kursiloi, or courses I have taught, which have shaped my thinking

This course examines the multiple ways that global actors, from nation-states to Indigenous organizations, navigate recognizing each other. To understand International Relations, we role-play a zombie pandemic and space governance simulation. We also read about more-than-human extinctions and repatriation and rematriation of Indigenous cultural works.

Photo: UN Photo and Mark Garten

This course explores the multiple dimensions of films across both their creation, whether by major Hollywood studios or small-scale productions, and their consumption by audiences public and private. Students learn ways to analyze films and video-based media on their political, ethical, and aesthetic dimensions.

Engage in the practices of dreaming, designing, and evaluating possible futures to co-create ones that better serve your communities. We foreground futures making and kinship collectives that pursue radical, abundant presents and futures and engage more-than-human communities across multiple temporalities in the projects of futures.

Photo: Heikki Kurkela via Suomen luonnonsuojeluliitto

This course considers how particular bodies constitute, construct, and complicate American politics. We will ask what mechanics undergird American politics. Who and what are sacrificed to create visions of America? Guest speakers include voting and queer rights activists, cyber security experts, and climate change mitigation specialists.

Photo: Todd Heisler for The New York Times

Dreaming and creating futures is always collective. Who do we collaborate with to make futures? Who, what, when, and where do we carry into future(s) in our collective imaginations? How can we create conditions of possibility for abundant, collective futures?

Photo: Efraimstochter from Pixabay

We examine pasts, presents, and futures of water and what that means for our communities and ecologies. We navigate Indigenous relationships to water and water protection, infrastructures of water management, water-related natural disasters and catastrophes, water scarcity narratives, rights to/of water, and water as sustenance for community building.

Photo: Marion Gaemers, “Coral Panel 2”