“The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the
academy… Urging all of us to open our minds and hearts so that we can
know beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable, so that we can think
and rethink, so that we can create new visions…” (bell hooks, 1994)
Courses Taught
University of Utah
GEOG6960 Qualitative Methods and Research Design for Graduate Students: This course is designed to provide graduate students with a comprehensive understanding of qualitative research methods and their applications across various academic disciplines. Qualitative research is a powerful approach for exploring complex phenomena, gaining insights into lived experience and human behavior, and generating rich, contextually grounded data. This course delves into advanced qualitative methods, theories, and practical skills necessary for conducting rigorous and meaningful qualitative research.
ENV2100: Environment + Society: This course focuses on our relationship with the environment and examines connections among local-scale phenomena and regional-, national-, and global-scale processes. We read and discuss several perspectives and approaches that are central to understanding human-environment relations, including environmental ethics, social constructions of nature, political ecology, and environmental justice. We also examine resources and themes that we encounter in our daily lives, including trees, gardens, concrete, energy, and carbon dioxide.
GEOG3630: Contemporary Southeast Asia: Environmental Politics: This course introduces students to Southeast Asia as a diverse and globally connected region that examines key questions in global environmental politics through policy debates and on-the-ground cases. Informed by political ecology and human geography, we explore key environmental issues facing the region, including agrarian change, deforestation, land degradation, biodiversity loss, pollution, climate change, and water governance. Students will critically evaluate the drivers and consequences of environmental challenges, as well as the responses of governments, NGOs, and grassroots movements. Emphasis will be placed on understanding the diverse socio-political contexts of Southeast Asian countries, including their historical trajectories, political systems, cultures, and power dynamics.
ENV2100: Food and the Environment: Questions surrounding food – whether we produce enough of it for growing populations; eat the right kind of it for our health, culture, or environment; and around inequality in access and outcomes – are important subjects of contemporary concern. Production, distribution, and consumption of food are among the earliest and most central ways humans relate to their environment. Food serves as a key lens for thinking through human-environment relations, our history, and the challenges of the future. This class explores how the increasingly global food system came to be and its social/environmental implications for different peoples and places. We will deploy historical, geographical, and critical approaches. By exploring linkages between food, well-being, political-economic processes, and the world’s ecosystems, we better understand why things look the way they do and how they might be different.
University of British Columbia
PPGA591: Ethnographies of Global China [Instructor of record, graduate seminar]: We study China’s global investments and integration from the ground. We will read deep empirical work to connect complex local realities to today’s pressing policy questions regarding China’s global development model. We explore topics through which global China is currently manifest such as labor, smart cities and zones, environmental issues, connective infrastructure, business networks, and surveillance.
PPGA562: Resource Governance, Environment, and Human Security [Instructor of record, graduate seminar]: We explore the linkages between environment, development, and human wellbeing. We will study a range of intergovernmental, nongovernmental, and other responses to the challenges posed by global ecological interdependence. Careful examination of the socio-political context will form an important part of the discussions. Case studies focus on land and food security, energy minerals, climate change, the resource curse, and more. We also explore reactions to these issues such as agrarian movements, environmental justice, and activism.
PPGA555: Asia Policy Practice [Instructor of record, graduate seminar]: The primary objective of this course is to allow students to engage with academics and policy practitioners on contemporary Asia policy issues. It is designed for students in the Master of Public Policy and Global Affairs (MPPGA) program to provide an identity and a community for those interested in strengthening their policy skills on Asia.
University of Colorado Boulder
GEOG3682: International Development [Instructor of record]: The course is organized in three parts and is intended to build an understanding of how the term “development” has emerged and how it has been repeatedly reinvented and transformed to match the changes in the world around us. Part 1 explores the development of capitalism in terms of states, societies, and markets. Part 2 considers the history of development as an international project as it emerged in the context of post-colonial Cold War geopolitics and the way in which its theories and practices have shifted over time. Part 3 addresses approaches, technologies, and/or alternatives to development.
