The readings and topics in this course center around the questions of (in)justice in y/our society and y/our environments. Primarily guided by Alex Ketchum’s Engage in Public Scholarship, we will explore the conversations around public-facing research in the social sciences to think through inquiries of ethics, community building, multimodal methods, and sustainability of our research-creation. How do we conceptualize social and environmental issues in our communities theoretically, methodologically, and discursively in the social sciences? How do we engage with the communities we do research with/about, and how do we ensure that our research reaches our intended audience? Most importantly, how do we use our research in the social sciences to respond to social and environmental injustices in a concrete, equitable, and accessible way?

As a community in the classroom, we will engage with difficult conversations, respond with curiosity to urgent issues, and practice “critical hapticity”—or the effort of feeling implicated or affected in ways that create restorative intimacy (Tina Campt in “The Visual Frequency of Black Life”)—to imagine a research project that attempts to engage with a site we wish to immerse our scholarship in. At the end of the course, students will choose a mode of presentation for a final public-facing research project that can be developed into a publishable paper for an undergraduate journal, a multimodal project, a digital publication, or poster presentation.

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Image is by Olivia Onuk: "Our Oneness will Sustain Us" (from the David Suzuki Foundation)

The course explores interpersonal communication in personal and professional contexts with an emphasis on the self, personal identity, and enacting agency in face-to-face and online settings. Students will critically examine concepts of self-perception and subjectivities as they impact personal and professional relationships and collaborations in teams and groups. They will have opportunities to apply these concepts in the creation of effective communication messages and analyses to achieve interpersonal goals, maintain personal and professional relationships, and resolve conflict. Students will also critically evaluate multidisciplinary approaches to concepts of identity construction and representation through diverse theoretical frameworks, especially in contexts of power and privilege.

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Image is from Cao Fei's COSPlayers (2004)

The theme for this course is sustainability through interdisciplinary lenses. The texts included in this course as supplementary readings were carefully curated to facilitate critical thinking skills,

embodied understanding, and introduce the student to the ideas, discourse, and issues regarding the concept or notion of “sustainability” through multiple contexts. I encouraged the students to read each text with an open mind and to not be afraid to raise questions about what they are reading. As they raise these questions, they can also think about the resources available to them as a university student and how they can utilize these resources to further add nuance to their ideas of "sustainability."

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Image is from Jeff Hong's collection, "Unhappily Ever After"

This course is designed to support students whose English is not adept for university-style writing, as well as students who need further accommodations. During this course, I have utilized both individual and small group dynamics activities to enhance students’ learning and participation in-person and online. As a practical course on academic writing, activities are built to allow students to comprehend the importance of academic writing in their own university and post-university endeavours. Further, the course also has an extensive hybrid component that allows the student to navigate the course according to their needs. With a 6-month course, I can relax my deadlines and support students who are struggling with illnesses, disabilities, and mental health issues. 

This course focuses on the possibilities and pitfalls of ecological poetry (ecopoetry) and transnationalism from two nations interconnected by migration, economic investments, and even the Pacific Ring of Fire: Canada and the Philippines. This course was designed to fulfill the Narrow Area Comprehensive Examinations for Candidacy.

As a GTA for Readings in Narrative for two years, I was able to teach alongside supervising professors on a range of North American fiction and literary theories on postcolonialism, ecocriticism, and cultural studies. In my tutorials, I ensured that conversations are facilitated with critical thinking and respect towards each other. Students were also empowered to apply the literary theories and narratives in their own personal environments, where they were gently encouraged to interrogate their own biases, privileges, and positionalities.  

As a GTA for two different Cultural and Media Studies class, I attended classes, held office hours, and taught alongside the two supervising professors on decolonial methodologies, cultural and visual analyses, queer media, and film studies. During this time, I collaborated with the professors to facilitate classroom discussion and to engage with the students during small group activities. I often provided the students with a debriefing or overview of the feedback they received after a major assignment, and then took over the lecture for course concepts that are relevant to my own scholarship, such as environmental studies, visual analysis, and literary texts. 

As the GTA for Art History, I attended class lectures, engaged with class discussions, held review sessions, and provided office hours for students. Since I have a broad background of art history from teaching Humanities in the Philippines, I engaged in conversations in class to enliven discussion and to encourage students to also ask questions about the course lectures and materials. Students also wrote essays responding to questions about art history and their own positionalities, which facilitated a nuanced comprehension and appreciation of the lectures and materials. 

During my time as a non-TT instructor, I taught major courses in the Literature undergraduate degree. These courses, Young Adult Literature and Comparative Mythologies, explored YA fiction and mythologies from different continents. The students were encouraged to decide on their own direction for class output—either creative or critical. At the end of both courses, students presented their outputs in a conference-style class presentation that allowed them to listen to each other’s works and provide constructive feedback as well.

As a minor course in the Philippines, I taught an Introduction to Humanities course that provided a broad array of art history, and then sampled different art forms like paintings, sculpture, architecture, cinema, performance, and music. Students were provided activities that allowed them to “experience” different art forms through class immersion, field trips, group activities, and individual activities. The course also ended with the class creating their own art exhibition that featured their selected forms and mediums. 

I also taught minor courses in the Philippines. These courses were surveys of general literary topics such as World Literatures, Classical European Literatures, and Philippine Literatures. They had varying outputs, but I ensured that the output tailored to the class’s program. For example, if the class were completing a course in Communications, then the class output is a postmodern rewriting of a classic literary text (e.g. Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children) presented as an audio-visual presentation of their choice. It was important for me that the students choose to participate in their own learning, and that they are also collaborating with me on the output that best fits their needs as they navigate their program completion.