My Teaching Philosophy
Professional Portfolio
My teaching philosophy is based on one key ideal: collaboration. In the classroom, my students and I are on a journey together, learning from one another and challenging each other to consider different perspectives. As an educator, my greatest desire is to learn alongside my students-- to engage in the pursuit of knowledge as a joint endeavor, rather than as a one-way street. Approaching pedagogy in this way has not only created a classroom where students feel empowered to share their own approaches to the text and to their writing, but also given me the opportunity to discover new and exciting ways to read my favorite texts.
Sample Syllabi
These syllabi showcase prospective classes that I would hope to teach in the near future. Each one can be modified for the undergraduate or the graduate classroom.
1
Shakespeare's Queenly Figures
This course centers on the image of the "queenly figure" as presented by William Shakespeare in a selection of his plays. Some of the core questions that this course is based on are the following: Why is the image of the monarch-- and of the Queen in particular-- so difficult to render? How do Shakespeare's portrayals of queens suggest tensions between identity and power, or divinity and humanity?
2
Shakespeare & Star Wars
This course examines a selection of Shakespeare's plays alongside George Lucas' Star Wars films in order to explore how narratives of destiny, power, corruption, and redemption persist across cultural forms. We will spend our time engaging with both authors and their respective works, pushing each one to reveal what human phenomenon they each contend with, and if the overlap is indicative of a wider, time-defying conversation in which both writers took part.
3
The Modernist Exile
This course seeks to track the breakdowns in philosophy that have led us to our current cultural moment: social media, hyper-alienation contrasted against hyper-connection, multiplicities of selves, and the constant rapid rebirth of the zeitgeist. In many ways, these complexities took shape in the wake of WWI, and the resulting movement coined "Modernism" seems to contend with this rupture in cultural, social, and religious norms. How do these literary negotiations not only mark the inception of these core questions, but also reveal the ways in which we are still very much looking for the answers?
4
The Medieval Royal "Self"
This course is interested in the ways that the medieval world theorized about kingship, sovereignty, and divinity. How did medieval rulers themselves think about the divided nature of their position? What were rulers advised in order to be seen as "good kings"? And how did the medieval philosophies of royalty come to eventually shape our current day understandings of power? This seminar will approach these questions from the angle of the literary responses, negotiations, or explanations that engage with them.
First Year Writing Syllabi
These syllabi were developed as part of my time as a graduate teaching assistant. These courses were taught to first-year undergraduates from a variety of majors.
1
WRS 105: Introduction to Writing
In this class, we are dismissing the idea of “good” or “bad” writing. Instead, we are
contextualizing writing within your specific personal experience— the way you have used it, the way you are using it, and the way you hope to use it in the future. To this end, there is “effective” or “not effective” writing.Like with any skill in life, writing must be practiced and honed in order for the writer to become more effective. In doing so, you will not only become more thoughtful and careful writers, but more thoughtful and careful communicators overall.
2
WRS 106: The Idea of "I"
What is the purpose of Literature? What is the purpose of writing it, or writing about it? Why do we read books to begin with? What can they offer us? Why should we continue to read and write about books? There is no one answer to any of these questions– your answer might be different from the answers of your peers. What this class aims to offer you is one possible answer to these questions: literature connects us. What does it connect us to? Once again– this answer is not straightforward. Literature can connect us to a great many things, depending on what we might be searching for, or what any one particular author might be trying to offer us. This class is divided into three modules, and each module presents you with a way to use literature and writing about literature as a source of connection: to further understand yourself, to further understand those around you, and to further understand the way stories from the past might connect to the stories we tell now.