As an award-winning scholar-teacher, I am deeply invested in integrating my research interests with my teaching and mentorship practices. In my classroom, I am motivated to create a space where my students can build skills regarding how to critique and unpack the social world. Inspired by bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress, I aim for my classes to be able to “collectively imagine” ways to break down social boundaries and structures. In fact, it was in an introductory sociology class that I first found myself able to develop the skills to think critically and thoughtfully about the world around me. With the tools sociology provided, I was able to question social norms and rethink my own identity and my position in society — every day in the classroom continues to refine these skills, supporting my belief that learning is a lifelong effort. My own intellectual journey informs my overall teaching philosophy, where I center student learning and engagement with critical, intersectional, and historically informed analysis of the social world.
To accomplish this, I rely upon collaborative-learning, peer teaching, discussion, and case studies-based techniques. Central to my teaching method is the use of discussion, reflection, and independent research assignments, as well as student-led debates. By allowing students to apply their knowledge to real-world phenomena and to reflect upon their relationships to others, I push students to draw connections between course concepts, their own experiences, and contemporary social issues, as well as to develop better written and verbal communication skills.
RACE AND RACISMs (RACE AND MINORITY GROUP RELATIONS)
A sociological introduction to understanding the construction of race and racism in the United States, this course focuses on the dynamics affecting people of various racial and ethnic groups, particularly how these groups interact with, and within, social institutions such as government, families, mass media, and schools.
Course readings and lectures will introduce students to perspectives on privilege, power, representation, diversity, and (in)equality, emphasizing how logics around race and ethnicity shape our experiences and understandings of (as well as exposure to) contemporary issues regarding immigration, the achievement gap, housing discrimination, criminal justice, and environmental pollution. The class will be concerned with the role that race and racism (and the broader social structure) plays in the reproduction of inequality.
INTRODUCTION TO THE AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
This introductory course covers central themes, concepts, and debates within the broader field(s) of African American, African Diaspora, Africana, and Black Studies. As a class, we explore various understandings of the origins and history of the discipline, as well as develop a critical understanding of processes that characterize the individual and collective experiences of Black people in the Americas, from chattel slavery through to the present day. Through course assignments and discussions, students will advance their understanding of the ways that Black people have historically and presently shaped politics, economies, cultures, and intellectual spheres of thought within the Americas.
click here for accompanying Spotify playlist
CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN THE UNITED STATES
Exploring the meanings of culture in contemporary U.S. society, this course addresses cultural representation, cultural products, and cultural (re)production. Course readings and lectures will introduce students to sociological, feminist, critical race, and queer theoretical perspectives on “taste” (also known as cultural capital), power, and cultural representation, emphasizing how culture shapes our experiences and understandings of socially constructed phenomena such as class, race, sexuality, and gender. The class will be concerned with the role culture/cultural representation plays in the reproduction of inequality and, therefore, will ask students to turn a critical lens toward the cultural practices and representations around them, particularly in regard to current events.
click here for accompanying Spotify playlist
CRITICAL RACE THEORY/SOCIOLOGY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY (GRADUATE LEVEL)
Critical theorists have long presented alternative perspectives to mainstream social sciences, history, and legal studies that seek connections between race, gender, class, sexuality, and social institutions. By investigating the facets of white supremacy and its subordination of non-white racialized social groups, critical race theorists in particular have aimed to present analyses of power differentials in order to both encourage and participate in collective action that challenges such power differentials.
To expand upon and contrast the initial perspectives on critical theories of race and racism offered by scholars such as Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, Mari Matsuda, and Dorothy E. Roberts, this course will discuss questions related to the nature and process of global white supremacy, tracing how modern iterations of race and racism have evolved. As a student in this course, you will engage with a variety of texts that provide a “critical” approach to theorizing race, ethnicity, racism, colonialism and nationalism in a primarily Western context and that has increasingly been utilized by sociologists of race/racialization, ethnicity, and racism in contemporary research and theorizing.
click here for syllabus
BLACK FAMILIES IN AMERICA
This course explores various social and cultural dynamics of Black family life in the United States and to an extent, in other parts of the Americas (inclusive of Canada, the Caribbean, and Latin America). Readings and other course materials will provide an interdisciplinary approach to understanding how race, class, gender, and sexuality shape the historical and contemporary representation, creation, and reproduction of Black families, as well as providing an introduction to the ways that social structure and public policy have affected Black families. Through course assignments and discussions, students will be encouraged to thoughtfully critique pathologizing narratives and logics about Black families in the U.S. and beyond.
click here for accompanying Spotify playlist
click here for list of films/TV/media
SHANTEL GABRIEAL BUGGS, Ph.D. 