Teaching Philosophy & Responsibilities
A core component of my teaching is to acknowledge these individual differences, to incorporate them into my lessons when possible, and to always remain aware that each student will have a different relationship to course materials.... While over the course of my career I may have hundreds of students come through my classroom, students (typically) have only one experience in my course; it’s my responsibility to make that experience worthwhile and meaningful.
Class photo with my final Rhetoric students (Spring 2017). [All photos
on site used with student permission.]
Teaching Philosophy Statement
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A core component of my teaching is the recognition that each student comes to my classroom with beliefs, interests, and experiences that set them apart from their classmates. As an instructor, I remain aware that each student will have a unique relationship to course materials. It is only through exploring these differences that we can have productive and illuminating conversations about literature. It’s essential that students make personal connections to the texts we read, that they don’t simply read the words on the page and forget them by the end of the semester. My lesson plans are often designed to help students have a more immersive relationship to course materials. For example, when we discuss characterization in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, students are put into small groups and asked to perform a tableau of an important passage from the novel in front of the class; that is, they recreate a scene and freeze in place, making sure that their body language and facial expressions convey the feelings of the character in that moment. In the conversations that follow, students explain their choices and recognize how embodying that character has forced them to think deeply about the character’s feelings and motivations. When I read Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl with my students at the University of Iowa, I brought them to the university’s Center for Computer-Aided Design, where my students put on virtual reality headgear that allowed them to see a recreation of the garret space Jacobs occupied for seven years. When students read about her experience, they expressed mild disbelief that she spent so long in the space; when they physically saw the space through the VR headset, they were visibly shocked and often remarked that they could never live in such conditions. These reactions indicated how they were making connections between their own lives and the text, an important step in helping them recognize the value of reading.
I design writing assignments to not only have students think deeply about course texts, but to also consider how our course themes resonate with their own experiences. I typically do this by assigning creative work for one of my major writing assignments. For example, after reading Audre Lorde’s automythography Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, I ask students to compose their own automythographies, in which they consider how their unique identities have shaped how they experience the world. In the rationales that accompany their work, students showcase how the assignment helped them better understand the course objectives and more deeply engage with Lorde’s text.
Another key component of my teaching is trust. This applies to my trust in students—that they are dedicating all the time and energy they can to our course, that their reasons for missing class or needing extensions are valid, that they challenge peers from a place of genuine inquiry—and in a peer-to-peer context, given the centrality of discussion in my classroom. Collaboration and community-building are pillars of my pedagogy. Twice a semester I meet with each student in office hours to discuss major writing assignments. During these conferences, I make time to also discuss their experience in our class and, should they be willing, their semester overall. These conferences are productive in multiple ways; since incorporating them, my students perform better on their written assignments and participate more often in class. Through question roll call, conferences, and a relaxed and congenial atmosphere in the classroom, my students are active, engaged participants, willing to express themselves and able to connect their own experiences with the course materials. At least one per week, I have students work in groups and I regularly assign major projects in teams. While many college students dread groupwork, my students always approach this work with excitement, since they know their peers well and understand that our classroom culture means that each student will be held accountable for contributing to the project.
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A major joy—and challenge—of teaching is starting each semester with a new group of students who will respond differently to course materials. With my style of teaching, I try to ensure that each student, each semester will both read and compose texts that resonate with them beyond their time in my class. My commitment to equity also demands that I devote time and resources to helping each individual student based on their needs, a challenge I meet via my ungrading and conferencing system. While over the course of my career I may have hundreds of students come through my classroom, students will have only one experience of my class. It’s my responsibility to make that experience worthwhile and meaningful, and to remember that each student arrives with a unique background and set of values that enrich our class experience.
Freddy, seen here wearing VR headgear, reaches into the virtually constructed garret space in which Harriet Jacobs lived for seven years.
