Marusya Bociurkiw Home Teaching

One of the most important teaching experiences I ever had was as a volunteer instructor for a storefront women’s humanities program in the Downtown Eastside, a low-income neighbourhood in Vancouver.

I taught 3 units of a course called Women and Popular Culture. I was inexperienced in this kind of environment, and so I assigned readings that were, perhaps, over the heads of the women, many of whom hadn’t completed high school. But my students - unruly, brilliant and tough - rose to the occasion. They had been given free dictionaries, and while I lectured they held them in their hands like gospels. It pissed them off when they couldn’t look up words like “discourse”, or “agency”, in their dictionaries, so I felt challenged, too, because I was asked to define and provide background for every single theory and idea at hand. Discussion, needless to say, was nuanced and intense.

This experience has become a model for me. In general, I try to get students to reach a higher level in their thinking, and to trust in their inherent skills and abilities. I enjoy the intellectual community of a classroom. I think of teaching as a creative endeavour that is linked to my writing practice , theoretical work, and activism. It’s also a performance: a weekly theatrical production involving lighting, jokes, props, and a showgirl’s panache.

Here are some of the courses I’ve taught over the years. I also do lectures and artists’ talks on specific topics.
  • Reading Television (ENG 80A/B), English Department, Ryerson University, Toronto
  • Tracking the Lesbian in Cinema, Television and New Media” (UNI375), Sexual Diversity Studies Program, University of Toronto.
  • Women and Popular Culture (WS 205) , Women’s Studies Department, Simon Fraser University
  • "Media, Gender, Globalization, Activism", (WS 301), Women’s Studies Department, Simon Fraser University
  • "Women and Film" (WS 412), Women’s Studies, SFU.
  • "Migration & Diaspora in Cinema" (FPA 237), School for the Contemporary Arts, SFU.
  • "Race and Representation" (GEVA 311) Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design
  • "Media Production" (IMED 201), Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design