GEOG3822: Geography of China [Instructor of record]: This course is on the human and cultural geographies of China and surveys the world's most populous country, examining physical and historical geography, urbanization and regional development, agriculture, population, energy, and the environment. Our most significant objective in this course is to demonstrate the usefulness of geography as a tool in dispelling many common myths about contemporary China. In doing so, we situate China's development in a broader Asian and global context.
GEOG3742: Place, Power, Culture [Instructor of record]: This course is fundamentally concerned with understanding processes of ‘world-formation’ through a meditation on several abstract and yet essential concepts: Power, Place/Space, and Culture/Subjectivity. We spend the semester developing the conceptual skills to think through these key terms. What is ‘power,’ and how are spaces produced through relationships of power?
GEOG3692: Global Public Health [Instructor of record]: We explore critical issues in global public health through a biosocial lens, incorporating the biological, economic, political, social, and cultural influences on health. We take a candid look at the challenges of quantifying health as well as the complexities of past health initiatives. We delve into the roles of the World Health Organization, nongovernmental organizations, and ministries of health in addressing both infectious and non-communicable diseases. We explore healthcare systems and consider the elements of systems that improve accessibility and quality of care for citizens, making health a human right. We end with future priorities of global health.
GEOG3422: Political Ecology [TA for Mike Dwyer]: “The environment” figures dominantly in our daily lives and academic training—from concerns about climate change and biodiversity loss to energy policy, organic agriculture, and ongoing struggles for environmental justice. Yet we rarely stop to consider the specific historical, political, cultural, and economic contexts of these issues. In this class, we do just that through the lens of political ecology, a growing interdisciplinary subdiscipline, which examines the politics surrounding environmental issues.
University of California Berkeley
GEOG130: Food and the Environment [GSI* for Nathan Sayre]: How do human populations organize and alter natural resources and ecosystems to produce food? The role of agriculture in the world economy, national development, and environmental degradation in the Global North and the Global South. The origins of scarcity and abundance, population growth, hunger and obesity, and poverty.
GPP115: Global Poverty: Hopes and Challenges [GSI for Fatmir Haskaj]: This class seeks to provide a rigorous understanding of 20th-century development and, thus, 21st-century poverty alleviation. Students will take a look at popular ideas of poverty alleviation, the institutional framework of poverty ideas and practices, and the social and political mobilizations that seek to transform the structures of poverty.
GEOG10: Worldings: Regions, Peoples, and States [GSI for Jake Kosek]: This course is designed to transform how you think about, understand, and engage in its makings and re-makings. Ideas central to the field of geography, such as space, nature, empire, and globalization, animate the histories and politics of each of these issues and many other cases. Our approach will not be to simply learn about the regions of the world but to think critically and geographically about how regions, peoples and states, and other foundational concepts have come into being and how they might be otherwise.
*GSI = Graduate Student Instructor
Dalian University of Technology, China | Princeton-in-Asia Fellow
Western Civilization, Phonetics, Conversational English, Literature, Writing
University of California Los Angeles
English as a Second Language
In their words
“Despite this being just an intro class, I learned an astonishing amount of information that tested my understanding and perspectives of the environment as well as society. In this class, I learned the importance of questioning my own beliefs in addition to challenging myself to make connections between seemingly unlike themes. I remember reading the syllabus at the beginning of the semester and being utterly confused about how themes such as feminism or race could relate so strongly to our environment. Furthermore, I was continuously intrigued by how an apparently small theme, such as a french fry, could contain enough content for an entire chapter. This class left me amazed and inspired and helped solidify my confidence in working towards a degree in Environmental and Sustainability Studies.”
“Jessica was always open, respectful, kind and engaging. She taught us a lot from her experiences but also pushed us to think critically and independently. She created a great atmosphere in the class where we all felt comfortable being honest and asking questions. She was always happy to give us helpful feedback and always made herself available
to chat with us.”
“Jessica is the most helpful and engaging professor I have had in my life. She is ready and excited to help students achieve their goals and taught me more than any other professor in the SPPGA.”
