Teaching & Pedagogy

ENGL 10111: Composition I: Academic Literacies

Study and practice in reading and writing texts towards development of college-level academic literacies. Students will engage through writing and reading in knowledge-based inquiry and sustained critical thinking for the purpose of better understanding the subject or issue. Concepts taught will include academic rhetoric and argumentation, research, and documentation. MOTR ENGL 100.

​

Through three units, each focusing on a particular mode of writing (analysis, reporting, argument), I help students explore and understand the various composite elements of academic writing. We focus on research literacy: finding, evaluating, using, integrating, and citing sources. We also pay special attention to document design, formatting, and organization. While I want students to be aware of linguistic and grammatical elements, and endeavor for prose economy, I try to embodied a linguistic justice approach. Finally, with a series of collaborative exercises, I try to help students help each other and see their own writing, and themselves, a bit more clearly than before. Students conduct peer review, followed by an estimated self-evaluation and evaluation of their peers' reviews, and concluding with a reflection comparing their self-estimates with their actual result to increase self-awareness and mindful writing.

ENGL 10203: Writing & Rhetoric

Writing and Rhetoric is an introductory course that explores the relationship of rhetorical theory to past and contemporary forms of written communication, both digital and offline. Students will use the tools of rhetoric to analyze writing, write persuasively, and think critically about both contemporary and classical rhetorics across an array of cultural contexts. 

In this course, I focus on walking students through primary sources, influential works within the history of rhetoric, as well as situating them within their historical and social contexts. Our assignments consist of readign questions ahead of each class day, which involves a combination of lecture and discussion. Students also write weekly reflections, relating any remaining content questions, interesting quotes from the week, connections of course content to 'real life,' and any advice for adjusting my approach. I assess their learning in a multiple choice and prompt-response exam following each unit, which is modeled on my own comprehensive doctoral exams.

I change the specific assigned readings each semester, this semester was “Middle Ages to Modernity”; beginning with the End of Antiquity, this course traced rhetoric, through the development of Christianity, the monastic tradition (which became the university), the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment to the 20th century. 
We focused on the work of women, as well as religion, figuration, science, philosophy & politics, providing a chance for students to read works they wouldn't encounter anywhere else.

ENGL 10403: Studies in Language, "Bad Words"

Studies of issues related to linguistics, with emphasis on English-language applications beyond traditional or schoolhouse grammar. Specific subject matter of course will change each semester. Possible topics include Ambiguity and Poetics, English and Politics, History and Science of Lexicography, Issues in Translation, Language Acquisition, Philosophies of Language, and so forth. Students may repeat the course with a change in topic.

​

Theme: "Bad Words"

In this course, we will explore the concept of “bad words.” But how and why are some words thought to be “bad”? Are they all “bad” in the same way, for the same reasons, and in the same situations? Is it in the harm they cause (like lies, insults)? or in how they ‘violate’ a presumed ‘calm quiet’ (like profanity, obscenity)? Or both? Or neither? Or something different altogether?

Using the tools of rhetorical theory (signification, affective force, attention to power dynamics and historical conditions, among others), this class explores the way language (speech and writing) not only communicates ideas, but also performs actions on others. Words don’t simply say, but they also do, and seeing how they do and say on the margins will give us insight into how they work pervasively through society, culture, and the human condition.