Over the years, I’ve interviewed hundreds of people for different research projects. One thing always stood out in the biographies of university-educated folks: how life-changing a single course in the social sciences can be. Sociology, in particular, has the potential to introduce people to a radically new way of seeing the world. By paying attention to the social dimensions of institutions, norms, and everyday life, we can start to deconstruct how these things are not ‘natural’, ‘unchangeable,’ or ‘random.’ Rather the world that we see around us is something that humans have made collectively. And, this human-made world has changed a lot over time, and therefore, can change again in the future.
The fancy word for this way of seeing the world is ‘the sociological imagination.’ Rather than facts and figures, it is this imagination that I try to impart in the classroom. I encourage my students to consider the social conditions that make seemingly ordinary events possible, let themselves be surprised by these phenomena, and imagine what can be. Equipped with this sociological imagination, students leave the classroom as more agentic individuals.
Below are some courses I teach at the University of Toronto.
| Course Title | Course Description |
|---|---|
| Issues in Critical Migration Studies (undergraduate) | This lecture course introduces students to the structural causes and consequences of international migration, with a strong focus on the relationship between border-crossing and neoliberal capitalism. The course also discusses how anti-Blackness and settler colonial nation-making have shaped migrants’ and Indigenous peoples’ lived experiences on Turtle Islan |
| Ethnicity, Race and Migration (undergraduate) | This lecture course introduces students to the structural causes and consequences of international migration, with a strong focus on the relationship between border-crossing and neoliberal capitalism. The course also discusses how anti-Blackness and settler colonial nation-making have shaped migrants’ and Indigenous peoples’ lived experiences on Turtle Island. |
| Practicum in Qualitative Research Methods (undergraduate) | This seminar course introduces students to qualitative methods as a way to examine the relationship between micro, day-to-day level processes and structural forces at the macro level. Students also receive hands-on experience carrying out original empirical research using qualitative methods. |
| Immigrant Scarborough (undergraduate) | This writing-intensive seminar course explores human agency in contexts of constraint, exclusion, and hardship. Empirically, course content draws on past research about the experiences of immigrants in the Greater Toronto Area. Additionally, students have an opportunity to conduct original interview-based research about a topic of their own choosing, relevant to immigrants living in Scarborough. |
| Immigration I (graduate) | This seminar course offers a survey of some foundational theories, ongoing debates, and new directions in the sociology of migration. A key area of focus is the relationship between migration, capitalism, and inequality. |
| Immigration II (graduate) | Drawing on cases from around the world, this course examines enduring theoretical paradigms in the sociology of immigration and the extent to which they need to be rethought to better explain the empirical world, particularly state power, nation-making, and racialization. |
Some other teaching experiences from the past:
- Instructor, University of California at Berkeley, “Sociology of Immigration Politics,” 2015-2016
- Berkeley Connect Fellow, UC Berkeley, 2014-2015
- Graduate Student Mentor for the Sociology Department’s Senior Honors Program, University of California-Berkeley, 2012-2014
- Co-Instructor, Literacy Volunteers of Tucson (now Literacy Connects), Tucson, AZ, 2011-2012.
- Co-Instructor, Prison University Project at San Quentin State Prison, San Quentin, CA “Critical Thinking: The Foundations of Modern Western Thought.” 2008