Justin Horton

TEACHING STATEMENT
I begin the first session of nearly every course I teach with a question: Why are you taking this class?
The most common answer is some variation of a simple declaration: because I like movies. But the
follow-up questionwhy?tends to stump my students. Indeed, it was this elusive question that led me
years earlier to pursue film studies. This deceptively simple query has become a common feature and
animating line of inquiry in the 12 courses Ive taught as instructor of record. How do we, my students
and I, cobble together words adequate to the object of study when it always seems to evade us, to resist
our intellect? What is the precise nature of this pleasure we get from cinema? Why does it draw us in?
Because this fascination with the medium is so multifarious, we can never hope to arrive at one simple
answer to encompass it entirely. I therefore build into my courses multiple opportunities for student
curationwhat Ive come to call my mixtape philosophy of teaching. Assembling a mixtape serves as
an emblem for me of a particular form of affective investment that is manifested through sharing. In my
film history course, for instance, I have asked students to compose posts for a class blog wherein they
curate a film or television clip of their choice and situate it historically (e.g., when, where, by whom, and
for whom was it made) as well as personally (e.g., what strikes you about this scene? Why does it matter
to you, and why should it matter to us?).
There are two important aspects of such assignments, and both serve the goal of making my students and
their interests, rather than myself and my taste, the center of the class. First, our investments in art tell us a
great deal about who we are as people, and providing students a forum to reveal these investments builds
a space of intimate exchange, not only between myself and a student but among the class as a whole.
Second, foregrounding student curation works to de-emphasize or, in some cases, to mount a critique of,
the film canon. For example, I divide my students into groups to analyze Sight & Sounds list of the 50
Greatest Films of All-time, asking them to research each films country of origin and its director. As we
discuss their findings, students quickly discover that white men from Europe and the United States
dominate the list. This raises a number of questions: who gets to make movies? Who votes in the poll?
Who is excluded from representation both on the list and within the films themselves? As an instructor at
Georgia State University, which U.S. News & World Report ranks as one of the 15 most racially and
ethnically diverse campuses in America, I strive to make visible cinemas pervasive history of exclusion
with regard to production, representation, and the critical community that determines value and
influences taste. With this is mind, I ask my students how we might go about constructing alternative
film histories built upon our idiosyncratic investments. My aim is to establish a pedagogical practice that
celebrates the medium and our attachments to particular films or shows that is at the same time keenly
aware of the power structures these films reflect and within which they operate. In my classroom, I invite
students to mount such critiques at any timethere are no sacred cows. Hence, my students frequently
mention in my evaluations that I welcome dissent, encourage debate, and that I am appreciative of
students perspectives.
In my classes, I place a premium on written and verbal expression, but I do so at varying levels of length
and formality. This emphasis is most prevalent in my introductory film analysis course wherein I
integrate multiple writing workshops on topics such as thesis development, argumentation, finding and

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citing sources, and so on. Moreover, I break students into small peer-editing groups and have them share
drafts of their term papers electronically. I stress that a quality essay is the result of a process, and to that
end, I mandate the use of Google Docs so that I may view previous iterations of the final document as
well as the quality and quantity of feedback each student provides to others.
Just as important, though, is lower-stakes writing: assignments that are not heavily weighted in my grade
book. Such mini-assignments allow students a time and space to write without the attendant pressures of
formality, a boon for those who are reluctant to speak up in class or whose writing skills may be below
par. Whats more, these assignments frequently function as checkpoints for larger-scale projects. For
instance, early in the semester I often ask students to list the films they might want to analyze in their
term papers and why. With these potential selections in mind, I suggest articles or books that might be
directly relevant to the film or that might help situate it within a genre or national cinema. In a variation
of this, I ask students to come to class with a hard copy of their rough thesis statements printed out so that
they may exchange them with classmates for a short round of written feedback.
A large-lecture class of course is an altogether different animal, and as such it demands a different
approach. I have twice taught film history to a group of more than 100 students, and what I find missing
in such an environment is the extensive dialogue that so characterizes my smaller classes. To compensate
for this, I require students to use Twitter and a designated course hashtag to answer weekly prompts,
ranging from their reactions to film screenings to supplying examples, say, of contemporary works that
are clearly inspired by the aesthetic of German Expressionism. I embrace Twitter and other new media
platforms as a way to shrink the class and allow my students to interact with me and with one another
in ways that are prohibitive in a vast lecture hall. Even with the limitations imposed by large class sizes,
students frequently describe me in their evaluations as personable and my classes as interactive, and I
attribute this almost entirely to my emphasis on informal communication.
In addition to welcoming students voices in my classroom, I strive to integrate them into my course
design so that they may play an active role in the trajectory of the class. In my upper-level course on
Puzzle Films, for instance, students voted on what form the final group project would take, how the duties
were to be distributed, and how each group was to be evaluated. It is my belief that students take
ownership of their own learning when they are given a say in its direction, and to that end, I gladly
relinquish some of my authority as instructor as a show of trust.
These pedagogical commitments are reflected not only in my own teaching but also in my engagement
with the profession as a whole. During two semesters I have served as a mentor to junior students
teaching for the first time at GSU, and I organized a workshop on practical advice for graduate student
instructors for the 2015 Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference. Moreover, I am a frequent
participant in the Teaching Media Facebook community, sharing (and soliciting) syllabi, lesson plans,
and suggestions for improved undergraduate teaching.
In short, the strategies outlined here are based in an overarching commitment to social equality through
collaboration and sharing. I believe that, ultimately, all teachers are students and all students are teachers,
and the most rewarding types of learning occur when the lines that separate the former from the latter are
blurred.

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