Teaching philosophy
My teaching begins from the premise that students understand history most deeply when they learn to see relationships across boundaries: between China and the Middle East, religion and politics, local experience and global structures, written archives and living communities. I design courses that combine close reading and historical argument with experiential and inquiry-based learning.
Students work with primary sources, oral histories, field observations, maps, material culture, and digital tools. Depending on the course, they may visit religious institutions, conduct interviews, analyze urban spaces, participate in role-playing exercises, or use immersive technologies to examine historical environments and practices. These activities are paired with structured reflection so that experience becomes evidence and evidence becomes argument.
Experiential learning is not an excursion from historical thinking; it is one way students discover how historical knowledge is produced.
Learning beyond the classroom
In field-based courses, I ask students to treat cities and communities as historical archives. In the NYU Abu Dhabi J-Term course Finding China in the UAE, for example, students investigated Chinese migration, commerce, education, religion, and community life through field visits and ethnographic observation in the Emirates. The course linked the study of China’s global presence to the particular social geography of the UAE.
Selected courses
China and the Islamic World
Explores historical encounters among China, Muslim communities, and the wider Islamic world through migration, diplomacy, religion, trade, translation, and political change.
China Encounters the World
Examines cross-currents between China and the wider world from the late sixteenth to the twenty-first century, emphasizing multidirectional influence in religion, diplomacy, law, trade, war, revolution, and political thought.
The Emergence of the Modern Middle East and North Africa
An introduction to the forces, movements, institutions, and historical experiences that reshaped the Middle East and North Africa in the modern era.
Arab-Islamic Influence on the West
A thematic exploration of intellectual, scientific, cultural, and historical exchanges between Arab-Islamic societies and Europe and the wider West.
Finding China in the UAE
A field-based J-Term course that uses the UAE as a living laboratory for studying Chinese migration, commerce, education, religion, and transnational community formation.
Worlds Connected, Worlds Apart
A writing-intensive global history course developed and taught in the NYU Abu Dhabi Writing Program, using global connections and disconnections as a framework for historical inquiry and academic writing.
Pedagogical practices
Primary-source analysisFieldworkOral historyExperiential learningRole-playImmersive / VR learningReflective writingGlobal history