Teaching

Naomi Bennett is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Honors College at Ball State University, and an adjunct instructor for the Masters of Liberal Arts program at Tulane University. She has previous taught at Lousiana State University as an Instructor in the Department of Communication Studies and at California State University, Los Angeles, where she was a graduate teaching associate in the Department of Theatre and Dance.

Undergraduate (lower-division):

Introduction to Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Introduction to Research in Humanities & Social Sciences
Introduction to Performing Literature
Fundamentals of Communication
Public Speaking
Acting Games and Exercises

Undergraduate (upper-division & honors):

Performing Visual Art
Performance and Technology
Pandemic Performance
Performance Composition
Digital Performance in Everyday Life
Acting Fundamentals: Scene Study
Zombie Films
Sex and Zombies
Black Women in Film

Graduate level:

Zombies, Culture, & Society
Digital Performance

Other areas of interest include:

Installation art
Digitally-mediated performance
Emergent pandemic performance genres
Phenomenology, liveness, and realness
Physical theater and devising
Clowning
Digital embodiment
Zombies as cultural metaphor

Pictured: Naomi Bennett, California State University, Los Angeles

Communication-Intensive Pedagogy

Naomi's teaching is rooted in Communication-Intensive pedagogy, incorporating interdisciplinary learning and high-impact practices to encourage student learning that goes beyond the classroom. She is one of the inaugural recipients of the Lillian Bridwell-Bowles Innovative C-I Teacher Award in Spring 2025 for her incorporation of Communication Intensive pedagogy and innovative approaches to teaching.

In her performance classes and creative scholarship, Naomi incorporates various physical practices as part of her pedagogy, including Contact Improv, InterPlay, Clowning, and is a (formerly) certified yoga teacher.

Read about her innovative teaching methods for performance composition in LSU's Communication Across the Curriculum's Teaching C-I Substack Spotlight Series.