Spanish & Portuguese faculty member G.D. Cohen was recently featured in the UCLA Daily Bruin newspaper for his work in teaching a Community Engagement course.
Cohen, a continuing lecturer in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, said he created the course Spanish M172XP: “Topics in Community Engagement: Cine Vivo: Community-Engaged Sensory Ethnography” to teach students about topics in community engagement, specifically within the field of sensory ethnography.
Sensory ethnography is the study of cultural and social interactions often through visual media to capture sensory data including sight, touch, smell, taste and sound. Throughout the quarter, students form groups to create a film project capturing the images and sounds of the human experience in Latino communities in Los Angeles.
Cohen said he hopes students can see and think critically about the world around them after taking the class, but more importantly, that students learn how to engage with their surroundings.
“It’s learning how to pay attention to the environment, pay attention to the world around us,” he said. “Not always at some kind of objective or intellectual remove, but rather directly through experience.”
To read the article in full, access it here.