I teach General Education in Literature and Rhetoric. Many of my students come in believing that they can’t ‘do English’ because they simply don’t have the skills. The first semester I taught GEL, a student told me they were too stupid to write well. I aim to combat this sentiment and was able to help the student write a fantastic paper on the bond between blood and marriage in Dracula. After that semester, I received the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award and after my second year of Rhetoric, I received the Doug Trank Memorial Award for Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring. I create confidence in my students by emphasizing the validity and quality of their interpretations and making them cocreators in the classroom.
Courses Taught
ENGL 1200: Interpretation of Literature: Gender | 2026
This course aims to help students think deeply about gender, and about transness in particular. It’s an opportunity to consider literary strategies for depicting concepts and experiences that are hard to talk about. We’re going to look at gender across a variety of genres and consider how our reading of these literary representations of gender affects our understanding of the reality of gender, and transness especially, in twenty-first century America, as well as how our discussions of that reality affect our literary reading.
ENGL 1200: Interpretation of Literature: Medieval Monsters | 2025
This course highlights monstrosity in medieval literature. Rather than provide concrete definitions to help undergraduate students identify the monsters from the non-monsters, students cultivate a nuanced understanding of monstrosity to see that it’s more than just black and white thinking. The central concern of the course is the act of interpretation, as students use and refine their reading and writing skills.
ENGL 1200: Interpretation of Literature: Medieval Fantasies | 2024
In this course, undergraduate students examine how the medieval period proves William Faulkner’s assertion that “The Past is never dead. It’s not even past,” to be true. Students read medieval literature to provide a foundation for discussing how issues of gender, sexuality, religion, and class compare with their conceptions in contemporary society. The central concern of the course is the act of interpretation, as students use and refine their reading and writing skills.
ENGL 1200: Interpretation of Literature: Adaptations | 2023
This course focuses primarily on “ways of reading,” asking undergraduate students to become aware of themselves as readers, to learn how to deal with different kinds of texts, and to understand how texts exist within larger historical, social, political, and cultural contexts. The central concern of the course is the act of interpretation, as students use and refine their reading and writing skills to respond critically and sensitively to literary texts.
RHET 1030: Rhetoric | 2021-2023
Rhetoric teaches undergraduate students the essential skills of advanced learning and higher education. In rhetoric classes, students learn to think logically, discover wrong or weak arguments, build a good case on a controversial topic, and overcome the all-too-common fear of speaking in public so that they can deliver crisp and well-prepared speeches.
Teaching Documents
Lesson Plans
Teaching Observations