Teaching Responsibilities
Lafayette College
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Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of English
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Literature of the (Post)Plantation: Reckoning with and Resisting the Legacies of the Plantation (Fall '22, Fall '23)
Advanced English major course examining texts from the late 18th century through the 21st century to identify how the collapse of plantation slavery created shockwaves in the way Americans conceive of race and belonging that reverberate today, in political and legal structures, conceptions of distinct U.S. geographies, and broader cultural narratives of national identity. The course does not focus solely on the harmful legacies of the Plantation, but also considers how Black life and art have thrived despite the nation’s investment in antiblackness, focusing at times on fugitivity, survivance, and an ethics of care.
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Major Assignments: Theoretical precís; poetry presentation; research paper; final research project using materials from College archives
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Course Texts: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (Jacobs); Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; Up from Slavery (Washington); The Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois); Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All its Phases (Wells); Passing (Larsen); Beloved (Morrison); Citizen (Rankine); Sing, Unburied, Sing (Ward); Are Prisons Obsolete? (Davis); excerpts from Scenes of Subjection (Hartman), Orphan Narratives (Loichot), In the Wake (Sharpe), and Black Aliveness, Or A Poetics of Being (Quashie); short fiction from Charles W. Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, and others; poetry from Phillis Wheatley, Jupiter Hammon, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, Gwendolyn Bennett, Sterling A. Brown, Langston Hughes, Margaret Walker, Nikki Giovanni, Danez Smith, and others.
Special Topics: Sex and the City (Spring '23)
This course navigates the complex relationships between urban spaces and queer subcultures. Relying on texts including novels, essays, theory, film, and other secondary sources, students don't simply read stories set in cities, but think deeply about the reciprocal relationship whereby the features of the metropolis can shape sexual subcultures, which in turn can alter the dynamics of the city. The specific city in focus is New York City, a sprawling metropolis just ~75 miles from campus. Materials cover various topics within this broader focus, including sex work, cruising culture, and community-based sexual education and activism. While class sessions focus primarily on literary fiction and nonfiction, at times historical, sociological, and theoretical texts grant a fuller picture of the period under discussion.
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Major Assignments: Personal-research paper focusing on student's hometown; theory response paper; final collaborative project mapping the sexual history of Easton, PA; in-class presentation on theoretical reading
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Course Texts: Cities & Sexualities (Hubbard); Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (Delany); Dancer from the Dance (Holleran); Roses in the Mouth of a Lion (Rehman); excerpts from Cruising Utopia (Muñoz) and Another Country: Queer Anti-Urbanism (Herring); How to Survive a Plague (film, dir. France); We Were Here (film, dir. Weissman)
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Black Writers (Spring ’23, Fall ’23, Spring ’24)
This survey course on the African American literary tradition focuses on themes of family and community in texts from key Black literary movements of the 20th-21st centuries, including the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement. As we read works of literature alongside their historical contexts—the Jim Crow era, the great migration, the civil rights movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, etc.—we consider how each author depicts the benefits and challenges of kinship. These readings offer a dynamic and evolving stance on kinship, and at times, we rely on theory to question the very categories of family and community. Major assignments ask students to respond critically and creatively to course materials.
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Major Assignments: Close reading paper; creative paper (original play) relating theme of family to student experience; final paper (creative or critical option); poetry presentation​
Course Texts: Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston); Passing (Larsen); Maud Martha (Brooks); Fences (Wilson); Kindred (Butler); Sing, Unburied, Sing (Ward); excerpts from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (Jacobs), Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Up from Slavery (Washington), The Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois); Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All its Phases (Wells); short fiction from Charles W. Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and others; poetry from Phillis Wheatley, Jupiter Hammon, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, Gwendolyn Bennett, Sterling A. Brown, Langston Hughes, Margaret Walker, Nikki Giovanni, Danez Smith, and others.
