Teaching
Guiding students through their intellectual development has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my academic career. At my core, I believe all students can succeed if challenged, supported, and given constructive feedback. With my teaching, I want to develop critical thinkers who can recognize how sociocultural contexts influence the development and application of psychology research and theory. I want my students to: (1) develop intellectual flexibility, breadth of mind, and the capacity to engage in interdisciplinary inquiry; (2) use empirical evidence to challenge assumptions, biases, and ideologies; and (3) recognize that sociocultural contexts influence the development and application of research and theory. Below, I list some of my previously taught courses:
Socio-Cultural Psychology (Upper undergraduate/Graduate Seminar)
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to general theories and methods in socio-cultural psychology. The course examines how social environment and culture shape psychological and biological processes, cognitive functioning, and behavior, along with how they affect health and well-being. In total, the course focuses on how diverse aspects of humans’ day-to-day lives both differ and are constant across cultures and social contexts. A significant portion of this course is also focused on issues of diversity, power, and justice. View course syllabus here.
Stigma (Undergraduate Seminar)
This seminar introduces students to theoretical and empirical psychological research on prejudice and social stigma. The course examines the effects of stigmatization for low-status groups (stereotype threat, dis-identification, internalization, health outcomes), including racial and sexual minorities. The course also explores the role of stigma in intergroup interactions and variation in the experience of stigma. Specific course topics include the meaning of stigma, why people stigmatize, the physiological, cognitive-affective, and social behavioral processes linking stigma and health, and moderators of stigma.
View course syllabus here.
Race in the Age of Genomics (Undergraduate Seminar)
This course examines the scientific study and conceptualization of race. Critically, this course uses a framework of “biology as an ideology” to make it possible for us to understand why some (recent) scientific research reifies race as genetic. This course approaches race (and ethnicity) as biosocial constructs, exploring their roles in debates about the relationship between biology & society, nature & culture, and human similarity & difference. This course examines the roles of science, technology, and medicine in redefining race; the ways in which cultural beliefs about race, have influenced scientific research and the development of knowledge; how contemporary scientific questions are related to genetic diversity and racial and ethnic diversity; and the efforts by individuals and social movements to challenge scientific institutions and assert new claims about identity, difference, and inequality.
View course syllabus here.
Cultural Psychology (Undergraduate Lecture)
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to general theories and methods in cultural psychology, emphasizing psychological research that links culture to mental processes. The course also examines how culture shapes psychological and physiological functioning, along with the cyclical nature of that relationship. The course also focuses on how diverse aspects of humans’ day- to-day lives—including social relationships, cognitive processes, basic visual perception, judgments of morality, and mental illness—both differ and are constant across cultures.
View course syllabus here.
Research Methods and Statistics (Undergraduate Lecture)
Psychology is a science. Science requires specific methods that test hypotheses that lend supporting evidence or no evidence to a theory. As a result, this course expands students’ awareness of the scientific underpinnings of psychology. The course focuses on the values, habits and skills that are important to scientific inquiry, as well as the primary methods used to expand the body of knowledge in psychology and related disciplines. The course covers a variety of topics related to both methodological and statistical issues (e.g., basic concepts in probability, t-tests, one-way ANOVA, correlation, simple regression).
View course syllabus here.