“In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.”

– Phil Collins

Approach

Engaging with resources is integral to my teaching practice. It only takes a small spark of interest in an aspect of history to fuel sustained captivation with the field, and I try to start developing that fascination early in the semester with primary sources that highlight different perspectives from the past. I intentionally provide an alternative history to topics students might feel they know to draw them into discussion and begin to think; to help them become investigators of the past. My courses are structured around connecting the events of the past to the developments of the present to reinforce the fact that history is messy, forgetful, and nonlinear. People, and their actions, are often the driving forces that led us to where we are today.

I also emphasize that history is community-driven. While topics ebb and flow in popularity over time, the center of doing history is community: either in the communities that we uncover and discuss, or the communities we are trying to reach as audiences or patrons of our work. I actively push back against the idea that “doing history” is lonely work done in an archive and solitary writing, but that we rely on those before us and those around us to shape the way we write and conduct historical work.

I have taught a variety of different fields to undergraduate students:

Early American History

I teach early American history from a global perspective. This means that we approach the colonial and revolutionary period (approx. 15th-18th century) from the Atlantic world perspective. I do not shy away from the realities of colonialism and imperialism that led to the development of new colonies and nations by various European empires by 1800. I rely on primary source content, transcription projects, museum exhibit work, maps, and material culture to direct students to really learn about the experiences of those that lived over 300 years ago.

History of Medicine

I teach global and US-centered history of medicine courses. At Butler, these courses are central electives to the Interdisciplinary Program in Public Health. I include voices of underrepresented voices and marginalized communities into all of my discussions. From Muslim perspectives on the plague, to the way gender plays a role in understanding disability and caring, all of my history of medicine courses push my students, in the humanities or in the sciences, to recognize the value of understanding our past to explain the current state of medicine in our world.

Digital Humanities

I have created a digital humanities curriculum from scratch at Butler. As a liberal arts university, I cultivate student interest in the digital humanities in two ways: first, by offering a rotating Topics in Digital Humanities course at the 300-level that approaches DH from a public-facing way and counts as an elective for our Museum Studies minor. Second, I incorporate digital humanities projects into class- or homework to inspire students in how they can “see” the patterns and outcomes from history. For students who are inspired by data, they find these examples inspiring, and have led more of my core-classes to critically analyze the content that I teach them. Their projects have led to work that is donated or used by our university library and special collections, usually in the form of transcriptions, digitized sources, and metadata corporra.

World History

I have been a co-leader in implementing a World History curriculum in our history program at Butler. I have helped to plan, structure, teach, and maintain our World History I and II courses. These classes are offered to non-majors, but our goal is to provide our lower-level history majors with a comprehensive look at what happened in the world to fill the gaps in their knowledge before they move on to junior- and senior-level coursework. I re-center my world history courses to prevent these classes from solely being a “World Civilizations” or “British Empire” type of course. Instead, I offer students a look into each region of the world for an equal amount of time throughout the semester. I push my students to analyze materials from our nearby museum, Newfields, and the primary sources we have in our university archives and special collections.

For more on my pedagogical perspective and examples of my coursework, please see my pieces in The Panorama (Sept 2025) and Early American Studies (forthcoming – 2026).

Courses (Instructor of Record)

Butler University

  • HST 205/ TI 204 – Colonial America, Fall 2025, 2024
  • HST 202 – World History II, Fall 2025
  • HST 306 – Medicine: Past, Present, Future, Fall 2025
  • HST 306 – Global Pandemics, Fall 2024
  • HST 101 –Introduction to History, Anthropology, and Classics, Fall 2024, 2023
  • HST 205/ 204 – History of U.S. Medicine, Spring 2024
  • HST 302 – Junior Research Seminar on Methods,  Spring 2024
  • FYS 101 and 102 – Space, Place and Memory, Fall 2023- Spring 2024
  • HST 205/ TI 204 – American Revolutions: Whose Revolution Was It?,  Fall 2023

Northeastern University

  • HIST 2311: Colonialism and Imperialism (lecture), Summer 2022
  • HIST 1215: Origins of Today, Global Pandemics (online, asynchronous, lecture), Fall 2020
  • HIST 3322: History of Medicine in North America (seminar), Fall 2019