teaching
As an educator, I aspire to: co-create a culture of belonging grounded in anti-oppressive praxis; center the body as a locus wisdom, potential, and insight; cultivate non-dual frameworks for understanding ourselves and others; and encourage inquiry-driven experimentation and creativity.
Somatic Movement Workshops
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This somatic movement workshop series explores the intersection of individual, contemplative practice with collective improvisation. Grounding our inquiry in the principles of Continuum, we will explore how we can take the potency, clarity, and fluidity that can arise from contemplative practice into the realm of relationship through somatic movement. Practicing a form of presence that keeps one eye on our internal experience and one eye on our relationships with others and the larger environment, we play with how we can balance attention in a way that honors our own flourishing and skillfully responds to all that we encounter.
The practice will start in a Continuum dive. When we are in the diving space, we are focused entirely on our internal experience, drawing on breath and sound to activate intuitive movement by following sensation. If the desire arises, we can leave the individual dive space, and enter a collective movement space where we open to interacting with other movers and the larger environment. When in this collective space, we practice a form of presence that attends to our internal experience while relating to others. At any point, we can return to our individual dive space, and we may even oscillate between the two. The aspiration is to find play – and maybe even joy! – as we lean into embodied trust in both individual and collective movement practice.
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In this workshop series, we will explore five dynamic pathways in Continuum – ground, space, gravity, waves, and spirals. Each week, we will explore how attention to each pathway supports fluidity in the body.
Continuum Movement® (CM) is a somatic practice that combines breath, vocalization (sounding), and intuitive movement to tap into the fluid nature of the body. Modern life—with its impossible work expectations, oppressive structures, and unlivable environments—can disconnect the body from its inherently fluid, lively, and creative state. Through gentle explorations, CM practices teach us to move the body intuitively by listening to the language of sensation, while giving full permission to be guided by pleasure and ease. Unlike other movement modalities that focus on physical form and external technique, Continuum teaches us to slow down and trust the body—regardless of how the movement appears on the outside. Continuum may be of particular interest to people who want to move their bodies in community without pressure or expectation about how the movement “looks.” In Continuum, we generally practice with eyes closed, lying on the floor, and emphasize trust, agency, and empowerment in movement.
Ground: We explore what supports the body, playing with what happens when we soften into ground and actively resist it.
Space: We see what happens when we shift our relationship to space – seeing it as a potent, alive resource, and anything but empty.
Gravity: We explore gravity as a source of belonging – and as a force that buoys rather than weighs down.
Waves: Activating the first three pathways, we play with waves as a teacher of what it means to both allow and respond.
Spirals: We explore spirals as a universal bio-motif and movement pathway that enables versatility, innovation, and possibility in the body.
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Continuum Movement sees the body in an expansive light – at once an expression of the biological, cultural, and unknowable dimensions of being human. Across four workshops, we will explore how Continuum practices – which use breath, body-generated sound, self-guided intuitive moment, and granular attention to sensation and pleasure – can deepen our awareness of these different dimensions of inhabiting a body. Through sounding, movement in community, and embodied conversation, we cultivate thoughtful ways of holding these different – and often conflicting – aspects of bodily experience together. Open to folks of all levels of movement experience!
The workshop series will be structured around what founder Emilie Conrad Da’oud called “the Three Anatomies.” Each week, our practice will be structured around a series of inquiries to be explored through breath, sound, and movement.
Introduction – Continuum Movement Practices and Foundations
Movement Inquires: what is a body anyway? what do I assume about my body? what do I want to learn about my body?
The Cultural Anatomy
Movement Inquiries: what was I taught about my body? when do I feel constricted or limited in my body? what does my larger social/cultural context tell me is “appropriate” and “inappropriate” about my body? how has my social/cultural context supported or hindered self-expression in my body?
The Primordial Anatomy
Movement Inquiries: how do I relate to my body as biological form? how do I listen to the biological processes – breath, sensation, fluid, bone, fascia, muscle, tissue – of my body? how are the biological processes of my body connected to other forms of life (human and non-human)?
