Though I specialize in early and 19th-century American literature, my professional teaching experience is as a generalist. I teach broadly in literature and English studies at AUS, ranging across period, geography, genre, and form. My courses include introductory literature courses and advanced undergraduate electives in American literature topics. I also teach general education courses in public speaking and academic research writing. Sample course descriptions, syllabi, and course websites are included below.
My teaching philosophy focuses on literature and writing as conversation, privileging student-centered learning and productive listening. Prior to joining AUS, I taught in a secondary school that employed Exeter Academy’s Harkness discussion model, which teaches students how to take responsibility for their own learning and offers models for respectful and deep engagement with ideas and texts. Further extending the focus on “conversation,” I believe that teaching students how to write effectively is a core responsibility of all literature and English courses, and to this end, students engage in a range of analytical and creative writing assignments to engage with ideas and enter a larger scholarly and social conversations around texts. Digital humanities pedagogy — meaning both teaching with digital resources as well as critically examining digital media as texts — informs all of my classes, whether it be through using computational text analysis tools to analyze student writing, examining digital archives to trace the material culture surrounding texts, or writing with multi-modal digital publishing platforms to remix and reform the traditional seminar paper.
Selected Recent Courses
ENG 410 American Novel
- Storytelling and Identity in the Contemporary American Novel (Fall 2022). Incorporated a grant-funded international virtual exchange project with an advanced Arabic class at Dickinson College, USA.
- Frauds, Fakes, and Fictions (Spring 2020)
- Bestsellers in American Literature and Culture (Spring 2018). Student final project: a collaboratively-authored Scalar book on “The Bestselling Novel.”
ENG 394 Comics (Fall 2021)
ENG 214 17th-19th Century American Literature
- Stories of America (Spring 2022)
- Settler Colonialisms (Spring 2018)
ENG 210 Introduction to Literature (Fall 2017; Fall 2018; Fall 2019; Spring 2021)
ENG 185 Playing With Texts (Fall 2020; Spring 2022; Spring 2023)
ENG 204 Advanced Academic Writing
- Themed research-writing courses: Sustainability and Global Problems; Interventions in Higher Education