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Queer of Color Literature & Theory (Spring '23)
Advanced English major course that navigates the literary and social history of queer life in the US via a focus on queer writers/artists of color. The course begins in the 1950s and runs through key historical junctures including the gay liberation movement, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the era of legislative victories in the early 21st century. In addition to reading many creative works, students also learn of the central role of Black feminism in queer of color critique and read theoretical works from José Esteban Muñoz, E. Patrick Johnson, Roderick A. Ferguson, and others. At times, course looks outside of literature to discuss queer artistic expression via mediums including film—as in the New Queer Cinema movement—and fine art.
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Major Assignments: Autoethnography paper; poetry presentation; theory paper; final collaborative project writing longform narrative about Lafayette campus, which was hosted on the Lafayette College Queer Archives Project website.
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Course Texts: Zami: A Biomythography (Lorde); Giovanni's Room (Baldwin); The Rain God (Islas); A Visitation of Spirits (Kenan); Don't Call us Dead (Smith); Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Muñoz); Borderlands/La Frontera (Anzaldúa); Tongues Untied (film, dir. Marlon Riggs); Combahee River Collective statement; Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries: Survival, Revolt, and Queer Antagonist Struggle; poetry from Nikki Giovanni, Pat Parker, June Jordan, Cherríe Moraga, Essex Hemphill, Assotto Saint, Marvin K. White, David Frechette, Carl Phillips, Tommy Pico, Kitty Tsui, and Justin Chin.
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Introduction to Queer Literature (Fall '22, Spring '24, Fall '25, Spring '26)
English majors course that navigates the history of queer life in America, focusing primarily on literature produced in the latter half of the 20th century. While the course spans history from the mid-century until today, it focuses especially on the 1970s (the gay liberation movement) and the 1980s (the HIV/AIDS epidemic) to better understand how these two decades indelibly shaped how queerness is lived and perceived in the US.
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Major Assignments: Close reading paper; autoethnography (personal essay); poetry presentation; final project creating podcast on queer US history.
Course Texts: A Queer History of the United States (Bronski); Giovanni's Room (Baldwin); Rubyfruit Jungle (Brown); Vanishing Rooms (Dixon); Gender Queer (Kobabe); Tongues Untied (film, dir. Marlon Riggs); Combahee River Collective statement; Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries: Survival, Revolt, and Queer Antagonist Struggle; poetry from Nikki Giovanni, Pat Parker, June Jordan, Cherríe Moraga, Essex Hemphill, Assotto Saint, Marvin K. White, David Frechette, Carl Phillips, Tommy Pico, Kitty Tsui, and others.
Introduction to Creative Writing (Spring '23, Fall '24)
Designed syllabus, assignments, and lesson plans for course taught to undergraduates from across majors and years. Students in this introductory creative writing course are required to write in three genres: poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Class sessions include sessions devoted to studying the form and history of the genres and workshops in which students discuss peer work and provide feedback for revision process.
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Major Assignments: Creative work in poetry, fiction, and non-fiction; final portfolio of revised work; workshop letters for providing peer feedback
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Writing Seminar (Fall '24, Spring '25)
General education writing course for sophomore students across majors. The course is designed to teach students the skills of effective writing and revision. Major essays are revised in a peer workshop and via individual conferences.
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Major Assignments: Rhetorical analysis of advertisement; personal nonfiction essay; argumentative research essay; podcast (incorporating research and interviews)
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Academic Writing (Fall '22, Fall '23)
General education writing course for sophomore students across majors. The course is designed to teach students the skills of effective writing and revision. Major essays are revised in a peer workshop and via individual conferences.
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Major Assignments: Rhetorical analysis of advertisement; personal nonfiction essay; argumentative research essay; podcast (incorporating research and interviews)
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Saint Joseph's University
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Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of English
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Craft of Language (Fall '21)
General education writing course for students across majors. The course is designed to teach students the skills of effective writing and revision. Major essays are revised in a peer workshop and via individual conferences.
