My Teaching Journey
Teaching Recognition: Excellence in Teaching Award, Department of Sociology, UCLA 2023, 2022
Teaching Philosophy and Practice
My teaching objective is twofold. I want students to master sociological thought, theory, and research, and I want them to leave treating sociology as a life skill instead of just a body of knowledge—applying the same rigor they use to question a theory or a dataset to their own lives. I do this in four ways: 1) when leading discussion, 2) when teaching methods, 3) when creating curriculum, and 4) when mentoring students.
When leading discussion
I lead discussion sections using a three-step method: 1) a low-stakes idea web on the board to build communal understanding; 2) analytical connections to test internal logic across texts; and 3) portability testing ("does this hold?"), pushing students to evaluate claims against their own social realities.
When teaching methods
In methods courses, I teach students to treat historical and empirical sources as socially constructed artifacts, asking who had the power to produce, preserve, or omit them. This approach is informed by my work with Rebecca Jean Emigh on the social organization of historical data (Emigh and Hernández-Pérez 2022).
When creating curriculum
I teach theory as a contested and historically uneven field, motivated not only by representation, but by the conviction that theory becomes analytically weaker when intellectual traditions shaped by colonialism and racialization are treated as peripheral to the canon. In. In 2020, I co-designed a graduate theory syllabus centered on BIPOC, women, and Global South scholars (published in ASA Theory Section newsletter, Perspectives).
When mentoring students
As a former Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow (MMUF), I demystify the “hidden curriculum” of academia for underrepresented students by sharing my own annotated draft revisions to model the research process to students in methods classes or when mentoring undergraduate honor theses.
Teaching Experience at UCLA
• 2025–2026: Teaching Fellow, Sociology of the Body; Sociology of Mental Illness; Introduction to Sociology ·
• 2022–2023: Teaching Associate, Comparative and Historical Research Methods; American Society; Introduction to Sociological Methods·
• 2021–2022: Teaching Assistant, Comparative and Historical Research Methods; Introduction to Sociological Methods
Courses prepared to teach
I am prepared to teach core courses and
upper-division and graduate seminars.
Core courses
Introduction to Sociology
Sociological Theory
Political Sociology
Sociology of Culture
Race and Ethnicity
Comparative-Historical Methods
Upper-division and graduate seminars·
Sociology of Tourism
Sociology of the Caribbean
Race, Empire, and Cultural Representations