Instructor of Record
Environmental Histories of Migration, NYU Florence (undergraduate) 2025
The course explores the interplay between migration history and the environment. By adopting a theme-based approach, the course tackles some of the most compelling issues pertaining to the various ways in which migrants transform nature and, conversely, are influenced by the environment. Identity and belonging, gender and race, healthy and disposable bodies, landscape and cultures: all these themes, examined in their interplay with nation-states’ and supranational entities’ politics and policies regulating human mobility, are at the center of migration processes. By adopting a transdisciplinary approach, such as the one offered by the environmental humanities, the course offers an overview of the latest research on the modern and contemporary Environmental History of Migration (EHM).
Cultural History (co-instructor with Prof. Monika Baar, Prof. Carlotta Sorba ), Department of History, European University Institute in Florence (doctoral) 2023
The entire field of the humanities has undergone a cultural turn since the 1970s. What has it meant specifically for historical research? What contribution has it made to the renewal of historical writing? And what legacies can be found today, when the debates and controversies that marked the so-called linguistic turn can be said to be over? To answer these questions, the seminar will combine theoretical perspectives with case studies, both classic and more recent, with the aim to show how this process has reconfigured and revitalized the notions of “the social” and “the cultural” and their reciprocal interactions in historiography. In five block seminars of two sessions each (one in the morning and one in the afternoon) some of the elements that marked the cultural turn will be analyzed, in their linguistic and anthropological aspects. Thereafter, the discussions will address fields of investigation such as “History and Identity”, “History and Narration”, “History and Practice”.
Integrative Seminar 2, Parsons School of Design, The New School (undergraduate) 2023
This course aims to challenge old beliefs about what you can do with writing. It invites inquiry and helps you to think about research as an energized idea. In Integrative Seminar 2 you will be encouraged to pursue topics you find perplexing and fascinating. How can curiosity lead you to ask productive questions and get answers to them? How can you create a writing process that is organic and unfolds over time?
In the first half of the semester quick assignments will introduce you to a variety of research methods and help you to define an area of interest. In the second half of the semester you will pursue your own research based project connected to Studio. Throughout the semester, you will read texts which explore a wide array of forms that researched writing can take.
Once again, Studio and Seminar will come together through a series of bridge projects that highlight the components of the research process: inquiry, context, investigation, interpretation, argument, connections and reflection. Bridge projects are the basis of the collaborative relationship of ideas between the two courses. They ask you to engage with writing as a form of making, and making as a form of thinking, in order to explicitly and productively blur the boundaries between seminar and studio.
Silenced Atrocities: Imperialism, Mass Violence, and Historical Redress, Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School (undergraduate) 2022
From the forest of Katyn in Russia to Charlottesville in Virginia, the legacy of a violent past is manifested in public upheavals and heated debates over history, memory, and justice. Among the most contested are those events that have been marked by repressive silence, denial, and historical erasure. When being reclaimed, they continuously reshape societal relations, shift memory politics, and reformulate historical representations. How can we understand this transformation? What kind of memory work needs to be done to overcome imposed forgetting? This course explores how societies, nations, and groups deal with the painful legacies of mass atrocities and genocides carried out by the 19th and 20th-century empires. Over the course of the semester, we will inquire into theories of, and approaches to, imperialism, history production, and politics of memory and apply them to major cases of mass atrocities and political violence, including slavery, the genocide of indigenous peoples in North America, the Armenian genocide, lynching and race-based violence, the Holodomor, the Holocaust, the Vietnam war, the Rwanda genocide, and the Srebrenica massacre. By incorporating a diverse range of sources into a course material – from artworks and memoirs to atrocity files, we will further discuss the shifting politics of representations of mass violence, mnemonic activism, and the complexities of historical redress. This course serves as an introduction to the field of sociology of knowledge and memory studies.
Integrative Seminar 1: Memory, Parsons School of Design, The New School (undergraduate) 2020
Sol LeWitt famously said that “ideas are machines for making art.” Integrative Seminar 1 awakens the possibilities of writing as an exciting, dynamic source of inspiration. It can be an experimental space full of play and invention. It can be a formal and rigorous space for debate. It can be a tool used to process, explore, express or reflect. Writing does not simply represent thought, it is a catalyst to form thought. In this course you will be introduced to a diverse range of texts (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, journalism, theory) in order to consider the expressive possibilities of language. Class discussions will examine how writing conveys ideas and emotions. They will also make room for your voice to enter into larger critical and creative conversations. At the heart of the integrative model is the connection to your Integrative Studio class. Our goal is to make reading, writing and critical thinking essential components of the art, design and strategic thinking processes. The two courses are tied together conceptually through a shared theme (as defined by the keyword of your class) and through bridge projects. Bridge projects are shared assignments between studio and seminar. They ask you to explicitly and productively blur the boundaries between the two courses. What happens when writing becomes a form of making, and making becomes a form of thinking? Class Description: Memory Memory is an act of imagination. It can be a process of recollecting or commemorating a person, an object, an event. It can be individual or collective. How does memory shape our identity and our understanding of the world? How can we use it as both a tool and a topic for our work?
Teaching Assistant
Social Practice, Parsons School of Design, The New School (undergraduate) 2020
Global 1919: World Making after World War One, University Wide Programs, The New School (undergraduate) 2019
Women and Men in Dark Times, University Wide Programs, The New School (undergraduate) 2019
Historical Sociology, Sociology Department, The New School for Social Research (graduate) 2016-19
Urban Landscape, University Wide Programs, The New School (undergraduate) 2016-19