Teaching is central to my work as a social scientist. The opportunity to learn and work collaboratively with students have been some of the most exciting parts of my experiences as a student and mentee and as an instructor and mentor to others. I have developed and taught methodological, substantive, and theoretical courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. These are some of the offerings that I am currently teaching or am developing:

Population and Society:

This course provides a broad introduction to population studies, or social demography, which offers a framework and tools by which to understand how fundamental human processes of birth, death, and migration are inextricably linked to social change and inequality. Is racial inequality deadly? Is there such a thing as “too many people” on Earth? Over the course of the semester, we will develop a conceptual and analytic toolkit that allows us to consider these, among other big questions about societies, populations, and inequality and change therein. In addition to developing a demographic vocabulary, students will learn how to use, interpret, and calculate basic demographic measures, including population growth rates, life expectancies, and racial/ethnic population compositions.

Social Exclusion:

Who is an outsider? Who is an insider? What role do systems and structures play in shaping exclusion and inclusion in social life and organization? In this course, we will examine forms, conditions, causes, experiences, and the very definitions of social exclusion and marginalization through a deep engagement with sociological scholarship. We will focus on key topical contexts of interest including immigration, family and kinship, and poverty, based on a shared foundation of core sociological theory and concepts. We will consider not only how social exclusion helps us analyze sociological phenomena in new (or expanded) ways, but also how social exclusion is enacted and/or recognized in the policy systems that structure our everyday lives.

Crime and Punishment/Criminal Justice Systems:

What is a crime? Who or what is a criminal? How do individuals and societies respond to crime? These are the key overarching questions that will structure this sociological introduction to criminology and criminal justice. We will begin by developing a shared foundation of key terms, concepts, empirical facts, and theoretical perspectives that are used to describe and analyze crime and punishment. We will then use this foundation to examine a set of real-world historical and contemporary “moments” as a vehicle for analyzing key challenges and possible futures currently facing communities and the criminal legal system.

Courts and Communities:

Courtroom dramas such as Suits, Law & Order, and The Lincoln Lawyer emphasize the crush of city life; the satisfaction or heartbreak of a decisive outcome; ethical quandaries; and the effectiveness of personal strategy and swagger in their representations of courts and criminal legal proceedings in the United States. However, as sociologists, we are equipped to analyze courts as places and institutions and prosecution and defense as processes, all of which are shaped by and, in turn, shape, their social contexts and communities. In this class, we will (1) sociologically confront the myth of courts as societal vacuums and (2) develop and/or strengthen concrete analytic and technical skills that facilitate collaborative and independent social scientific exploration of courts in place. Are rural courts different? How does climate change relate to guilt? Do opinions matter in the “doing” of justice? What happens when the court is the community? These are just some of the questions that we will engage.

Calderwood Seminar in Public Writing: Crime and Justice in America

In the United States, at least 1 in 6 persons will be arrested by the time they reach adulthood. Nearly two-thirds of adults have ever had a family member incarcerated. The vast majority of people incarcerated in jails have not been convicted of the crime for which they are being held. Public writing is a primary vehicle by which these and other aspects of punishment have come to the public eye and, in some cases, informed resistance and change. This Calderwood Seminar for Public Writing (CSPW) offers students with the opportunity to learn about and practice various forms of public writing—including research briefs, blog posts, public statements, and op-eds—with crime and justice in the U.S. as our central point of engagement.