Advice for working with environmental justice groups
I gave a “virtual guest-lecture” this week for Liz Shapiro’s class on community-based environmental management at Duke University. The class is part of one of the more appealing distance learning...
View ArticleAssistant overcome with despair…
… after reading 60 essays on the transition to modernity.
View ArticleTeaching classical sociological theory through the media
Each quarter I try structuring my classes differently so that I can experiment with a variety of teaching styles. This quarter I worked as a teaching assistant for my department’s “Classical...
View ArticleTeaching my first environmental justice class
I taught the first of what I hope will be a long career of classes in environmental justice this quarter. It was a 40-student upper-divison sociology course formally titled “Environmental Inequality.”...
View ArticleUpcoming Event: Green Museums!
I just finished a conference call with the organizers of JFKU’s annual Museum Studies Colloquium: “People/Planet/Profitability: Museums and Sustainability.” I’ll be facilitating the break-out group on...
View ArticleMarx, the Simpsons, and hog farms
What do Marx, the Simpsons, and hog farms have in common? If you were a student in my discussion section for Contemporary Sociological Theory, you’d know! This week we did a brief re-cap of Marx’s...
View ArticleThe Culture Industry Past, Present and Future
Last week in my discussion sections for Contemporary Sociological Theory we covered Horkheimer and Adorno’s concept of the ‘culture industry.’ In a nutshell, as far back as 1944 these two had serious...
View ArticleConsumer society and “haul videos”
Have you ever heard of “haul videos?” I hadn’t until one of my Contemporary Sociological Theory students recently turned one in as part of an assignment. As described in this New York Times article,...
View ArticleRapping toddlers, inappropriate grandparents, and early structuralism
In my discussion sections for Contemporary Sociological Theory, we recently reviewed early structuralism and the work of Ferdinand de Sassure and Claude Levi-Strauss. The students had already been over...
View ArticlePink Floyd and Michel Foucault: A Match Made in Heaven
Last week I covered excerpts from “Discipline and Punish” by Michel Foucault with my students in Contemporary Sociological Theory. We spent most of the class reviewing the concepts in small groups with...
View ArticleTeaching Contemporary Sociological Theory through the Media
Last quarter I worked as a teaching assistant for my advisor Andy Szasz’s class on Contemporary Sociological Theory. This means that I attended lectures, graded student work, and led two break-out...
View ArticleLink roundup: Resources for teaching environmental justice
I’ve come across a variety of intriguing online resources in past months that I keep meaning to write-up into a variety of teaching tools. But time is short so instead I’m posting them all here, with a...
View ArticleSpeed-dating, Dave Chappelle, and the limitations of structuralism
Oops! Discovered this post written during the winter quarter in my “drafts” folder and am publishing it now… *** Last week in discussion section for Contemporary Sociological Theory I covered Harold...
View ArticleStudent-generated classroom content
This year I’m participating in the HASTAC Scholars program organized by Duke University and UC Irvine. It is an online forum for scholars to discuss ideas and share resources related to the...
View ArticleTeaching “Women and Work”– Syllabus
Now that summer is here, I’m hoping to post some of the things I did in my “Women and Work” class from January – March. I had a great time with the class and tried out a bunch of new activities with my...
View ArticleTeaching “Women and Work”– Music Videos
When I taught “Women and Work” this winter, I had a great time experimenting with regular use of music videos. I played one just before class as students were coming in each day. I selected some of the...
View ArticleTeaching low-wage work with playspent.org
One of the activities that went particularly well in my “Women and Work” class last winter used the website playspent.org. This website is an online “game” that challenges users to make it through the...
View ArticleNew digital project in honor of Teresa De Anda
Today I released a new digital project to honor the memory of California pesticides activist Teresa De Anda, and to help educate the public about the problem of pesticide drift. In Her Own Words is an...
View ArticleValentine’s Day and Fossil Fuels
If you’ve ever been to a workshop on how to write an op-ed, you’ll know that the leaders spend a lot of time talking about the need for your piece to have a “hook.” This usually means finding a way to...
View Article“Nature and Society” syllabus
Last fall I taught Nature and Society in my Sociology department for the first time. A few people have been asking to see my teaching materials recently, so I’ve embedded my syllabus below. You can...
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