I came here in 1997 to work with other folks on developing MIT. I've taught, and loved to teach, a first year Media Studies course. I now teach two courses about war: the first, MIT 3440 War for War, is about how Vietnam rolled into the two wars in the Middle East from 2002- the present; the second course, MIT 3215 Killer Culture, is about how we represent war (or don't).

I also teach MIT 4035 The Mechanical Flower, which is about the relationships between people, our myths of green worlds and the infinitely more mechanical one we inhabit, and our ongoing machine-human-environmental interactions. Recently I've been teaching MIT 4100 Rebel Knowledge, which is an attempt to give people what they might need before they go rocketing out into the world, baffled as to how to change it, overburdened by the demands my generation has placed on anyone born roughly 20 years ago. It's just no good for people my age to say "We broke it, you fix it." It's irresponsible.

I should also teach a course entirely driven by tangents. (This in itself could be one such!)

I've been trying to cram everything I think people might need to know into these and my other courses.You don't need to know particular factoids about world events or crucial theoretical ideas, but to understand how to be strong in what you believe, whatever that might be, and in your voice, however it might sound. How will you learn to know what you need, otherwise?

In the graduate programs I teach a media theory class for the MMJC program, and have offered a popular culture course to the LIS program. I also teach a graduate course on trauma and memory in the Media Studies program. I get that this doesn't sound like a lot of laughs, but we do have laughs.

I love to look at things, so if you take a course with me, you'll be looking at film, comics, art, posters, propaganda—you name it, we'll do it. You'll also be reading and writing because nothing replaces sharp analytical ability. The best thing about teaching is the conversations I have with students, those particular moments when everyone is suddenly alight, and the world seems suddenly more possible. There's never enough time for curiosity, I'm finding, so talking to people is an excellent way of finding out a lot about the world.