Courses
Between 1971 and 1993, I taught sporadically at several universities in the U.S. and Canada:
1970 – 72: Brookdale Community College (New Jersey) – Human Growth and Development, Human Sexuality, European Study Tour
1977 – 78: Concordia University (Montreal) – Community Development, Social Intervention
1982 – 85: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (Toronto) – Basic Processes of Adult Education
1989 – 90: University of Toronto – Photography and Society
2000: URRACAN University (Bluefields, Nicaragua) – Popular Education for Social Change
2012 – 2015: Coady International Institute, St-Francis Xavier University (Antigonish, Nova Scotia) – Food Sovereignty, Art and Social Change
I finally found my academic home in 1993 in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto. It suited me so well, because of its interdisciplinarity and its honouring of arts-based and community-engaged learning. taught a range of courses. For the first decade, I taught Critical Education for Social Change and Women & Development at the graduate level, and an Environmental Research and Action Workshop at the undergraduate level (with Anders Sandberg). Here I include only sample course syllabi from the past decade that focus on popular education and community arts:
I share these not only for potential exchange of resources with other educators in these fields, but also because I take very seriously the pedagogical design of the courses. I have enjoyed the challenge of trying to subvert conventional academic pedagogies by applying popular education principles and practices into my courses. Thus, I hope that other educators attempting to transform academic classrooms will share their own efforts with me.
Since my official retirement, I have been able to design and co-teach my dream course, ENVS 4810B Environmental Art and Food Sovereignty, at our eco-campus in Costa Rica. Along with the course outline, I am including a course promo flyer as well as a synthesis of the 2019 course which I wrote in the form of a litany of thanks to all the collaborators, and in particular my two co-teachers, Costa Rican artists Raquel Bolaños and Guadalupe Urbina. This course is open not only to York University students but to interested artists and food activists working with NGOs and social movements anywhere in the world.
In 2013, I was the first social justice chair at the Coady International Institute on the campus of St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Through this engagement, I was able to propose, test and ultimately co-teach two courses:
Integrating Food Justice into Community Programs (with Selam Teclu)
Art for Social Change (with Liliona Quarmyne)
These courses were very special because the participants were primarily practitioners from NGOs and social movements in Africa and Asia. Thus, the activities were constantly related to the diverse contexts of the participants. Again we applied a popular education methodology to the hands-on courses. Unfortunately, neither course has been continued.