Valentina Pagliai

Linguistic Anthropology
Ph.D. UCLA 2000
e-mail: valentina.pagliai@oberlin.edu

My teaching philosophy.

I believe that education should leave an open field for the expression of diversity and individual creativity. Being a good teacher, for me, means looking at my students as unique individuals, each of them with particular strengths, each able to pursue a successful career in the right environment. It is my goal as a teacher to help them find that right environment, so that they may realize themselves to their fullest.

Teaching to take charge. I expect my students to take an active role in learning. I expect them to be responsible for their own decisions about how to obtain knowledge. This responsibility is fundamental to me as I look at my students not just as future professionals or scientists, but especially as citizens. I see my role as teacher in giving them the theoretical and methodological means to apply what they learn, to tackle research in first person, and to reflect on the role of research in the larger communities of which they are part.

Teaching complexity. I believe a teacher should stimulate the students to “think beyond,” never accepting what they read in a book as truth, but always maintaining a questioning attitude. In my classes, I avoid being an "explainer" and try to be a "stimulator" to think, proposing new and old questions to the attention of the students, pointing at problems there, where did not seem to be any.

Multiple ways of learning. I am a strong believer in the philosophy of "teaching with your mouth shut." As far as I can, I privilege discussion over lecture. In my classes I use videoclips, guest lectures, and engage the students in the class. I reserve time for students to discuss, present their own work, lead class discussion, and work with each other in smaller groups. My students generally do small research projects during my courses, engaging in data gathering and data analysis, at times individually or in groups. The students generally enjoy this hands-on approach to learning, and this allows me to teach them theoretical concepts and methods at the same time.

Past Courses

• Discourse, Nationhood and Racism (Syllabus 2006)
• Language, Gender and Sexual Identities (Syllabus 2006)
• Native Americans: Contemporary Issues (Syllabus 2006)
• Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (Syllabus 2005)
• Language in Culture and Society (Syllabus 2005)
• Language and Cognition (Syllabus 2005)
• Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology (Syllabus 2004)
• Art, Language and Society (Syllabus 2003)
• Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Syllabus 2002)
• Micro-ethnography of Communication (Syllabus 2001)

(See brief descriptions here)

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