About my teaching.
As a teacher and scholar of media studies, I equip students with the critical tools needed to analyze the popular texts, icons, and moving images that they may take for granted in their everyday lives. My approach to teaching and mentoring is what I call passionate inquiry, that is, letting one’s passions and organic interests guide one’s research. This begins for me in the selection of topics and media texts covered in class. I routinely populate my syllabi with films, media texts, and contemporary topics that I’ve never taught before. I like to learn alongside my students, so that we can explore together and teach one another.
The substantial benefit of this approach is that I model passionate inquiry for the students. They witness in real time how I look closely at a piece of media, bring a set of questions to it, and find answers through discussion and weighing of ideas. This approach also keeps the material fresh and allows students to share their own expertise, whether it be with media technologies like video games and social networks or with knowledge gained in other classes or extracurricular activities.
I aim to be a facilitator of the students’ inquiry rather than an authoritative dispenser of information. This serves them well in their lives beyond the university, particularly given the ever shifting nature of modern media. Instead of just providing training in technologies or techniques that are likely to be outdated within a few years, I give students the terminology, historical frameworks, and methods of analysis that they can bring to any media object—from the past, present, or future—in order to critically engage with it and understand it more deeply.
The substantial benefit of this approach is that I model passionate inquiry for the students. They witness in real time how I look closely at a piece of media, bring a set of questions to it, and find answers through discussion and weighing of ideas. This approach also keeps the material fresh and allows students to share their own expertise, whether it be with media technologies like video games and social networks or with knowledge gained in other classes or extracurricular activities.
I aim to be a facilitator of the students’ inquiry rather than an authoritative dispenser of information. This serves them well in their lives beyond the university, particularly given the ever shifting nature of modern media. Instead of just providing training in technologies or techniques that are likely to be outdated within a few years, I give students the terminology, historical frameworks, and methods of analysis that they can bring to any media object—from the past, present, or future—in order to critically engage with it and understand it more deeply.
New courses created at Emory
Video Games
The “Video Games” course serves as an introduction to the history, theory, form, function, and culture of video games. The first half of the syllabus focuses on broad formal and ontological questions: What makes a video game distinctive as a medium? How do video games use narrative, and how is that use different from film or literature? How does the industrial context of gaming shape its form? The second half of the course concentrates on issues of culture: the representation of gender, race, class, and sexuality; video game violence and its effects on player culture; the rise of professional gaming and eSports; the changing cultural status of video games; and the use of video games for advocacy and social change. In a two-hour weekly lab session, the students play video games together.
Digital Media and Culture
"Digital Media and Culture" looks at how computers and algorithmic culture have influenced modes of communication, knowledge building, industrial models, personal expression, and media forms. Beginning with a history of computation and the Internet, the course asks students to explore how digital media have changed how we conceive of ourselves, our communities, and our engagement with politics, culture, and art. While we do a series of traditional film screenings, many of the required 2-hour weekly screenings are devoted to interactive media experimentation. For instance, we use Twitter to live-tweet a popular TV show, we use an ARG (alternate reality game) to gamify coursework, and we watch a series of YouTube videos curated by the students themselves to showcase the multiple uses and pleasures of online video.
Honors Methods Seminar
This seminar was developed to help undergraduate honors students in Film and Media Studies learn the research, writing, and production methodologies that will allow them to complete their honors thesis projects in a timely fashion. Faculty mentors visit the class to discuss their own writing and creative strategies, and the students share and workshop their work-in-progress. Giving them the opportunity to communicate their ongoing research findings to their peers encourages the students to learn from one another and creates an atmosphere of support and collaboration.
The “Video Games” course serves as an introduction to the history, theory, form, function, and culture of video games. The first half of the syllabus focuses on broad formal and ontological questions: What makes a video game distinctive as a medium? How do video games use narrative, and how is that use different from film or literature? How does the industrial context of gaming shape its form? The second half of the course concentrates on issues of culture: the representation of gender, race, class, and sexuality; video game violence and its effects on player culture; the rise of professional gaming and eSports; the changing cultural status of video games; and the use of video games for advocacy and social change. In a two-hour weekly lab session, the students play video games together.
Digital Media and Culture
"Digital Media and Culture" looks at how computers and algorithmic culture have influenced modes of communication, knowledge building, industrial models, personal expression, and media forms. Beginning with a history of computation and the Internet, the course asks students to explore how digital media have changed how we conceive of ourselves, our communities, and our engagement with politics, culture, and art. While we do a series of traditional film screenings, many of the required 2-hour weekly screenings are devoted to interactive media experimentation. For instance, we use Twitter to live-tweet a popular TV show, we use an ARG (alternate reality game) to gamify coursework, and we watch a series of YouTube videos curated by the students themselves to showcase the multiple uses and pleasures of online video.
Honors Methods Seminar
This seminar was developed to help undergraduate honors students in Film and Media Studies learn the research, writing, and production methodologies that will allow them to complete their honors thesis projects in a timely fashion. Faculty mentors visit the class to discuss their own writing and creative strategies, and the students share and workshop their work-in-progress. Giving them the opportunity to communicate their ongoing research findings to their peers encourages the students to learn from one another and creates an atmosphere of support and collaboration.
Courses taught at Emory
Undergraduate
- FILM 190: Introduction to Film (Freshman Seminar)
- FILM 208: Digital Media and Culture
- FILM 270: Introduction to Film
- FILM 380: Video Games
- FILM 396: South Korean Cinema
- FILM 406: War in Film and Media (Senior Seminar)
- FILM 473: Honors Methods Seminar
- FILM 500: Introduction to Graduate Film and Media Studies
- FILM 502: The War Film (Genre/Criticism Seminar)