Teaching
Environmental Studies 113: Introduction to Environmental Humanities
Teaching Assistant
Spring 2025
Course Description: Our environment is ever present: we are part of it; we consume it; we alter it; we study it; we enjoy it, and yet we don't often step back to think about why we interact with the more-than-human world the way we do. We are currently living in a geological period that has been coined, The Anthropocene, a period in which the earth itself is being vastly changed by human activity. What does it mean to be alive and awake to this moment? This course will look at how our ideas about nature and our environment affect these interactions, now and in the past and as we look toward the future. You will be invited to think about your own values and stories as well as those of others as you consider your place in this world in this historical moment, as well as to think about what kind of ancestor you want to be for generations beyond your own, for humans and nonhuman beings.
We will investigate writings, websites, podcasts, and other artforms by a diverse group of writers and researchers...anthropologists, political ecologists, poets, philosophers, filmmakers, scientists, and artists who are reflecting on our human relationship to land, water, air, and other creatures. The perspectives will sometimes align and sometimes challenge your own. We will also examine the ways in which these ideas intersect with issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and social and economic mobility. Lecture, discussion, writing assignments, and experiential projects will all be important components of the class.
Environmental Studies 600 Senior Capstone
Food, Power, and Social Change: A Community-Based Approach
Instructor of Record
Fall 2023
Course Description: In this capstone course students will interrogate power structures within the food system while engaging in community-based projects with farmers and community organizations working to support a just food system across the Upper Midwest. We will partner with an organization called Regenerative Agriculture Alliance which is organizing farmers of all backgrounds (particularly Latinx) to raise animals in regenerative silvopasture systems. Our group projects will directly support on-farm efforts and organizing across the supply chain.
Students will engage in interdisciplinary learning, exploring debates on food justice, ecological impacts, social stratification, and community-based research methods. We will engage in praxis by applying the concepts we learned in class within group projects and centering reflection exercises to better understand power structures and our positionality within them.
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Interdisciplinary investigation with an emphasis on real-world challenges. Examine environmental issues and apply, often in a team context, a variety of academic perspectives and methodologies, and cultivate academic and professional abilities such as establishing connections within the larger community, developing strategies for analyzing and addressing problems, developing field skills in ecosystems, and working with others trained in fields different from one's own.​
Click the image above to view the final capstone projects!
Anthropology 281: Principles of Socio-Cultural Anthropology
Teaching Assistant
Spring 2018
Course Description: American anthropologist Ruth Benedict noted that “[T]he purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences.” As a field, cultural anthropology developed out of a desire to understand the (so called “primitive” and usually non-Western) “other.” But our own daily lives are just as culturally determined as any other. Anthropology helps us question our normally taken-for-granted ideas and practices. Anthropology has a way of making the strange familiar and the familiar strange.
This semester, we will examine central concepts and theories of gender, race, or class and cover some key arguments/insights from the field socio-cultural anthropology (such as those related to kinship and marriage, economics and exchange, and globalization and culture change). Throughout the course, we will pay careful attention to the ways anthropologists develop their insights through careful fieldwork and present their findings through ethnographic writing. The reading list reveals my commitment to teaching anthropology through ethnography, through reading “the whole book.” Students will also try a little ethnographic work of their own throughout the course.
Anthropology 176: Culture, Power, and Civic Life
Teaching Assistant
Fall 2017
Course Description: Anthropology is often associated with foreign cultures, exotic “tribes,” distant times and places. If that is your idea of anthropology, then anthropology might seem interesting but perhaps not very relevant to your life. In this course, you will learn to how anthropology can be very useful for understanding our own everyday objects and places. By looking at some of the common “stuff” of our daily lives (milk, alcohol, and coffee) and a place we have all been (Walmart), we will begin to question our relationships to them. An examination of these everyday things and the culture of capitalism will help us think about what our culture values, how it gets reproduced or changed, and what kind of society we want to live in. We will also reflect on some of the major human problems of our time (e.g., social inequality, addiction, gender discrimination, over-consumption, environmental degradation) and how we might solve them.
Guest Lectures
2024 Guest Lecturer
Lecture title: “Just Transitions in Animal Agriculture: Tree Range Chickens in the Upper Midwest”
HE375: Human Ecology of Food and Sustainability, taught by Dr. Jennifer Gaddis
Civil Society & Community Studies, UW-Madison
2022 Guest Lecturer
Lecture title: “Justice in Agricultural Transitions Workshop Series: PAR Methodologies”
AGR702: The Multifunctionality of Agriculture. taught by Dr. Sarah Lloyd
Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences, UW-Madison
2022 Guest Lecturer
Lecture title: “Policy Process and Policy Tools”
FWE515: Natural Resources Policy, taught by Dr. Adena Rissman
Forest & Wildlife Ecology, UW-Madison
2021 Guest Lecturer
Lecture title: “Farm Policy & the Farm Bill. Co-lecturer for Natural Resources Policy”
FWE515: Natural Resources Policy, taught by Dr. Adena Rissman
Forest & Wildlife Ecology, UW-Madison