Teaching

Teaching and mentoring have always been integral to my intellectual journal and knowledge practice. From 2018 to 2020, I taught independent recitations for four courses at the University of Pennsylvania: SOCI137: Sociology of Media and Popular Culture; SOCI100: Introduction to Sociological Research; SOCI001: Introduction to Sociology; SOCI175: Medical Sociology. I gave five full lectures at SOCI137 and SOCI230: Media, Culture & Society in Contemporary China. I also served as a project mentor for the Penn Media Scholar in China in the summer of 2018, and as a teaching fellow for the Social Justice Research Academy (SJRA) in the summer of 2022.

A former student activist in China and a frequent participant in progressive US social movements, I am a staunch advocate of social justice teaching through an international and historical lens. In classes and mentoring sessions, I introduce students to bottom-up and user-centered analytical approaches that move beyond antagonism between elites and states. I try to uncover the common conditions and similar mechanisms by which ordinary people live, work, care, and struggle in seemingly different socio-political environments, while taking into account the nuanced hierarchies embedded in the global circuits of capital. I practice intersectionality by emphasizing the myriad ways in which racial, gender, disabled, and neurological minorities’ life stories illuminate and challenge the global system of production and accumulation. See a sample of my SJRA class slideshow here.

I use multimedia and multi-platform approaches in my teaching. Given my research interests in technology and labor, I am also exploring the use of scenario-based simulations, board games, online interactive games, and other gamification tools to promote social justice teaching.