequalities in creative industries, the "how" of the process is frequently overlooked, and the "so what?" is frequently dependent on unstated but implied disregard for consumers and their reception practices. This course opens the "black box" of media representations by focusing on inequalities in artistic creation and careers, industry processes of production and dissemination, and the practices of audiences and consumers of creative goods (including the counting or non-counting of those practices by creative industries). Readings are drawn from economic, organizational, and cultural sociology, and accounts from popular and trade presses on inequalities within creative industries. Students leave the course with an informed, critical perspective on both how creative industries "work" and how creative industries "don’t work" when it comes to equal access, participation, cultivation, and representation.
Additional Courses Qualified to Teach: Social Network Analysis Theory/Methods, Quantitative/Qualitative Data Analysis, Media Economics, Sociology of Art & Literature.
