I currently live in Charlottesville, VA with my husband, dog, cats, and tortoise enjoying my dissertation year fellowship from UCLA. I study and teach remotely, as well. I am interested in sensory archaeology, which examines the different ways people understand how their bodies interact with their environments. My research specifically examines how the manipulation of scent in New Kingdom Egypt contributed to the construction of a social ideology that informed how they led their lives.
Because of the nature of my research, I am interested in how incorporating not only students’ minds but also their bodies into classroom activities and assignments might serve as an effective teaching method, especially when teaching about the past. By encouraging students to really experience their history, it becomes less divorced from and more relevant to their own lives, thus ingraining lessons of cultural awareness through embodied learning. For an example of this, check out our podcast series “Now as Then.”
Many of modernity’s problems stem from misunderstandings across borders, whether they are geographic or conceptual. Yet, while sensory systems are culturally constructed and so vary greatly across the planet, we all have bodies. My research and teaching philosophy seeks to bridge the gap between the biological and the social, between the us and them. By employing sensory experience as a pedagogical tool, I wish to help my students understand and celebrate difference, rather than to fear it and so divide us.