The Cosmic Anatomy
Movement Inquiries: how do I relate to experiences of wonder, awe, and mystery in my body? what does my body teach me about the unknown?
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Continuum Movement (CM) is a somatic practice that combines breath, vocalization (sounding), and intuitive movement to tap into the fluid nature of the body. Modern life—with its impossible work expectations, oppressive structures, and unlivable environments—can disconnect the body from its inherently fluid, lively, and creative state. Through gentle explorations, CM practices teach us to move the body intuitively by listening to the language of sensation, while giving full permission to be guided by pleasure and ease. Unlike other movement modalities that focus on physical form and external technique, Continuum teaches us to slow down and trust the body—regardless of how the movement appears on the outside. Continuum may be of particular interest to people who want to move their bodies in community without pressure or expectation about how the movement “looks.” In Continuum, we generally practice with eyes closed, lying on the floor, and emphasize trust, agency, and empowerment in movement.
In this introductory workshop, we will explore the core practices and philosophy of Continuum through embodied conversation and movement. Each week, we explore one of the essential elements of Continuum.
Breath
Sound
Sensation
Movement
Innovation
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Creativity is often hampered by the voice of an inner critic – one that tells us we’re not good enough, that we don’t know what we’re doing, or that we’re not as talented as others. In this workshop, we will combine the somatic practices of Continuum Movement and Insight meditation to deepen our understanding of, and relationship to, this inner critic. Rather than silencing or repressing the inner critic, we explore kind, present, and embodied ways of working with this inner voice to deepen our relationship with ourselves – and to show up in uncompromising, fierce, and compassionate ways in our creative endeavors.
Academic Courses Designed & Taught
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Description
Considers how embodiment—the lived experience of inhabiting a body—offers unique insight into a variety of social and political issues. Explores the body as a layered terrain of social, moral, political, biocultural, and historical forces. Examines the body as a site of power; as cultivated through techniques and discipline; as constitutive of personhood and identity; as a material, biological, and organic entity; and as a locus of experience, wisdom, and subjectivity. Topics vary but include: racialized, gendered, and classed dimensions of embodiment; critical disability studies; technological and biomedical enhancement; pain and pleasure; mindfulness, somatic therapy, and psychosomatic experience; sex and sexuality; affect and the sensorium; religious discipline and piety; self-expression and performance; and body/non-human/environment relations.
Learning Goals
Recognize and explain central debates, problems, and conversations in anthropological work on the body and embodiment; distinguish different theoretical and methodological approaches to studying the body/embodiment
Examine intersectional dimensions of embodiment across race, gender, class, ability, and sexuality; analyze how power, institutions, political-economy, biology, culture, environment, and intergenerational legacies affect bodies, embodiment, and healing
Develop awareness of one’s own changing bodily experience in the classroom and everyday life
Harness insights from course materials and one’s own embodied self-study to formulate novel perspectives on the import of embodied perspectives on pressing socio-political issues
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Description
Amid social movements calling for reparations, ongoing displacement, dispossession, and occupation, and enduring global inequality, understanding how histories of violence and subjugation permeate the present is more urgent than ever. Combines anthropology, literature, historiography, and critical theory to explore how histories of violence morph and find new expressions in the present. Asks how ordinary people live with, experience, and reckon with the afterlives of history in their everyday lives. Draws on scholarly articles and books, films, and other media to ask: In what ways do histories—personal, social, political—stay with us? Are past, present, and future so easily separable? How do people see, know, feel, or touch the past in their present lives? How do people resist the weight of history and carve out different possibilities for the future? Topics vary but include: psychic and structural legacies of colonialism; bodily aftereffects of war, trauma, and dispossession; spatial aftermaths of segregation; and environmental impacts of industry.
Learning Goals
Knowledge: recognize foundational concepts in historical anthropology (e.g., time/temporality, knowledge/power, periodization/sovereignty, artifices of temporality, emplotment, positivist vs. constructivist vs. genealogical frameworks); review different histories and their legacies in the present.
Understanding: review central debates on the relationship between history, knowledge, and power; distinguish theoretical paradigms and approaches in historical anthropology; compare and contrast different approaches to the study of historical legacies in the present.
