I have experience as a teacher both inside and outside the classroom. In addition to the descriptions of my classroom teaching below, I have experience as a teacher and mentor in the field through my work as the Assistant Director for Recording on the Kaymakçı Archaeological Project. This position involves training new project members in the excavation strategies and software necessitated by our born-digital recording system. I have also frequently worked with undergraduate student volunteers as part of my own research.
Teaching Archaeology
I have taught a variety of archaeology courses both as a graduate teaching assistant and as a professor, including surveys of the Mediterranean world and introductions to archaeological science and GIS.
As a lecturer at Clark University, I taught two courses that explored the archaeology and art history of the Mediterranean. “The Aegean World” was a survey of the Bronze Age in Egypt, Crete, and mainland Greece; “Art and the Ancient Landscape” examined diverse case studies to understand how ancient people experienced and depicted the landscapes they inhabited.
Even when not teaching classes in archaeology or anthropology departments I have sought to include content focused on these disciplines. For example, my writing course “The Archaeology of Greek Myth” engaged with artifacts that depict mythological stories and with archaeological evidence for the sacred landscape of Greece. “Museums and Cultural Heritage” also helped students explore questions about how the artifacts that fill museums were found and made their way around the world.
Teaching Writing
I have extensive experience with writing pedagogy, which informs my teaching and assessment in all of my classes. In addition to providing an important opportunity for students to practice and exhibit critical thinking, writing assignments that include scaffolding (e.g., outlines, drafts, peer review) also support students success by allowing them to work on an assignment and improve it over a longer period of time.
At Boston University, I taught two writing courses that explored different dimensions of Greek heroic mythology: “Heroic Myth and the Imagination” and “The Archaeology of Greek Myth.” At Brandeis University, I taught “Animals in a Human World,” in which students interrogated our complex relationship with animals through the lenses of domestication and non-western theories of animal personhood. In “Museums and Cultural Heritage,” students explored the complex relationship that museums, as institutions, have with the broader landscape of cultural heritage preservation and repatriation
My teaching portfolio can be found here; please contact me for the password.