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Major Assignments: Rhetorical analysis of advertisement; argumentative research essay; podcast (incorporating research and interviews)
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Creative Writing: Introductory Workshop (Fall '21)
Designed syllabus, assignments, and lesson plans for course taught to undergraduates from across majors and years. Students in this introductory creative writing course are required to write in three genres: poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Class sessions include sessions devoted to studying the form and history of the genres and workshops in which students discuss peer work and provide feedback for revision process.
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Major Assignments: Creative work in poetry, fiction, and non-fiction; final portfolio of revised work; workshop letters for providing peer feedback
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University of Iowa
Sole Instructor, Department of English
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Queer Movements: Queer of Color Literature and Theory (Spring '21)
As the Huston Diehl Distinguished Dissertation fellow, designed syllabus, assignments, and lesson plans for course taught primarily to English majors. The course examined the history of queer art and political action from the last 75 years through writings by queer writers of color, who were often at the forefront of queer liberation movements. Readings began in the '50s and moved chronologically to the present, focusing on several important moments in queer history, including the gay liberation movement, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the recent interest in a more capacious understanding of sexual and gender identities. The final project allowed students to research the queer history of Iowa City and collect this history into a public-facing presentation.
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Major Assignments: Autoethnography (personal essay); intersectional analysis of character from course text; poetry presentation; community-engaged final project in collaboration with LBGTQ Iowa Archive.
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Course Texts: Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (Lorde); Giovanni's Room (Baldwin); The Rain God (Islas); A Visitation of Spirits (Kenan); Don't Call Us Dead (Smith); Combahee River Collective statement; Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries: Survival, Revolt, and Queer Antagonist Struggle; “‘Quare’ Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know about Queer Studies I Learned from My Grandmother” (Johnson); selections from Disidentifications (Muñoz) and Borderlands/La Frontera (Anzaldúa); poetry from Nikki Giovanni, Pat Parker, June Jordan, Cherríe Moraga, Essex Hemphill, Assotto Saint, Marvin K. White, David Frechette, Carl Phillips, Tommy Pico, and Kitty Tsui.
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Interpretation of Literature; Legacies of the Plantation (Fall '20)
Designed syllabus, assignments, and lesson plans for course taught to undergraduates from across majors. This course examined literature that came directly from the plantation as well as the texts that emerged after slavery’s formal end to identify how the collapse of the plantation system created shockwaves that impact how Americans conceive of race and belonging that reverberate today in our political and legal structures, conceptions of distinct U.S. geographies, and broader cultural narratives of national identity. Course texts helped us consider how racism was redesigned via Jim Crow laws and a history of racial violence, learn more about migration out of the South, and consider how the postplantation survives today via mass incarceration and the violence of the modern police state.
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Major Assignments: Close reading essay; research essay; creative option for second essay (writing original play); final exam; reading journal; poetry presentation
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Course Texts: Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurson), The Glass Menagerie (Williams), Kindred (Butler), Dutchman (Baraka); excerpts from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Jacobs); short stories including "The Wife of His Youth" (Chesnutt), "Désirée’s Baby" (Chopin), "Afternoon" and "That I Had the Wings" (Ellison), "The Appropriation of Cultures" (Everett); non-fiction including the 1619 Project (NYT), "Time and Distance Overcome" (Biss) and excerpts from The New Jim Crow (Alexander); poetry from Gwendolyn Bennett, Sterling Brown, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Ai, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Ntozake Shange, Margaret Walker, Juliana Huxtable, Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, Carl Phillips, Danez Smith, Phillip B. Williams, Joshua Bennett, Erica Dawson, Eve L. Ewing, Ross Gay, Terrence Hays, Claudia Rankine
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Interpretation of Literature; Somewhere on the Outside: The Alienated Self and Other (Spring '19)
Designed syllabus, assignments, and lesson plans for course taught to undergraduates from across majors. After analyzing the "quintessential story of alienation"—Mary Shelley's Frankenstein—this course turns to other texts that allows students to think about alienation from both inside and outside perspectives, consider what determines meaningful membership in a community, and challenge assumptions about the alienated. A diverse collection of major course texts allow us to consider how feelings of liminality and exclusion can derive from markers such as sexuality, class, and race.