Application: apply foundational concepts to a wide variety of global situations; discover how different approaches to history and temporality can illuminate contemporary social problems
Analysis: breakdown complex theories of history and temporality; outline different styles of argumentation, writing, and uses of evidence; examine how historical legacies structure contemporary experiences across the globe
Evaluation: appraise authors’ insights to historical anthropology and ethnography; critique authors’ blind spots and highlight their ingenuity.
Creativity: formulate unique perspectives on historical legacies in the present; create a final project that explores a contemporary afterlife or historical legacy of particular interest to you.
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Course Description
Medical anthropology explores health, medicine, and the body as embedded in cultural contexts and shaped by social inequalities. Introduces foundational concepts and approaches that emphasize the meanings and experiences of health and illness. Develops tools for understanding health, illness, and well-being within broader systems of power, including inequalities of gender, ethnicity, race, class, and sexuality. Examines case studies in a variety of contexts to trace the implications of these approaches. Topics may include the production of authoritative knowledge, symbolic and ritual healing, mental illness, pharmaceuticals, organ donation and the commodification of body parts, disability, and/or well-being. Reflects on the unique methods and perspectives that anthropologists bring to the field of medicine, along with the role of anthropologists in public debates about health.
Learning Goals
KNOWLEDGE: recognize core concepts in medical anthropology; review different health inequalities and their intersections.
UNDERSTANDING: explore debates about the reproduction of health inequalities; distinguish theoretical paradigms in medical anthropology; compare and contrast different approaches to the study of medicine, the body, and health inequalities.
APPLICATION: apply medical-anthropological concepts to current health issues; discover how different points of foci—including race, gender, class, sexuality, citizenship, and bodily ability—illuminate divergent aspects of the experience of illness and the study of health inequalities.
ANALYSIS: Breakdown complex theories of health, medicine, and the body; outline different styles of argumentation, writing, and uses of ethnographic evidence; explore the patterns of health inequalities globally; examine how historical legacies of violence, discrimination, and injustice structure contemporary experiences of health and illness.
EVALUATION: appraise authors’ approaches to health, medicine, and inequality; critique authors’ blind spots and highlight their ingenuity.
CREATIVITY: Formulate unique perspectives on the persistence of health inequalities in the contemporary world; propose crucial areas for development in future medical anthropological work.
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Course Description
This course explores theoretical approaches to the study of culture and society that have emerged from the nineteenth century through the present. Contemporary anthropology defines itself in relation to—and sometimes against—various theoretical traditions and historical influences. Close readings of anthropological texts elucidate some of the underlying assumptions of social theory and the historical contexts in which anthropologists have worked. Understanding how contemporary anthropologists employ, extend, challenge, or reframe earlier concepts and theories illuminates the abiding concerns and transformational possibilities of the discipline.
This course starts from the fundamental premise that theory is transformative. Radical change is contingent on our ability to think critically and abstractly—to understand the problems we face and imagine different possibilities for the future. In a moment where many of us are rethinking how we organize ourselves socially, politically, and economically, this class focuses on theories that changed the world, and how we might mobilize, refine, and expand them in the present moment. The class juxtaposes classical theories with contemporary concerns, asking us to consider the possibilities and limitations of applying theories created in previous historical moments to our present predicaments. Each week, we will begin by contextualizing a groundbreaking piece of theory in its moment of creation, finishing the week by considering its purchase on the present through a grounded, anthropological problem.
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Anthropologists have turned to care as an important site in which to understand larger issues, such as kinship, violence, politics, economy, expertise, and the like. Ethnographies of care moved away from previous orientations in medical anthropology that divided narrative approaches from the political economy, showing how care—as a form, practice, and ethic—is just as intimate as it is political. Further work on care sought not to sanitize care as a value-neutral good or source of uninterested altruism, but one intimately entangled with violence. Care, it was showed with great creativity in both written and ethnographic experimentation, is more ambiguous than one might think. In line with this spirit, the class will read multiple full ethnographies of care in an attempt to understand how experimental writing, methods, and theoretical approaches have been employed to understand the ambiguous anthropological object of care.
