At UBC, I draw on over a decade of diverse teaching experiences—from intensive language instruction to critical media studies—to design courses that serve a large, diverse, and often non-specialist student population. Since 2019, I have developed new undergraduate and graduate courses in Japanese film and media that integrate audiovisual literacy, critical thinking, and digital skills through scaffolded assignments and collaborative learning. Teaching amid the disruptions of the pandemic and ongoing institutional change, I’ve focused on practical pedagogy that meets immediate student needs while building toward clear, attainable outcomes. I actively engage in international teaching communities, co-lead grant-funded projects to create inclusive, media-rich learning spaces, and design courses that connect meaningfully with students across disciplines—from the humanities to computer science and business. While I no longer teach language courses, my work continues to center on inclusive, skills-based learning that underscores the relevance of Japanese media and culture in a global, interdisciplinary context.
Courses I teach at UBC:
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This is an introductory, undergraduate survey course on the cinema of Japan from the silent era to the present. In it, we practice the foundations of media literacy, visual analysis, and reception as we trace culturally specific historical, industrial, and aesthetic movements throughout the history of Japan’s film industries.
ASIA 354: Introduction to Japanese Cinema
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This upper-level, undergraduate course focuses on the J-Horror boom that was instrumental to the global revitalization of the horror genre that occurred at turn of the century. As we encounter both culturally specific and transnational aspects of the genre this course asks three key questions: Why does horror scare us? How does horror scare us? What can horror teach us?
ASIA 465: Japanese Horror
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Why does studying video games matter? How can we critically engage with video games? What can we discover at the intersection of Asian studies and video game studies? Designed with these three foundational questions in mind, this graduate seminar is an introduction to the study of video games with a focus on texts, markets, and player communities in Asia. Students engage with both core readings in video game studies as well as new research in area studies in order to analyze texts from their own geographic area and/or cultural context of interest. For course projects and game interaction, students have access to my Game Studies Lab in the Collaborative Digital Heritage Studio housed in the Asian Centre.
ASIA 518: New Media and Asia: Video Games
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This graduate seminar serves as an introduction to Japanese cinema studies and foundational film theory. Students engage with primary theoretical texts including essays by filmmakers and critics, monographs that have historically shaped the field of Japanese cinema studies, scholarship that demonstrates close readings of Japanese films, and the practices of formal sequence analysis and videographic criticism. Students also learn how to make videographic essays through a sequence of short exercises. For course projects, students have access to an editing bay in the Collaborative Digital Heritage Studio housed in the Asian Centre.
ASIA 535: Japanese Cinema Studies: Theory and Practice
Courses I teach for University of Massachusetts, Amherst:
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The course introduces students to videographic criticism as a tool for studying and analyzing audiovisual material, as a presentation format to share knowledge, and as a teaching method. Videographic Criticism is viewed throughout the course as a multiple and hybrid format that speaks to the diversity of audiences as well as of audiovisual culture. Students watch, work with, and assess video essays to develop an understanding of how they can be used to diversify our understanding of audiovisual material and decolonizing our gaze. Exemplary video essays are shown and their strategies analyzed. Apart from that, students engage in their own videographic experiments that they will present in class.
Film-St 650: Videographic Teaching: Pedagogy, Methods, Assessments
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This course explores the history and the different techniques of editing and montage as aesthetic, affective, and argumentative devices. Students will learn about the technological and philosophical aspects of editing, as well as different editing modes and styles, such as the split screen, the multiscreen, the spatial montage, and soft montage. New forms of montage as they can be encountered on social media platforms with their specific affordances are critically discussed and added to the palette of editing tools as tools for thought.