In spring 2023 I’m hosting the AMCS intro course, L98-229, one of my favorite courses to teach. We’ll think about mythmaking, memory, and remembrance under the semester title, “Tales Culture Taught Me.” We’ll investigate how mythologies of national identity emerge from distinct cultural moments and inform future constructions through a wide variety of popular, primary materials from the 19th century to today.
The course invites you to think about the power of cultural production to inform or constrict social imaginaries. We will look closely at institutions devoted to broadcasting myths over truths and draw insights from those who resisted restrictive normative principles through engagement with high and low culture.
I study the interoperating influences of technology and culture at moments when new tech emerges onto the economic and pop culture scene. I investigate cultural origins for a variety of commonplace tech—computers, automobiles, surveillance—and map what broad cultural awareness of and imaginations about such technology ‘mean’ in political and cultural spaces. My courses include the study of the cold war era of the early computing industry, St. Louis’s industrial identity, the 1904 world’s fair, and surveillance studies. I also teach service courses including the AMCS intro #ExploringAmerica and the capstone project incubator, and serve as undergraduate Harvey Scholar mentor.