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Major Assignments: Close reading essay, creative non-fiction essay, research essay, midterm and final exams.
Course Texts: Frankenstein (Shelley), Giovanni's Room (Baldwin), The Glass Menagerie (Williams), Kindred (Butler), Dutchman (Baraka), Trifles (Glaspell); excerpts from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Jacobs), poetry from queer writers including Frank O'Hara, Danez Smith, Pat Parker, and others; short stories including "A Haunted House" (Woolf), "The Werewolf" (Carter), "Real Women Have Bodies" (Machado), "Sea Oak" (Saunders), and "Hands" (Anderson); non-fiction including "Time and Distance Overcome" (Biss) and excerpts from The New Jim Crow (Alexander).
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Interpretation of Literature; Fantastic Literature (Fall ’17-Summer '18)
Designed syllabus, assignments, and lesson plans for course taught to undergraduates from across majors. Course readings span a wide array of fabulist genres (fairy tales, science fiction, magical realism, etc.) with the intent of understanding how and why writers use fantastic literary techniques to discuss the very real political and social concerns of their times.
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Major Assignments: Close reading essay, original creative essays (fairy tale about overcoming a challenge; sci-fi story about a relevant social issue), creative interpretation (turning a short story into a one-act play), research essay.
Course Texts: The Handmaid's Tale (Atwood), The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (Carter), Kindred (Butler), Dutchman (Baraka); fairy tales from Giambattista Basile, Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen; short stories such as "When It Changed" (Russ), "Sea Oak" (Saunders), "Hands" (Anderson), "The Lottery" (Jackson).
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Sole Instructor, Department of Rhetoric
Rhetoric 1030 (Fall ’15-Spring '17)
Designed syllabus, assignments, and lesson plans for course designed to teach the analysis of practice of argument in both speaking and writing. Evaluated all student work and conducted one-on-one conferences with each student to discuss essay drafts. My section focused on identifying the role media and popular culture have in shaping our actions as citizens and consumers. The course is a general education requirement and was comprised of 18-20 students per section, mostly freshmen and sophomores, from various departments.
Major Assignments: Rhetorical analysis essay (analyzing the lyrics of a song), compare/contrast speech (comparing two advertisements for similar products), argumentative essay (examining ideology in war propaganda), group podcast (arguing the role technology plays in a public space in Iowa City), class debate.
Course Texts: The Influencing Machine (Gladstone), “In Persuasion Nation” (Saunders); excerpts from "Hiroshima" (Hersey), Thank You for Arguing (Heinrichs), and Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Didion).
Sole Instructor, Rhetoric 1060 (Fall '16)
Designed syllabus, assignments, and lesson plans for course similar to Rhetoric 1030, but focused specifically on speaking and reading skills. Major assignments included rhetorical compare/contrast speech, analysis of 2016 election rhetoric and candidate positions, and group podcast.
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Tutor, The Writing Center (’15-present)
Met one-on-one with enrollment students (scheduled meetings twice a week) or drop-ins to work on writing skills, specific assignments, and general practices for being a prepared and productive student.
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Partial Instructor, Foundations of the English Major (’14-’15)
Designed and led weekly discussion section for survey literature course of approximately 15 English majors. Connected class readings to course goals and facilitated discussion. Graded all essay assignments, mid-term and final exams. Readings included Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Tempest (Shakespeare), Sula (Morrison), and poetry from the Norton Anthology of English Literature.
Partial Instructor, Dead is the New Alive: The Zombie Metaphor in Contemporary Fiction, Film, and TV (Fall ’14)
Graded short answer reading quizzes for a 50-student course, giving professor feedback on quiz drafts and suggesting edits when appropriate. Helped grade mid-term/final examinations, comprised of several short essays.