Teaching

In my courses, I strive to cultivate students’ sociological imagination by exposing them to what sociologists think and do. I view my students as future sociologists, therefore, my goal as their instructor is to demonstrate how sociology is a powerful tool that they can use to answer their own questions about the social world. In addition, as an African American Studies professor, I challenge my students to understand the experiences of diverse communities with a particular focus on the US Black community and to cultivate an understanding of how Black studies is relevant for critical thinking and essential for an 21st century education. 

Black-ish and the Black Middle CLass

Since 2014, Black-ish, the popular ABC sitcom about a Black suburban family, has entertained and educated millions of viewers about the complexities of race and racism in American society. The Johnson family has used humor to wade through complex racial topics related to identity, the workplace, school, childrearing, emotional trauma, sexism, and class issues. As a weekly viewer myself I have enthusiastically watched the show and admired how they approach vexing issues with thoughtful consideration and often sociological insights.  But occasionally I have thought that the topics they engage only scratch the surface of much more complex issues and that we as an audience could benefit from reading more extensively research from sociology and African American studies. This course is an answer to that problem- it expands on the sociology of the Black middle-class present in the show and provides a more complete profile of the Black middle class today.  

In each class, students read important scholarship on the Black middle-class which is paired with a related of Black-ish episode to view. To this end, in each class, we have multiple discussions that center around the Black middle-class broadly and the Johnson family specifically. This dual approach is meant to spur students to critically think about the sociological gaps present in the show and critique academic scholarship and its applicability to the real-world situations.   

Exploring the American Racial State

To understand the persistence and pervasiveness of racial inequality in American society, this course studies the United States as a racial state. It identifies the state as the progenitor of racial inequality and excavates the constitutive role of race in the American political system. Students consider how race organizes governing institutions and how racial dominance is secured through public policy. Course readings draw on racial and ethnic studies, sociology, and political science. This course provides students with a critical lens to analyze current events as well as offer a theoretical understanding of racial domination. 

Class, Status, and Power

 This course is about inequality in American society. While there are many approaches to studying inequality, in this course we analyze this problem by examining how the construction of class- and status-  based identities contribute to an unequal social world. That is, we investigate how individuals go about living their everyday lives and how their lives are structured by their position in the social order . 

The pedagogical approach to this course is simple- we will study the intimate lives of different socio-economic groups in American society.  We start by observing the lives of elites and then working our way down the socio-economic ladder to understand the lives of those who are less affluent. We focus on the elites, the middle-class, the working class, and the poor. We also explore different racial experiences within these groups. Sociological theory ground these empirical readings. Students will learn how to think sociologically about the organization of these social groups. We compare how individuals spend their time, consume goods, reproduce class and status- based-identities, and perceive their own social positions.