Undergraduate Studies

I teach undergraduate students in the History program at the University of Toronto, Mississauga (UTM). I usually teach HIS 272H, US History, 1877-Present. In addition, I run the the History full-year internship program, HIS 498Y. Students in this program are placed at area cultural institutions and work 150 hours for course credit. Recent placements have been at the Canadian Arab Institute; Heritage Toronto; Heritage Mississauga; the Oakville Museum; Peel Art Gallery, McDermid Literary Agency; Museum and Archives (PAMA); the Royal Ontario Museum; the Ward Museum and others.

Spring 2021 - Doing Digital History

In Spring 2021, I will teach “Doing Digital History.” This question asks: how have Web 2.0 technologies changed the practice of history? Students learn by doing in this course: researching and writing for the digital medium; learning about the theory and practice of digital history; experimenting with new technologies; and creating a digital history project.

Fall 2020 - LGBTQ+ Oral History

This September I will teach a course on LGBTQ+ Oral history. Like other marginalized groups, LGBQ2+ people have turned to oral history to learn about our past. In this course, students will learn how scholars and community activists have used oral history to write new, intersectional histories of being LGBTQ2+. In addition to learning about post-1945 LGBTQ+ history, students will also learn to develop an interview guide and consent form; grapple with ethical considerations; how to interview via audio and/or video; analyze and write from the material. The main research creation project for this course will be a short video drawing from oral history footage that students will create through the WeVideo platform, using a social-justice oriented Digital Storytelling methodology pioneered by The Story Center (Berkeley CA). This digital storytelling project will unfold in collaboration with another course meeting at the same time, SOC375H5F - Sociology of International Migration, taught by Prof. Anna Korteweg. The two classes will be supported by workshops in learning the digital storytelling methodology and in learning to use the (very easy) WeVideo platform. We do not expect any prior experience in using any of these technologies; newbies are welcome! Students from outside of History who are interested in learning more about the LGBTQ2+ past are welcome to enroll.

Winter 2020 - Queer Peel

In Winter 2019 I taught “Queer Peel” a third-year course examining the history of queer & trans life in Peel Region, where the University of Toronto Mississauga is located. The course asked: What’s it like to be LGBTQ2+ in Canadian suburbs and edge cities? For the most part, scholars couldn’t tell you since there has been so little research on the experiences of those living outside Canada's major cities of Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. But as activist and curator Anu Radha Verma has argued, “there is long, complicated history of queer and trans organizing in the burbs” (Verma, Any Other Way, 228). Yet this history is mainly invisible and inaccessible except to those who have experienced it personally. We can't write new histories of Canada's LGBTQ2+ past without primary sources; in order to create these sources, we need to collaborate with narrators willing to share their stories with us.  Students created a digital Omeka exhibition of the interviews they completed for the course. The course received coverage in the local press, too.