Welcome to the newest edition of our Teacher-Scholar Spotlight, illuminating PhD students’ insights on teaching and learning! Each month we’ll share the experiences of PhD students who have engaged in Bok Center programming and what they’ve learned about and from teaching.
Jewel Pereyra, G6 in American Studies
Summarize your research in 2 sentences.
My current research explores Filipina and Black feminist and queer kinship networks and experimental performance aesthetics across the Philippines, France, and United States. My work engages literary, performance, and cultural theories, archival methodologies, and interviews with performers and their friends and families.
What have you learned from teaching?
As a Performance Studies scholar, I believe that the classroom is an invitation, offering, and portal for students to experiment with ideas and to dare to dream new worlds. With my students, I honor both the importance of the collective and the individual body—the ensemble and the soloist—where the students and the instructor learn from each other in a mutualistic synergy. In doing so, I ultimately believe the classroom is a collective space to “rehearse” new modes of inquiry that strive for social change.
How did you get involved with the Bok Center?
I wanted a better understanding of how to lead in-person discussion sessions. I enrolled in the seminar “Tools and Techniques for Leading Classroom Discussions.” This seminar invigorated my teaching, and I was able to learn more about how to construct effective lesson plans and how to better foster a generative and inquisitive classroom space.
What is something you learned in a Bok Seminar that you’ll use in the future?
The seminar “Engaging Audiences in our Professional Stories" provided ample ways to communicate our scholarship and ideas to a wide range of audiences, from specialists to non-specialists in our individual fields. As someone whose research is embedded in my family’s personal history, I enjoyed the various kinds of story-telling templates and ways of engaging audiences with our research. By the end of the seminar, I felt confident in my ability to guide audiences through the importance of my research.
What would you say to PhD students about why they should get involved with the Bok Center?
If you are interested in improving your confidence in teaching, communicating your research, and working with a team, I highly recommend you take classes at the Bok Center!
What’s a fun fact about yourself?
I lived in Cambodia for two years and traveled across the country singing songs with my guitar in cafes and at open mics.
Have you been working with the Bok Center this year? Do you want to be featured in the Teacher-Scholar spotlight? Fill out this form and we’ll be in touch!