In a combination of self inquiry and being open to the world, I help students to explore the human experience, and to move between the processes of ideation, creation and critical reflection that analyzes the possibilities and challenges of technologies. My experiences as a community organizer and practice-based engaged scholar inform my teaching. I encourage students to have a careful curiosity about their realities, infuse them with an activist energy to challenge unjust situations and offer them multiple interdisciplinary tools and skills to experiment with their own research forms, combining design, media making skills and critical theory. I am also invested in creating safe collective spaces for all students to be able to share their own skills, collaborate and generate productive feedback.
Courses taught at Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design
Fall 2023 ART DES 359 Marking Memory
Across different cultures humanity has found ways of making meaning and leaving traces about significant events through time and across generations. States, communities and individuals make memory marks through many forms and artistic mediums: statues, plaques, altars, graffiti, grave markers, gardens, flags, quilts, stamps, tattoos, photo albums, and other non material forms such as oral histories. Whether through public or private rituals, memory practices express our individual and collective desire to remember the past and shape the future.
Students will experiment with objects, imagery, archives, digital authoring tools and the urban environment to create projects that critically engage cultural memory and the contested politics of memory. We will explore together multimodal representations, texts, ideas and practices from art, design, digital media, performance, activism, and urban studies that investigate the role memory plays in fashioning and questioning meaning in everyday life.
The course is part of the #ArtsandResistance themed semester at U-M
Class Trailer with works by students from previous class:
Mimi Hourihane
Greyson-Felicia Snyder
Christian Dean
Meredith Kratochwill
Paulina Braverman
Phoebe Rose Matthews
Winter 2023
Students will acquire proficiency in both the concepts of time-based art & design and the tools and methods necessary to create this work. Assignments in video, animation, sound, and real time/ live art serve to provide students with a range of approaches to creating works that utilize time and movement and are experiential in nature. This course is organized around the completion of four different creative projects in time-based media including: animation, video, audio, and performance/ live action. Through in-class critiques, discussions, exercises, technical demonstrations, guest lectures, presentations, and readings, students will gain the essential skills to analyze and produce creative work in which time-based media plays a crucial role.
ART DES 130 Methods of Inquiry
Methods of Inquiry is a process-based studio course in which students learn and practice a series of creative inquiry methods. Students learn different ways of approaching creative inquiry, drawing on and integrating creative methods from disciplines across the art and design spectrum. Course work includes learning how to effectively present project proposals, thoughtfully assess a project’s strengths and weaknesses, consider viable alternatives, and make informed decisions regarding solutions/outcomes/proposals. By the end of the semester, students will be able to employ multiple methods for finding and addressing meaningful creative problems and opportunities.
Fall 2022
“Narrate to not forget. Historical memory and feminism”. Feminisms, Memory and Resistance in Latin America Graduate Seminar, Center for Higher Studies of Mexico and Central America. Chiapas University of Sciences and Arts, Mexico, 2021.
Courses taught at USC
Annenberg Youth Academy for Media and Civic Engagement, Annenberg School of Journalism, USA, 2017.
Teaching Assistant
IML 354 Introduction to 3D Modeling. Instructor Silvia Ragon. Fall 2020.
IML 202 Media Arts and Practice Studio I. Instructor Michael Bodie and Evan Huges. Fall 2020.
IML 320 Designing and Writing for Transmedia. Instructor Vicki Callahan. Spring 2018.
IML 364 Methods in Digital Research. Instructor Kiki Benzon. Spring 2018.
CNTV 101 Reality Starts Here. Instructor: Jeff Watson. Fall 2017.
IML 364 Methods in Digital Research. Instructor Kiki Benzon. Spring 2017.
IML 335 Digital Narrative Design. Instructor Ashley York. Spring 2017.
IML 295 Race, Class and Gender in Digital Culture. Instructor Virginia Kuhn. Fall 2016.
CNTV 101 Reality Starts Here. Instructor: Jeff Watson. Fall 2016.
Subversive Research 