As an anthropologist and assistant professor of urban and environmental policy, I work with students to explore how grounded and critically engaged ethnographic methodologies, combined with investigations of urbanism elsewhere, can inform innovative and socially just policymaking. See below for descriptions of courses I have recently taught.
Revisioning Cities: Ethnography for Policy and Planning This research seminar introduces students to the craft of ethnography and explores how qualitative, embedded, and socially committed research can critically and constructively intervene in contemporary urban problems. We read both classic and cutting-edge ethnographic texts on topics like addiction, eviction, violence, insecurity, informal markets, participatory planning, and urban social movements. At the same time, students experiment with different ethnographic and qualitative research methods – including writing field notes and thick description, spatial and participant observation, in-depth interviewing, material culture analysis, and archival, discourse and media analysis – as they design and execute their own original research projects. Ultimately, our goal is to use ethnographic methods and modes of analysis to uncover alternative ways of envisioning and attending to the world, and to theorize how these new vantages might contribute to creating more just policies and urban spaces.
Global Urban Developments This seminar invites students to develop a global perspective on urban development by exploring the development trajectories of cities around the world and the diverse ways world cities are coping with problems that are "global" in nature, such as climate change, displacement, and real estate speculation. Drawing on critical urban theory and cutting-edge ethnographic case studies from around the world -- with particular attention to cities of the Global South where the vast majority of the world's urban population resides -- we investigate topics including informal housing, spatial segregation and inequality, water and energy infrastructure, transportation solutions, coping with climate change, migrant and refugee relocations, and emerging forms of governance and social mobilization. As we explore these topics, we will also ask: what exactly do we mean by a "global" city and what might constitute a "global urban development"? What issues do city-dwellers have in common across sites, in what important ways might they diverge, and how do we account for these similarities and differences? And finally, what do we learn about urban development, social life, and how to confront new challenges by getting past our presumptions of what cities “should” be and looking instead at the realities and emergent possibilities of everyday life in less-celebrated urban spaces? This course is designed for graduate students or advanced undergraduates pursuing research and careers outside the US, and for those eager to learn new paradigms we might use to resolve problems at home.
Medicine & Society Biomedicine plays a profound role in shaping social phenomena. It informs how we conceptualize ourselves, how we care for others, the ethical dilemmas we confront, and our global political engagements. Through case studies on topics such as addiction, organ transplants, and infectious disease, students explore the socio-political, moral, and existential issues associated with biomedicine, while also developing theoretical and methodological tools they can use to conduct their own person-centered investigations of afflictions and treatments in the US and around the world. Students leave this course with an appreciation for how social and political processes shape health and disease outcomes, as well as how culture is revealed and produced as people pursue and receive medical care.
Transnational Latin America This course introduces students to the diverse cultures of Latin America by exploring key issues that shape Latin America’s international relations as well as everyday life for specific local populations. Topics we explore include: race and gender inequalities, urban crime and insecurity, social movements, state terrorism, and the traffic of drugs and people across borders. By the end of this course, students will have developed greater insight into dynamics of everyday life in Latin America, the region’s place in the larger world, and how social problems in the region can be more thoughtfully addressed.