Philosophy

Bringing unique voices together

Throughout my graduate career and teaching endeavors, I have been on a personal, academic and political mission in search of my voice, only finding it when I began helping students discover their own. In the classroom, the acts of speaking and listening during discussion are just as important to knowledge production as reading and thinking. After advancing in my doctoral degree at UCLA and teaching my own courses in postcolonial studies, women’s studies, British and American literature and Middle Eastern studies for the English and Comparative Literature Departments at UCLA, California State University, Long Beach and Occidental College, I realized I have a voice, I speak for myself, and that my voice can help bring my students together in the collectivity of the classroom and beyond, in the community.

When I am teaching, I want to dazzle students, but I also hope to energize and stimulate students to add to the collective experience of the class. Though I lay out an objective and curriculum for the course, I believe that the class belongs to the students as much as it does to me. I encourage my students to take ownership of the class and cultivate their own voice and critical understanding of the works we discuss, so the material rises beyond the boundaries of the course and resonates with their everyday lives. I push my students to contribute their varying perspectives to our class discussion, layering in their opinions like a four-part harmony in creation of a chorus for our course.