Teaching

These are courses I’ve developed to provide examples of my teaching philosophy and subject matter expertise.

Contentious Politics: This course evaluates and analyzes contentious politics using examples from American history to understand the potential and limits of social change.

Social Policy and Social Fear: This course evaluates and analyzes horror films as social criticism to understand contemporary social policy issues.

Additional designs for critical methodologies and reproductive justice are available upon request.

Experiential learning through a group simulation. Analyses American mass political movements, their interaction with police, and their influences on American politics. Topics include the relationship between social movements and various political institutions. Explore various theories with case studies of specific political movements.

TA for Daniel Kryder, Fall 2021

See our article in PS: Political Science & Politics about this course.

This core course of the community health curriculum introduces concepts, frameworks, and skills to identify and intervene in population health and health equity issues. Students engage in active learning scenarios, including case discussions, role plays, simulations, and project development and implementation. The action class prepares students to address critical social problems in their future roles as changemakers.

Instructor at Tufts Medical School, Fall 2022

Course Creator: Collaborative Department Effort

Introduces students to the field of policy analysis and the basic concepts and methods for conducting policy analysis in the fields of public health and health care. By the end of this class, students should be able to envision the different roles of a policy analyst across an array of policy, advocacy, research, and governmental public health and health care organizations, and start to build their policy analysis toolkit.

Instructor at Tufts Medical School, Spring 2022

Course Creator: Signe Peterson Flieger

Prepares future policymakers or managers by enabling them to identify when a situation implicates the law and how relevant law may influence social behavior. Materials in the course will show how law is translated into policy and policy becomes practice that impacts women’s lives.

At the conclusion of the graduate course, students will 1) be able to identify important legal issues related to women’s rights in the U.S. and around the globe; 2) recognize U.S. constitutional and statutory frameworks for analyzing gender issues, 3) understand the relationship between the development of law and policy; and 4) have a basic understanding of different theories of gender equality employed by the courts and legal theorists.

TA for Anita Hill, Spring 2023

This hands-on course invites students to address concrete social problems through public policy reform. It provides background in theories, advocacy skills, networks, and key players that drive the legislative process. Focusing on policy change at the statehouse level, students engage with elected officials and community organizations to advance key legislation affecting social welfare, health, education, and economic justice.

TA for Melissa Stimell, Spring 2023

Students’ understanding of medicine and health policy is enriched through the lens of literature – fiction, memoir, poetry, drama and film. Studying 20th century American literature will enhance students’ understanding of key issues by harnessing the power of the authors’ imaginations, insights and compelling stories. The readings and discussion of health themes conveyed in the literature connect to how we address problems through legislation, regulation, and public policies.

TA for Deborah Garnick, Fall 2022

Examines the development of social welfare over time by reviewing policy arguments within a historical context and using an analytic framework centered on eligibility, benefits, administration, financing, and behavioral incentives to assess perennial issues in social welfare and analyze contemporary challenges.

TA for Michael Doonan, Fall and Spring 2021

Students engage with constructs of cultural superiority, debate about modernization, and learn about what motivates individual and cultural change. Students are introduced to alternative theoretical approaches to culture and development and learn how to apply those theories to different historical contexts as well as contemporary situations.

TA for Rajesh Sampath, Spring 2021

Examines why the gap between richer and poorer citizens appears to be widening in the United States and elsewhere, what could be done to reverse this trend, and how the widening disparity affects major issues of public policy.

TA for Tom Shapiro, Fall 2020

Study tour of the Civil Rights Movement in the South taught through IU South Bend. An intensively personal and academic experience, Freedom Summer students embark on a fourteen-day journey traveling to historic sites in the Civil Rights Movement and hearing from its participants, experiencing this history first-hand. Students march in the footsteps of activists, dialogue with Civil Rights leaders, and visit museums, monuments, and churches.

2016 Trip Coordinator and TA for Darryl Heller