Teaching & Advising
Teaching Biography
Since 2003, I have taught or advised students at nearly every grade level from 5th grade to Ph.D. students. I have long-standing teaching interests in gender and masculinity, the sociology of K-12 and higher education, children and youth, and feminist and sociological theory; and newer interests in the sociology of food and the sociology of W. E. B. Du Bois. In summer 2025, I taught a new course on the sociology of food for the Tufts in Talloires (France) program.
From 2003-2005, I taught 6th grade at Anna Howard Shaw Middle School in the School District of Philadelphia, as a corps member with Teach For America. During the 2004-2005 school year, my classroom took part in a unique partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters, Teach For America, and the Fox Leadership Program at the University of Pennsylvania. During the summers between 2006 and 2009, I was a high school writing instructor with the Pre-College Academy (PCA) of the Early Academic Outreach Program.
You can read more here about my teaching pedagogy, particularly on the topics of (anti-)racism and Blackness, which has been inspired by my seminar on the life and work of W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Souls of Sociology.”
I have been recognized multiple times for my teaching. I am the 2018 recipient of the Tufts University Recognition of Undergraduate Teaching Excellence (ROUTE) Award, a 2013 recipient of the Tufts University Teaching with Technology Award, and a 2013 CELT Teaching Faculty Fellowship. As a 6th grade instructor, I received the 2005 Educator 500 Award from West Chester University’s Institute for Educational Excellence & Entrepreneurship.
Undergraduate Courses
- Sociological Theory [Fall 2024 Syllabus]
- Sociology of Food [Spring 2025 Syllabus]
- W. E. B. Du Bois and the Souls of Sociology [Fall 2023 Syllabus]
- Sex and Gender in Society [Spring 2024 Syllabus]
- The Masculine Mystique [Fall 2024 Syllabus] [Fall 2016 Digital Storytelling Project]
- The Sociology of Higher Education [Spring 2025 Syllabus] [Fall 2017 Class e-book, An Entrepreneurial University Revisited]
- Sociology of the School [Fall 2014 Syllabus]
- Feminist Theories in Education [Fall 2014 Syllabus]
- Educating Women and Girls [Spring 2014 Syllabus]
- Masculinities in Urban Schooling [Fall 2013 Syllabus]
Resources for Students
- Guidelines for students requesting letters of recommendation from me (and this overview for how to ask for letters, via Stanford University, is very helpful)
- Tufts Policies on Academic Integrity
- They Say, I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein (an outstanding resource that demystifies academic writing; see the authors’ templates for basic rhetorical devices in academic writing)
- American Sociological Association’s style guide for citing and referencing
- Purdue University’s excellent Online Writing Lab (OWL)
- Tufts Library resource for citing sourcs
- Tufts StAAR Center writing support
- Harvard University’s annotation guides