Pedagogy
Teaching Statement
Over the last decade I have worked within a variety of teaching environments in Montreal including college, undergraduate and graduate programs in cinema, fine arts and the humanities. Guided by my interdisciplinary training I have learned to move deftly between audiences from differing levels and fields, as well as diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, and to adapt quickly to new and shifting teaching situations. These skills have come to inform my pedagogical philosophy in which I take student-centered approach to fostering critical media literacy no matter what the specific topic or context of instruction. My aim is to create productive dialogue between course materials and the diverse experiences that students bring to the table. As such I take an ecological view of my teaching, hoping to make students aware of how attentiveness to the environments in which they live can help inform their critical thinking in any field, encouraging a self-reflective understanding of our position in relation to what is studied. Here I take some cues from the field of acoustic ecology, founded upon the desire to teach people to experience the world differently through an interdisciplinary approach to environmental listening and acoustic design. And from the exponentially growing networks of sound studies, the main challenge of which is, according to Jonathan Sterne, “to think across sounds, to consider sonic phenomena in relation to one another,” crossing disciplinary boundary lines to engage with “alternative epistemologies, methods [and] approaches,” and ultimately to “move beyond the academy to try and effect change in the world” (The Sound Studies Reader, 2012, pp. 3-4). This is a call to interdisciplinary action in research and pedagogy alike with an emphasis on “positionality” (4). In this spirit I infuse my teaching with an ecological approach that fosters awareness of the social and geographical environments through which we relate to our objects of study. In this spirit I embrace interdisciplinary dialogue within my teaching practices through which I strive to find the right harmonic relationships to set course materials resonating with the quotidian experiences of my students.
Teaching – 2024/25
Champlain College St-Lambert:
Knowledge and Media
World Views: Green Living
Ethical Issues (Law and Civilization)
Concordia University:
Film Sound
Special Topics in Art and Film: Sound/Art/Consciousness
Special Topics in Art and Film: The Hallucinogenic Imagination (Undergrad Seminar)
Topics in Canadian Film (Regional Cinema): The Cinemas of British Columbia
Past Courses
Champlain College St-Lambert (2015-2023)
Ancient World Knowledge
Theories of Knowledge (IB Program)
The Vision of Art
Concordia University (2002-23)
Expanded Cinema (Grad Seminar)
Sound, Ecology, Cinema (Grad Seminar)
Topics in Canadian Cinema: Finding Vancouver on Film (Grad Seminar)
Approaches to Film Studies I + II
Expanded Cinema
Film Aesthetics
Studies in Film Directors
Film Sound
Special Topics in Art and Film: Sound/Art/Consciousness
Special Topics in Art and Film: The Hallucinogenic Imagination (Undergrad Seminar)
Topics in Canadian Cinema: Finding Vancouver on Film (Undergrad Seminar)
Ryerson University (2017-18)
Fundamentals of Media II (Digital Sound) (MFA Seminar)
Intro to Film Studies
From Page to Screen
Contemporary Canadian Cinema
Film Theory II
LaSalle College (2006-2012)
Knowledge
World Views
Culture and the Media
Cinema, The 7th Art
About Me
I teach full time in the Humanities department at Champlain College in Montreal. My research, pedagogy, and creative practice reside at the intersections of soundscape research, media studies, and critical geography. I have previously taught in the cinema departments at Concordia University and Toronto Metropolitan University, and in the Humanities departments at Lasalle College and Dawson College. I have presented and published extensively on film sound, media geography, and acoustic ecology. My sound compositions, photographs and films have been exhibited internationally. See bio for more details.