Teaching


Purdue University

“Transformative Texts: Critical Thinking & Communication I, Antiquity to Modernity,” SCLA 101, Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts Program (Four sections each in Fall 2021 and Spring 2022). A humanities-based general education course geared towards first-year students in science and engineering fields. Courses center transformative literary texts, with an emphasis on written communication and information literacy. I designed my four Fall sections around a theme of “Multi-Perspective Texts.” My four Spring sections investigated “Science and Narrative.”

Emory University

“Interdisciplinary Approaches to Economic Inequality,” English 389W, Section 2 (Spring 2021). Upper-division, writing-intensive course focused on the central problem of economic inequality, from Victorian Britain to today. Course texts drawn from the literature of the Industrial Revolution and put in conversation with current issues, such as economic recession, educational equity, affordable housing, universal basic income, public health, and environmental justice. Taught remotely.

“Reading Communities: What the Victorians Knew about Learning in Tough Times,” English 389W, Section 7 (Fall 2020). Upper division course focused on Victorian literature and the history of reading in the nineteenth century. Collectively, the class considered a central question: how might we adapt and repurpose nineteenth-century reading practices for a remote learning environment? The hope of the class is that reanimating this historical form might help us to form social bonds through literature in a time of social distancing. Taught remotely.

University of California, Santa Barbara

“Reading Communities: The Social Life of Literature,” English 165RC (Spring 2020). Upper-division course based in nineteenth-century literature and the digital humanities. Partnership with the UCSB Reads program and a “sister” Environmental Studies class throughout the quarter. Taught remotely.

“Literature and its Uses: How to Solve Problems with Books,” English 11 (Winter 2019 and Winter 2020). Introductory course that placed Victorian authors in conversation with twenty-first-century issues such as environmental justice, economic inequality, and education reform.

“Reading with Scientists: How to Export Literature,” English 148RS (Fall 2018 and Fall 2019). Upper-division course exploring how we might use literature to communicate between humanistic and scientific fields. What questions, for instance, could a well-timed excerpt of Frankenstein help you to explore in a Computer Science course? Included students from a wide spectrum of majors.

“Reading in Santa Barbara: Past, Present, and Future,” English 197 (Spring 2019). Upper-division seminar in which students conducted extensive archival research and organized a public humanities event, in collaboration with the UCSB Library. Emphasis on theoretical and critical texts.

Stanford University

“Reading Politics: The History and Future of Literacy,” English 180B (Summer 2017). Public-humanities-based course in which students considered how best to relate the books we read in school to the needs of the communities around us. Class included an emphasis on community engagement work with local Bay Area literacy centers. Recipient of a Cardinal Course Grant from the Stanford Haas Center for Public Service and listed as a Human Rights Intensive course.

“Novels vs. Dinosaurs: Narratives of Evolution in Nineteenth-Century British Literature and Science,” English 162-W (Spring 2016). Course centered around tandem readings of George Eliot and Charles Darwin with students from humanities and science majors. Part of the Writing Intensive Seminars in English (WISE) Program in the Stanford English Department. Emphasis on literary criticism.

“Display Cases and Databases: The Rhetoric of Collection,” Program in Writing and Rhetoric 1GAD, (Winter and Spring 2014). Freshman writing course, teaching students to craft an original research paper. Course emphasized detailed, personalized feedback through one-on-one student-teacher conferencing. In preparation for teaching, participated in a term of pedagogical training from the leaders of Stanford’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric in Fall 2013.

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