“This class had an extreme impact on my perspective regarding modern environmental issues and the several components that are involved. We looked at challenges through the lenses of markets, ethics, political economies, social construction, feminism, and more. Now, I am able to critically and thoroughly consider all aspects of a situation and work with new ideas. I believe I am more prepared for my future career because of my strengthened ability to criticize and effectively research in depth.”
“Jessica DiCarlo is an excellent professor and really cared about effectively engaging with material alongside the students. She showed that she cares about our learning and hopes for our success both in this course and elsewhere. She is readily available to meet and ready to accommodate students needs to ensure effective learning.”
“Before this course, I had a very broad understanding of what was necessary for development, and it fairly closely mirrored the understanding that was reached at the launch of Big “D” development. I remember learning about the demographic transition model in high school, and thinking that it told a lot of the story about development. I thought that once poorer countries had access to technology, healthcare, and family planning, birth rates would decrease. What this course has really underscored is that this is only part of the story of development. I had completely discounted legacies of colonialism in the global order. I hadn’t considered how extractive industries in the poorest countries had not only robbed those lands of natural resources, but also of the stability, human capital, and societal cohesion necessary to build prosperous, functioning societies and economies. I also failed to consider how because of colonialism, and later supranational corporations, modernization development interventions in poor countries, such as infrastructure investments, often didn’t benefit everyday people, but instead helped facilitate further extractive economies and entrench power.”
“Jessica is one of those people that comes across your life and doesn’t leave it without making an impact for the better. She has been more than just a TA for me, she’s been a mentor who continues to educate and advise long after her role in the classroom for me has ended.”
“One of the best (or the best) GSIs I’ve every had. Great discussion facilitation, fantastic participation encouragement and variety of activities. Really wonderful. I learned so much, I’d call it a personal paradigm shift.”
“Jessica is the best TA I have had in my entire academic career. I honestly wish she had given the course herself. She is very knowledgeable, very approachable, provides amazing feedback and genuinely engages with the students. The few classes she has given were much more informative and clear than any of the other ones. Thank you Jessica!”
“This was by far my favorite discussion section at Cal. Jessica created a respectful and safe classroom environment and made students comfortable participating. I only with the class period was longer each week.”
“I felt confident in Jess as our TA and found that she was both aptly qualified for the position and enthusiastic about the subject. Her lectures were great and it was nice to have a change up from the professor every once in a while - it kept things interesting and offered an alternative perspective in lecture.”
“Jess really made the most of our sections. I always left feeling like I had a better understand of the material. We got really in-depth within an hour, which is very different from many of my other sections where we seem to barely graze the surface.”
“Overall an amazing instructor, one of my favorite GSIs out of 4 years at UC Berkeley. Not only is she knowledgeable, but also very passionate and conveys understanding of the material in a way that is easy to understand but also inspires. She made this class much more enjoyable. great activities planned!”
“I have been fortunate in my career at CU to have had some incredible professors; teachers who have challenged me, inspired me, and opened my eyes to a bigger world than I ever dreamed of. But among them all Jessica stands out. I enrolled in her Global Public Health class with little knowledge of the subject, but during the first recitation not only did she make a previously unknown topic seem accessible she made me so excited for the semester to come. Every week when we would discuss a case study Jessica gave space for students to discuss their take aways and questions openly; while that may seem simple I think it can be difficult for teachers to guide a discussion without being heavy handed or simply impressing their own thoughts and answers. And at the same time she kept us on topic and whenever someone had a question she met it without criticism and with thoughtful honesty. Having Jessica as a TA was more than just being a part of a great recitation, I felt like I had the support of someone important behind me all semester and that extension of kindness and knowledge was felt by all the students in our class. Jessica is a fantastic educator; she is intelligent and experienced, and her investment in the course makes it easy for students to understand and get excited about coming to class.”
“I think Jessica was one of the best GSIs I’ve had in my time as a student at UC Berkeley. I’ll be honest and say that overall the class lectures were not captivating for me, but going to discussion with her help me understand what I should get out of the course and discussion was also really fun. I hope she GSIs for this course again because I would definitely recommend her to prospective students.”
