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Teaching
My pedagogy treats the classroom as a site of critical experimentation. I combine close reading and theoretical training with hands-on making, speculative practice, and studio thinking: the habit of moving between concept and form, between archive and invention. Students develop fluency in humanistic analysis while also building things: datasets, artworks, speculative ethnographies, AI interventions, performances.I have taught at Purchase College–SUNY since 2006 and have advised MFA and PhD students internationally, including at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel. I have chaired three academic programs simultaneously: Media Studies, Gender Studies, and Global Black Studies.
Current and Recent Courses
Artificial Intelligence — A critical and hands-on examination of AI systems through feminist STS, decolonial theory, and practical tool use. Students work with text, image, and sound generation tools while developing collaborative social media projects as semester-long creative works. Co-taught with artist Hakan Topal.Drugs, Bodies, Design — How do pharmaceutical and algorithmic systems design bodies, desires, and subjectivities? This course investigates parallels between chemical and computational enchantment through Preciado, Schüll, Fisher, and Gordon, ritual documentation of students' own pharmaceutical and algorithmic practices, and a collaborative Digital Mourning Archive.
Transhumanist Media — What makes us human, and how do technologies reshape the answer? Two strands of transhumanist thought — queer and feminist technoscience and contemporary accelerationism and its critics — examined through film, theory, and contemporary AI art practices including digital occultism and hyperstition.
Machine Dreams — An interdisciplinary course exploring human-machine relations through the "desiring-machine." What is artistic intelligence? What are the politics of machinic dreams? Integrates ML tools, 3D modeling, and digital media with critical theory, speculative design, and critical fabulation. Co-developed with artist Hakan Topal, supported by a TAPROOT Fellowship (to launch Fall 2026).
New Black Ethnographies / Black Futures — Running for over a decade, this course uses Black and queer ethnography, Afrofuturist worldbuilding, and speculative design to develop alternative modes of knowledge production. Students have created Afrofuturist field studies, speculative archives, and future-world ethnographies, some published via Issuu.
Drag Theory and Practice — Interdisciplinary course combining feminist and queer theory with practical workshops in makeup, movement, and performance, culminating in student drag performances.
Queer Media Convergence / Queer Cinema and Theory — Histories and theories of queer media production, distribution, and reception, with significant creative project components.
Media Institutions and Forms / Introduction to Media Studies — Core theory courses integrating Black feminist critique, platform studies, and contemporary media culture.
Teaching Philosophy
My training as an anthropologist taught me to listen first. I meet students where they are, adapt my methods to their needs and interests, and build toward rigorous critical and creative literacy. I cultivate environments where Black and queer students — and students working at any margin — find their questions centered rather than tolerated.The consistent feedback I get from students who are now a decade (or two!) out, working in fields I didn't anticipate, is that something shifted for them in how they understood themselves as thinkers. That's the only metric I actually care about.