Teaching

In this section you will find descriptions, syllabi, and other teaching resources about courses that I taught in the past or tht

HIST4530 Development of Toronto, 2016-2017, 2017-2018, 2018-2019, Department of History, York University – Course Director
Course website
Twitter handle: #yorkhist4530

Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, cities became the predominant form of human settlement in Canada and the rest of North America. The history of Canada’s largest metropolitan centre illustrates many trends in North American urbanization. At the same time, Torontonians have in the recent past claimed a unique status for their city, based in large part on a multicultural and globalized identity as one of the most ethnically diverse and transnational metropolis in the world. However, Toronto’s contemporary self-perception often ignores or rejects its past and sometimes relies on an oversimplified mythology. This course explores the social, cultural, economic, political and environmental history of Toronto and how that history is remembered, focusing primarily on its industrial and post-industrial urban development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It will also consider the state of the city and its region(s) in the twenty-first century. This course includes weekly readings, discussions, primary research assignments, field trips, film screenings, and digital history projects. Course assignments are heavily based on primary source research done in local and online libraries and archives in the Greater Toronto Area. This course also provides opportunities for experiential education with digital and public history. See the course syllabus here.

Evaluation: Riot Map (10%), Mock Heritage Plaque (10%), Long research Project – Dwelling(s) in the Past (50%), Presentations (10%), Participation (20%) – check links for assignment rubrics.

HIST1050 Life, Labour, and Love: an Introduction to Social and Cultural History, 2010-2011, 2011-2012 – Teaching Assistant to Prof. Nick Rogers

This course introduced students to the core concepts of class, gender, race, and sexuality, within the contexts of the industrial revolution; the rise of Western imperialism, capitalism, and global free market economies; American and British slavery; the growth of modern nation-states; the American Civil War, World War I and II; the Great Depression; the rise of European socialist and fascist regimes; the New Deal and other welfare states; postwar consumerist, middle class and youth cultures; along with other social movements, revolutions, state formations, labour and migration histories. The course also introduced students to historiographical and methodological notions, such as the French Annales and British “bottom up” social history schools; cultural history and poststructuralism; micro and macro history; oral history; public history (i.e. history in film); and quantitative and qualitative research. Besides running tutorials, holding office hours, and marking assignments, I also gave one guest lecture on the subject of North American immigration in the 1860s-1910s.

Transnationalism, Diaspora, and Globalization in North America’s “Immigrant Nations” – fourth-year course design

As part of my doctoral program’s comprehensive exams in 2010 , I designed a fourth-year level syllabus for a course titled “Transnationalism, Diaspora, and Globalization in North America’s ‘Immigrant Nations’,” which I am prepared to teach. This interdisciplinary course offers students the opportunity to engage critically with these important concepts primarily from the point of view of history, but also sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, and political science. The concepts discussed in it are also used as a prism through which students will be asked to analyze (re)presentations of migration, ethnicity, race, gender, labour and nationalism in North American contemporary popular culture, by examining mainstream fiction and documentary film, digital humanities, literature, and other cultural outlets.

Other experiences

My experience as an educator has been enriched by my public history work, where I have had the chance to offer in- and out-of-classroom lectures with high school and undergraduate students; supervise student placements; consult in the creation of lesson plans; co-organize and deliver a youth summer program curriculum; and create digital humanities educational resources. Beside having the technical skills necessary for providing rich digital and online resources to my students, my extensive experience in multiple media allows me to discuss both the potentialities and limitations of digital vs. analog formats. My multi-pronged approach to teaching enables students to engage with the curriculum in a comprehensive and dynamic way.