I view teaching as an invitation to think critically about the social world and to see oneself as capable of participating in its interpretation and transformation. My courses introduce students to major sociological traditions while encouraging them to engage enduring questions concerning race, class, capitalism, migration, power, and historical change.
As a first-generation college graduate and former undocumented immigrant, I am particularly committed to helping students recognize that intellectual life is not the exclusive province of a privileged few. Many of my students encounter sociology, Marxism, or critical social theory for the first time in my courses. My goal is not simply to familiarize them with these traditions, but to help them develop the confidence and analytical tools necessary to become producers of knowledge rather than merely consumers of it. I also encourage students to reject the false opposition between a commitment to justice and rigorous scholarship. In my view, serious engagement with social problems requires careful research, critical inquiry, and intellectual discipline.
Teaching and mentoring are closely connected in my work. Through independent studies, honors projects, senior theses, collaborative research, and programs such as the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, I encourage students to pursue ambitious intellectual questions and to see themselves as participants in larger scholarly conversations. Several former students have gone on to doctoral study and continue to collaborate with me on research and publication projects.
As one former student recently reflected, my classes "always stress the need for interdisciplinary approaches and the importance of not seeing a contradiction between a sense of justice and rigorous, objective research. That is, as opposed to common-sense presumptions, the former actually demands the necessity of the latter." This captures a central premise of my teaching: that serious engagement with social problems requires intellectual rigor, careful inquiry, and a willingness to follow evidence wherever it leads.
Introduction to Sociology
Race, Migration, and the Law
Migration and Capitalism
Sociology of Capitalism
Globalization and Global Inequality
Racial Capitalism and the Political Economy of Race and Class (Honors Seminar)
Marxism and Radical Political Economy (Honors Seminar)