Dimitrios Latsis

Statement of Teaching Philosophy

As a teacher who aims to continuously bring my own research to bear on classroom instruction and
vice-versa, a constant in my practice is what I would call a dialectical approach to pedagogy that
emphasizes the circulation rather than the mere transmission of ideas. Having benefited from it
myself in the past, I am a strong believer in fostering undergraduate research and engagement with
creative tools which then inform and shape the students understanding of texts and theories.
The first component of this approach stems from my training as a comparatist: I have always
sought to place cinema and the moving image more generally in the context of other media and art
forms. As a result, I always seek to reflect that relational bent in the design of syllabi for my classes
and in the form and substance of assignments. Giving students the opportunity to correlate
concepts of film theory, aesthetics and history to their own artistic experiences and backgrounds,
regardless of major, and explaining how the goals of the course can be applicable in their studies,
careers and lives, tailors my teaching to the individual interests and expectations of the learners I
interact with. This skill translates directly into my research areas that routinely entail such crossdisciplinary inquiry. I often incorporate show-and-tell sessions of archival material and films in my
classes that place early cinema against the background of turn-of-the-century popular amusements.
My students have, in turn, repeatedly come up with creative projects, like a collaborative video essay
on Buster Keatons physical comedy or a student-curated week of formal analysis of vintage TV ads,
projects that implement in action notions like performance and visual authorship that can
otherwise sound too abstract.
The other component of my conception of teaching and the one that truly posits instruction
as an ongoing interactive endeavor is its Socratic orientation. While maintaining clarity in the
distinctive roles within the teacher-student dynamic, I have always encouraged students to assume
the role of collaborators, actively shaping their learning experience. Instead of lecturing on the
importance of media archives, I prefer to assign sessions of guided sleuthing whether in microfilmed
journals or the librarys 16 and 35mm holdings. Such undergraduate research forays never fail to
provide the class with a cornucopia of primary materials, from film programs of early twentieth
century Chautauquas to visual records of Le Corbusier and Xenakis Philipps Pavilion at the 1958
Worlds Fair. In both cases the excitement of student-led discovery was accompanied by a vivid
demonstration of the weeks theme: the moving image in its live, performative dimension. Student
presentations and discussion-leading also promote a culture of mutual responsibility for the courses
success.
Finally, it is equally vital to cultivate a classroom environment where healthy skepticism is
sanctioned and alternative viewpoints and life-experiences related to the material are invited. Since
our field deals with popular culture and its historic permutations, it is, to my mind, crucial to allow
students to doubt and question the validity of established theories and ultimately develop an attitude
of critical appreciation of the endless varieties of moving images that they encounter daily. Teaching
in a field as interdisciplinary and evolving as film and media studies necessitates a constant
adaptation and diversification of ones pedagogical techniques, one driven by both the changing
nature of the content as well as the format of our field of study. Both inside and outside the
classroom I have tried to provide my students with the tools they need to face their image-saturated
present while appreciating the historical and conceptual context of the media that make it up.