“One of the best GSIs I’ve ever had at Cal. Jessica explains material clearly, goes above and beyond what is expected, is truly knowledgeable in the subject and genuinely cares about her students. Thank you!!”
“She is one of the most passionate GSIs that I’ve ever had. I appreciate how she tried to bring in new formats to each section, and keeps it interesting. She is caring and empathetic to students’ needs, and I always felt like I could go to her if I needed help. Overall, she is a wonderful GSI and I hope she continues teaching.”
“She is absolutely fabulous! This was honestly the most well-run and most stimulating discussion section I’ve has in my first two years at Cal. And I’ve had some great discussion in geography classes.”
“Best GSI I’ve had at Cal. Her knowledge of the material and passion for it translate well to her students.”
“Jessica was an incredibly helpful and knowledgeable TA. She graded assignments quickly and thoroughly and was always available to talk or answer questions. I would love to take a class that she is the main teacher for!”
“Jessica was a rockstar this semester. She was always available to discuss course material and she helped everyone understand her main points. You see the sincerity in her teaching and it’s refreshing to see.”
“I had a lot of fun in this discussion. The discussion section is why I decided to stay in this class. The readings were intimidating but I always felt better about them after discussion.”
“Jessica has been awesome this semester. I always look forward to coming to discussion. She wholeheartedly encourages students to express their ideas and share experiences. She helped increase my understanding of certain material and was always eager to try to help more.”
“She was always willing to accomodate and really let us know that she was there to help us. She helped me on a one-on-one level. She was available for office hours and was also available to meet outside of that. Very clear teaching and instruction, and also passionate.”
“I really loved having Jessica as a GSI. She made every discussion engaging and pushed us to think about difficult ideas.”
“The only thing I would change about class would be to have more time!”
Evaluations from faculty:
“Jessica is an exceptional teaching assistant in her pedagogical skills, interpersonal skills with students, professors and other TAs, and in her desire to continually improve her craft in teaching. Since the beginning of the semester, the students in the course have been raving about Jessica and that has not waned as the semester has gone on. She will undoubtedly make an excellent instructor as a faculty member in the future.”
“Jessica has a great command of the room, is organized and inviting.”
“Jessica is also always making time to meet the needs of her students. We have had many students who have needed various accommodations throughout the semester and Jessica is always willing to modify assignments or proctor longer exams, or set up extra times to meet one-on-one. She is also a team player and has worked seamlessly with the other TA on lesson planning for recitation sections and grading exams. Her generous spirit in teaching is exemplified by the fact that early in the semester, my other TA had a bad injury and could not hold recitation sections for two weeks. Despite the heavy course-load that Jessica had as a first year PhD student, she took on extra recitation sections and also allowed students from the other TAs sections into her recitation sections. Despite essentially juggling teaching all 132 students in our course during those two weeks, she never lost a single assignment. She clearly went above and beyond what was part of her original contract so that the students of the other TA did not miss out on their learning opportunities as part of this course.”
“[Jessica] arrived with an excellent pedagogical toolkit from Berkeley that she has built upon this year at the University of Colorado Boulder and will continue to build upon in the next few years. One of Jessica’s greatest strengths at a teacher is her ability to foster dialog among students in her recitation sections, as I have witnessed in the three times I have observed her recitation sections this spring. When I have sat in on her recitation sections, she has shown that she has a clear plan for the main points that she wants students to gain from the discussion, but she helps the students get there on their own. Rather than lecturing to them, she prepares questions about the reading ahead of time that she poses to the students and allows them to discuss and figure out the themes from the reading themselves. She showed skill in guiding the discussion back on track when it veered off course to ensure that each of her sections covered the main topics that they were responsible for in the exams, but also allowed the students time to share their own thoughts and insights from the reading. She set a tone of respect and support that the students clearly internalized – not just that she respected their thoughts but that they should also respect each other’s thoughts.”