Teaching

Courses:

Introduction to British Literature before 1789

By 1789, Great Britain was one of the most powerful empires in the world, having colonized portions of Africa, the Caribbean, and North America. Why was such a small island consumed with gaining such great power? Could national and political power somehow transfer to personal ability and agency, or vice versa? In this class, we will consider the potential connections and conversations between political power and personal agency in British literary texts, including the works of Chaucer, Sidney, Donne, Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, and Pope, to name only a few. Through the exploration of these texts, we will consider Great Britain’s obsession with power and agency—be it through theological, political, sexual, or literary contexts—in order to interrogate the ways in which the world of Great Britain before 1789 continues to shape our understanding of the world around us.

The Body and Medical Humanities

This course investigates how we think about and make sense of our bodies from a medical humanities perspective. What does it mean to have a “normal” or “abnormal” body? What social, political, and cultural conditions shape and enforce these boundaries? How do those conditions interact or conflict with each other? Surveying literary texts in diverse genres and covering a broad historical and geographical scope, students will investigate how we construct and interpret images, narratives, and counternarratives around bodies, critically examining the philosophical and ethical implications of these discourses in contemporary contexts.  Our primary texts will include William Shakespeare’s Richard III, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Audre Lorde’s Cancer Journals, and shorter texts by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, and Suleika Jaouad, among others. Classtime will be discussion-based, involving cooperative and inquiry-based learning approaches.

Rhetoric and Composition (First Year Writing)

ENGL 1030 uses a rhetorical approach to help students improve critical reading and writing skills and craft effective arguments. Rhetoric is the study of persuasion, and we’ll spend time analyzing arguments to determine why audiences might be persuaded by them. Studying rhetoric helps us understand the language people really use, whether they are writing or speaking or composing multimedia texts. Rhetoric touches all, and it helps everyone – no matter what they study in school or do in life – make sense of how people use language to communicate. You will learn how to research, compose, and revise ethical and effective arguments to address specific audiences. While this is a writing class, you can expect to be studying and creating arguments that take many forms: written, oral/aural, visual, and material.

Our first unit begins with an introduction to rhetoric and reorienting our approaches to reading, writing and analyzing. Our second unit will then move into research and argument based on asking better questions. The final unit will focus on argument, analysis, and using self-reflection to improve writing. Throughout the course, we will take a process-based approach to writing, and each paper or project you complete will build on the skills and strategies of previous assignments and ask you to develop them further.

Sex & Sexuality: Introduction to British Literature 

This survey course spans the medieval, Renaissance, and Restoration periods of British literature with a focus on how sex, sexuality and gender appear in these texts. How are we empowered (or not) by desire and the physical body? We will consider the way the texts we read engage with sex, sexuality, and gender as they relate to politics, theology, marriage, colonization, and individuality, among other topics. Come to class ready to ask and answer questions. Most class time will be discussion-based, with an emphasis on critical thinking and class participation. 

Introduction to Fiction: Myths and Legends

How are myths and legends made? This introduction to fiction focuses on narrative and fictional constructions of myths and legends. Our objectives will be to define, understand, and then deconstruct the distinctions between myth and legend within the broader category of fiction. We will also consider how myths and legends can be a source of social and political empowerment as well as cultural confusion. We will read a variety of fictional myths as well as the fact/fiction blend of legends. Most class time will be discussion-based, with an emphasis on critical thinking and class participation. Class assignments will include two essays, a midterm, a final, and quizzes.

Imagination and Interpretation: Page and Stage

How do we know who we are? How do we distinguish between authentic and performed versions of self? This course will introduce students to a variety of texts and authors as they appear on the private page and the public stage. Students will learn how to read and discuss texts with an analytical eye and how to write a short literary analysis of a text. Authors will include Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Wordsworth, Austen, Woolf, and others. Requirements: 2 papers, midterm, final exam, and some quizzes.

Power, Passion, and Protest in British Literature

A high-speed, one-semester introductory overview of British literature, from its medieval beginnings to (almost) the present day, with attention to literature’s capacities to pursue desire and to exercise (and resist) various kinds of power. As we survey this history, and trace the story of one of the world’s great cultural treasures, we will consider literature in relation to the social, political, intellectual, and religious histories in which it was written, as well as its relevance to our own time. Authors covered will include Chaucer, Shakespeare, Wroth, Donne, Milton, Behn, Swift, Wordsworth, Keats, Browning, Rossetti, Tennyson, Woolf, Joyce, Eliot, and Beckett. Method of instruction: lecture and discussion. Methods of evaluation: midterm and final exams, quizzes, short essays, participation.

Shaping Subjectivities

Through a variety of texts that analyze the origins of human subjectivity, this class will explore the ways we rely on or reject external influences in the formation of self. This course provides tools that will make students more efficient readers, writers, and speakers. Class objectives will include utilizing basic techniques for interpreting and constructing arguments, recognizing subtext in fiction and non-fiction works, and honing critical reading and composition skills.

Identity and Individualism

Students write thesis-driven, evaluative, and persuasive essays in response to a variety of relatively short texts from a number of academic disciplines, including those in scientific and technical fields. Texts focus on questions of identity and what it means to be an individual. Both the texts students read and the texts students create employ and exemplify the principles of academic discernment and discourse.

Ways of Seeing: Making Sense of Visual Images

This course examines a variety of images, from high art to popular culture, as well as consider a number of scholarly articles in order to construct students’ own understanding of how the artist, cultural influences, artistic media, and personal contexts affect the way people respond to visual images. This class meets occasionally in the campus art museum and facilitates first-hand research activities that culminate in the final research paper.