teaching
I have taught a wide array of classes on Latin American literature and film, introduction to Astrophysics, as well as introductory Philosophy courses focused on the social aspects of science and technology at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and at the Women's Huron Valley Prison in Michigan. For the full range of courses I have taught, see my C.V.
Pedagogically, I aim to create a space of encounter that is collaborative and critical by experimenting with what every student brings to the shared learning space from their lives and studies.
Below is a sample of some courses I have developed that interweave film, literature, philosophy, politics, and science.
What is justice?
¿Qué es la justicia?
In societies such as ours, justice is executed by the police, decided by courts and served in prisons. But do these institutions resolve violence and harm in our personal lives, in our communities, and in society as a whole? Or do they reproduce that violence? Is justice itself transformative or must it itself be transformed? In this course we will develop Spanish conversational skills while we think critically about these questions by exploring how they are taken up in films produced throughout the Hispanic world (Mexico, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, and Spain).
Fact and Fiction: Encounters Between Art and Science in
the Hispanic World
This course will explore the points of intersection between science and art in the Hispanic world. We will grapple with two key questions: how have scientific ideas been taken up in film, poetry, and literature? And how have artistic practices presented the sciences as an instrument of domination but also as a powerful tool of emancipation? The focus will be on three distinct sciences: astronomy, computer science, and ecology. No background in these sciences nor in literary and film analysis is required. We will read fragments of Sor Juana's baroque poetry on astronomy, Borges' short stories that anticipated the internet, as well as contemporary ecofeminist literature and film.
Borderless Cosmos
We will explore the vast borderlessness of the physical cosmos as a way to think through, re-imagine and re-make the social cosmos. Readings will cross disciplinary borders and will be drawn upon from a constellation of disciplinary formations: astronomy, science/speculative fiction as well as social theory and history. At the end of the course, students will have the opportunity to create and articulate what a borderless cosmos might look like. We will read from (and watch) Carl Sagan's book (and series) Cosmos , Eduardo Galeano's social history of the colonization of the Americas, the Zapatistas' "Intergalactic" declarations, Octavia Butler's Afrofuturist novel Dawn, and Ursula K. Le Guin's utopian science fiction novel The Dispossessed.
