This is a selection of courses I currently teach at Duke University. For more information, please contact me.

CAPOEIRA: CULTURE & PRACTICE (CULANTH 221/AAA 221/DANCE 235). Seminar/Studio course. In studio students learn the movements, percussive music and call-and-response singing of the Afro-Brazilian combat game of capoeira; in seminar students read about and discuss the rich history, culture and politics of capoeira..  Challenges students to think, learn and collaborate in embodied ways that explore how knowledge is produced and transmitted not only textually and verbally but also through movement, music and emotion, avenues historically undervalued in academic settings.  Playing capoeira together becomes a conduit for exploring embodied experiences in connection with others.

See website created by capoeira students here

PEFORMING AFRICAN DIASPORA(CULANTH 226/AAA 229/DANCE 226):Hip hop, voguing, samba, kizomba…..the world dances to African rhythms; yet the Black cultural contributions of these globally popular performance genres often remain unrecognized and unacknowledged.  Through lecture, seminar, workshops and live performance, this course introduces students to some of the rich tapestry of performance genres of the African diaspora.  We will explore both the similarities and differences in dance and music from Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean, and the ways in which they often express joy, connection, resilience, healing and potentiality.

ANTHROPOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD (CULANTH 295): What does it mean to be and raise a child? This course explores how definitions of childhood and childrearing practices vary across history, geography, culture, ethnicity and socio-economic class.  It examines how children are socialized to become competent adults in their particular social worlds, as well as how children come to stand in as symbols of broader political and social concerns.  Through historical and contemporary ethnographies, fiction, popular media and films, the course approaches childhood as both a lens through which to understand difference and power at work in the world, and a complicated subject position to inhabit. 

ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELD METHODS (CULANTH 302):

see 2020 course website about teaching methods during Covid-19 here

MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY (CULANTH 424 / GLHLTH 321 / ICS 424): Medical Anthropology, is, broadly speaking, the cross-cultural study of the body, health and affliction.  My introductory course covers a diversity of topics, including disease, pain and disability; biomedicine and other healing practices; reproduction and childbirth; body modification and commodification; medical humanitarian; end of life debates and ethics.  Students explore the ways in which ethnographic research and writing can contribute to deeper cultural, social and political understandings of these topics; and gain critical perspectives on how conceptions of the body, health and illness intersect with social difference.