Teaching

courses + materials

About my teaching

I started teaching in the Film and Media Department at Emory in 2011. In that time, I have taught a wide range of courses relating to film, digital media, video games, and media theory. My goal is to help my students critically analyze the media that surround them in their everyday lives—from TV to social media to AI-generated content. I guide students in connecting the form and structure of media to its function or message. And I ask them to imagine alternative forms of media that work toward the society they want to live in.

New courses created at Emory

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.

Digital + New Media Theory

This course serves as an introduction to theories of media, focusing specifically on digital media and its predecessors. Our readings will examine the origins and development of technoculture, which is a term that refers to the influence technology has on culture, politics, and aesthetic forms. More specifically, we will study the impact of computation on the ways that we communicate, conceptualize the world around us, make art, tell stories, and understand issues like embodiment, difference, and identity. A key focus for this class will be how digital forms mediate ideas of race and gender within the broader context of society

Black Mirror

This course closely examines the Netflix Channel 4 series Black Mirror 2011 2023 a science fiction anthology series that explores the implications of digital technology on our society The class pairs screenings of the show with readings on the relationships between digital media and politics social relationships privacy identity trolling etc Students then work on their own ideas for Black Mirror episodes

Introduction to Television + Digital Media

Designed in conjunction with Dr. Michele Schreiber and Dr. Beretta Smith-Shomade. This course introduces the analysis of television and digital media. Readings and assignments identify and evaluate the aesthetic principles, narrative strategies, and cultural significances of these media forms. Although not a history course, it explores some technological developments that shift how media are produced, distributed, consumed, and monetized from the origins of television in the early 20th century to the social media, streaming video, and video games of today.