My Courses

In my tenure as a post-doc and assistant professor, I have developed thirteen courses from introductory through senior-level, including:

100-level: Imaging Russia: Film as a Window to Cultures (Fall 2003);

300-level: Environment and Society (Spring 2006);

300-level: Peoples and Cultures of Russia and Eurasia (Spring 2004),

300-level: Geography of Russia and Eurasia (Spring 2004);

300-level: People, Plants and Culture (Spring 2008);

400-level: Fostering Sustainability in the 21st Century (Fall 2007);

400/500-level: International Environmental Affairs: Russia (Fall 2002);

400/500-level: Cultures and Environments of Russia (Spring 2003);

400/500: Russia in Global Context: Peoples, Environments, Policies (Fall 2003);

500/700-level: Qualitative Research Methods (Spring 2007);

500/700-level: Culture & Environment in Local to Global Perspectives (Spring 2005);

500/700-level: Advanced Seminar in Human Ecology (Fall 2004);

500/700-level: The Human Dimensions of Global Climate Change (Fall 2008).

My courses are founded on complementary conceptual themes that guide classroom discussions, readings of class materials, and students’ assignments. For example, in my Advanced Area Studies course, Russia in Global Context, we base our inquiry on the complementary conceptual themes of 1) Cultural Survival, 2) Political Efficacy, and 3) Circumpolar Governance. In this way, students are provided a scalar frame to view issues on the local, national and international level. Throughout a course, I strive to broaden and enrich students’ concepts of anthropology, inviting them to craft their own understanding of anthropology and its sub-fields through self-reflection and active classroom discussion. I encourage students to deepen their understanding of world cultures other than their own by enacting simulations (e.g., of environmental debates, natural resource and indigenous policy decision-making, the undermining of identity, and the unequal distribution of wealth) and by studying ethnographic and documentary films and international literature.