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This course explores radical approaches to medicine and health, with particular focus on the intersection of settler-colonial politics; race, racialization, and racism; gender and sexuality; dis/ability; and citizenship and immigration in the United States. We explore how various forms of historical violence continue to profoundly affect widely accepted understandings of “health” and “illness,” access to forms of adequate care, and the distribution of dis-ease. The course will take an iterative approach to historical and contemporary health issues, asking how we can understand and address enduring health disparities across different intersections of difference. Combining theoretical, activist, ethnographic, and historical material, the class will train students to put a rigorous understanding of the cultural politics of difference to work on the most pressing health issues of our time.
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Course Description
This course provides a general introduction to the multidisciplinary field of global health. We look at the roles that cultural anthropology, clinical medicine, public health, and social theory play in efforts to understand and ameliorate health problems around the world and in diverse historical settings and contexts. We explore the global burden and distribution of disease and mortality, the multi-factorial determinants of health conditions and inequalities, the international development of policies and institutions, and the complex impacts and outcomes of medical and public health interventions. This course introduces students to important philosophical frameworks and questions in global health, delves into close-up case studies, and stresses the importance of how society, politics, economy, and culture influence health and illness.
In the spirit of Raymond Williams’ famous project, this course takes a “keywords” approach to global health. Over the course of the three parts of the course, we survey a series of crucial keywords in the history and present of global health theory and practice. By taking a keywords approach, we seek not simply to “define” each term, but to explore the multiple dimensions of each term in theoretical, practical, and material domains with an eye toward developing a shared vocabulary for global health. Each class session deals with a different keyword: lecture will provide students with necessary background and context to the keyword, and the required reading will supplement the background through an in-depth case study. The required readings are all high-impact contributions to global health and social medicine broadly construed. The first part of the class, GLOBAL, surveys important developments in the multifarious field of world health—including colonial medicine, tropical medicine, and international health—over the course of the 20th century. Part I of the course will thus give students the necessary background in the geopolitics, political economy, and social history of world health. The second part of the class, HEALTH, will explore the wide-ranging theories, perspectives, and orientations employed to understand inequality, difference, and power in the global distribution of dis-ease. Readings will include famous contributions by physicians, public health scholars, medical anthropologists, and sociologists. Part II of the course thus familiarizes students with the wide variety of frameworks for understanding health in the contemporary world. The third and final part of the class, GLOBAL HEALTH, explores contemporary formations of global health projects, focusing on some of the most pressing health issues of our time. Readings will track the pitfalls and potentialities of current global health projects, asking how a wide variety of scholars and practitioners have approached unforeseen and emerging global health issues. Part III of the class thus grounds students in contemporary global health priorities, and asks how we can practice global health in thoughtful and sensitive ways in today’s world.
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Cultural anthropology explores the diversities and commonalities of cultures and societies in an increasingly interconnected world. Introduces students to the significant issues, concepts, theories, and methods in cultural anthropology. Topics may include cultural relativism and ethnocentrism, fieldwork and ethics, symbolism, language, religion and ritual, political and economic systems, family and kinship, gender, class, ethnicity and race, nationalism and transnationalism, and ethnographic representation and validity.
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The history of global health is, in many ways, a history of life in crisis—whether it be cholera, yellow fever, influenza, population growth, or SARS. Amid the current COVID-19 pandemic, the sense that life is in crisis is unmistakable. As we are seeing across the world, the designation of crisis mobilizes support, calls for transnational collaborations, demands swift and steadfast action. Times of crisis produce an accelerated sense of urgency and confer unassailable moral clarity for action. This course explores the work that “crisis” does in preparing for and executing health interventions. Across four modules—anticipate/prepare, emergency/exception, crisis/critique, represent/intervene—the class will carefully parse what is enabled and disabled by the designation of crisis, putting these questions to work on the current COVID-19 pandemic. We will read across social theory, ethnography, current news media, and documentary film in an attempt to further understand the pandemic we all currently face, asking in particular: what does crisis enable and foreclose?