TEACHING
UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT
Spring 2017 - Present
In the Fall of 2021 I joined UConn full-time as Assistant Professor-in-Residence in Human Rights Documentary Filmmaking, a joint appointment under UConn's Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute and the Department of Digital Media & Design. Through this appointment, I have been working to build UConn's Human Rights Film & Digital Media Initiative, designing and teaching courses that combine a social justice/human rights thematic framework with a theoretical and technical orientation in documentary film. The centerpiece of these cross-listed courses is the two-part course sequence Human Rights Archives I & II, which currently focuses on the Bosnian War and Genocide (1992-95), working collaboratively with the Hartford-area Bosnian Community in Connecticut. Previously we collaborated with the local Armenian Community for the course sequence. An earlier iteration, "Visual Storytelling Through Human Rights Archives," engaged students in a special documentary project utilizing the Thomas J. Dodd Nuremberg Trial Collections held in the UConn Library Archives. Other courses that I have developed while at UConn include "Social Documentary in Theory and Practice" and "Visual Representations of Armenian Memory," Student work generated through these courses has been screened at a variety of public forums and conferences and won awards at film festivals, such as ERASING BOSNIA, LETTERS FROM NUREMBERG, and THE DILDILIANS: A Story of Photography and Survival . In addition, I completed a short documentary produced by the Human Rights Institute on the Polish Human Rights scholar Wiktor Osiatyński, which premiered in March 2023.
AMHERST COLLEGE
Spring 2014 (also Copeland Fellow Spring 2013)
Designed and taught two courses, “Gender, Nation and South Asian Cinema” and “Women Filmmakers of South Asia” (both cross-listed in Film Studies, South Asian Studies, and Women’s Sexuality and Gender Studies). Also lectured, presented, and worked on independent projects as a Copeland Fellow/Artist in Residence at Amherst in Spring 2013. During this period I collaborated with Amherst Music Professor Eric Sawyer to produce SUNDARBANS, a short piece on the Sundarbans mangrove forest, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
TEACHING IN BANGLADESH
1998 - 2014
My teaching experience in Bangladesh spans a variety of roles, from developing and teaching courses at the University level for the Bangladesh Cinema & Television Institute and North South University, to shorter courses and workshops at public and private institutes and organizations such as the National Institute of Mass Communication, Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, and the British Council.