Teaching

*To be updated in December 2024*

 

My commitment to diversity and inclusion is grounded in my teaching, mentoring, and tutoring experiences with diverse student bodies at UCLA, Tokyo Gakugei University, and National Taiwan University. My teaching emphasizes a multiplicity of perspectives and modalities by deconstructing the monopolies of knowledge. During my time at UCLA, I have taught undergraduate courses on Culture and Communication. Additionally, I have worked as a Teaching Fellow for courses that include, introduction to linguistic anthropology, anthropology of Japan, methods in cultural anthropology, and archaeology of past and present cities. 

Courses Taught

Gender and Langage in Society

This upper-division seminar is a comprehensive introduction to the study of language, gender, and sexuality.  Students need not have any previous linguistic training to enroll in the course, though students with some background in linguistic anthropology and/or sociolinguistics will probably reap additional benefits from the course.  We take as our point of departure the recognition that, 1) language is a non-neutral medium; and 2) gender is non-binary, performative, and mediated by the larger sociocultural and political-economic structures.  As we unpack these concepts throughout the quarter, students will (re)consider WHY, HOW, and WHEN gender differences in language use exist.  To facilitate this learning process, this course introduces students to a variety of linguistic anthropological and sociolinguistic concepts as they are used and useful in studies of language and gender (including style, dialect, standard/nonstandard language, speech community, socialization, performance, and linguistic creativity).  We will survey a wide range of social contexts, locally within the U.S. and globally across the Indo-Pacific Region, as we unpack different notices of gender and sexuality. 

Culture & Communication

This course introduces students to topics and methods in linguistic anthropology. Drawing on ethnographic studies conducted by both linguistic anthropologists and sociolinguists in numerous speech communities and contexts, we will learn the tools linguistic anthropologists use to understand and dissect the social life of language in general, and our very challenging COVID-19 world in particular. We will survey a variety of social aspects of language, and different methodologies, to understand how our semiotic practices (e.g., languages, gestures, facial expressions, clothing styles, etc.) both reflect and facilitate our participation in various social and cultural phenomena, from story-telling and humor, identity politics, discrimination and social injustice, nationalism, media representation, to capitalism and globalization. 

Culture & Communication

This course introduces students to the social life of language. We will survey a variety of social aspects of language to understand how language both reflects and creates our social worlds, including identity, gender, class, race, ethnicity, nationality, and social media participation. Drawing on ethnographic studies conducted by both linguistic anthropologists and sociolinguists in numerous speech communities and contexts, we will learn the tools linguistic anthropologists use to understand and dissect the social life of language.