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Teaching

Philosophy

James A. Berlin defines the “liberatory classroom” as a space where reflective dialogue engages both teacher and student in a joint practice of resisting the alienating or oppressive features of culture through shared responsibility for learning and for the cultivation of a critical consciousness.[1] In my teaching, as well as in leadership and mentoring positions, I am committed to liberatory frameworks for approaching diversity, intersectionality, and equity. I believe such frameworks foster classroom communities that are more dynamic and, more importantly, more just.

This work begins in my courses with careful juxtapositions of texts and contexts that privilege voices not traditionally heard in canonical models of literary excellence. For instance, students in my Feminist Literary Theory course encounter essays authored by indigenous women, sex workers, fandoms and collectives, experimental artists, activists, and pop musicians—examples of so-called “low theory” to which we dedicate as much time as the “high theory” we study. Likewise, students in my course on Sci-Fi and Speculative Fiction spend multiple units discussing Afrofuturism and Black speculative traditions, from W.E.B. Du Bois to N.K. Jemisin. This literary history is not simply important as representation; it is essential to our examination of shifts in popular and scholarly interest in the speculative genres, to conveying the relationship between science fiction and postcolonialism or postnationalism, and to communicating the full range of possible futures that appear in speculative texts. Meanwhile, students taking my course on Climate Change and U.S. and Global Souths find themselves engaged in a semester-long investigation of global environmental injustice. When we read works like Imbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were or Helon Habila’s Oil on Water alongside post-Katrina narratives, like Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones or Natasha Trethewey’s Beyond Katrina, for example, students gain a better sense of the magnitude of the ecological problems we face as a global commons. All writing might be said to be a future-oriented act, and my writing-intensive classes ultimately ask students to join other choruses of voices to imagine what their futures will look like and what they can do to build the futures they imagine.

Situating literary and theoretical texts within meaningful critical and cultural contexts, I guide students toward strategies for interpretive thinking, intellectual resourcefulness, and open reflection—skills that translate easily from the classroom to the rest of their lives. In so doing, I invite them to see both the texts we study and those which they, themselves, produce as collaborative processes that depend upon active dialogue, oriented toward possibility rather than fixity. By design and in practice, my classes demonstrate my belief that each student’s participation is integral to the making of meaning and that a deep understanding of any topic depends upon a desire to invent new pathways to knowledge, not just to respond or adapt to those that already exist. This ethos takes the form of inquiry-based courses through which students raise the consciousness of their classmates via collaborative projects. Most importantly, I aim for students to connect the conversations we have in class to other on- and off-campus spaces and communities. Last year, for example, I designed a writing course grounded in labor histories, theories of work, and post-work futures for first-year Honors students. Throughout the fall of 2023, I brought students to the Georgia State University Library’s Southern Labor Archives, working with them alongside a team of archivists and research librarians to develop original, public-facing projects. Students’ research culminated in a series of labor pamphlets based on primary sources they discovered in the archives as well as a final project, wherein students collaborated across both sections to produce two, interconnected seasons of an audio podcast series. The development of this course was supported by a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grant from the Department of English and a Writing Across the Curriculum Course Redesign Fellowship from CETLOE, and its success demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and ongoing funding for thoughtful innovation taking place in early-college classes like mine.

I believe in the efficacy of George D. Kuh’s “High Impact Practices” in higher education.[2] Not only have I facilitated or participated in several integrated learning communities, cross-disciplinary faculty clusters, and themed undergraduate seminars, I utilize collaborative, research-based, capstone projects at every level of undergraduate instruction. Research illustrates how experiential learning, especially paired with metacognitive reflection, helps students make connections between local and global issues as they hone their own standpoints. At Georgia State, I have developed and taught courses on a range of environmental themes from climate histories and futures to environmental activism. Such courses emphasize global citizenship, ecological precarity, environmental justice, and sustainable praxis, asking students to think about their personal, generational, or communal roles in environmental issues, but also, importantly, about the limits of individual accountability and consumer ethics. These concepts fill in gaps in prior ecological learning for most early undergraduates, and their relevance to contexts beyond the classroom or the university motivates students to rise to the challenge of thinking and writing about difficult material. Though they are primarily writing courses, my classes have interdisciplinary appeal, necessitating a broad definition of literacy to include literacies of ecology and place and inviting opportunities for hand-on, experiential projects involving growing food, making art, and exploring the region around them. Additionally, in my Honors Service-Learning Seminar, students begin their semester in the classroom, reading and thinking about Atlanta as a rich and thriving ecosystem. Then, they spend eight weeks in the field, volunteering with local, environmental nonprofits and engaging in public scholarship that advances those organizations’ missions. I have presented on the effectiveness of these courses at the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment and elsewhere, but their impact goes beyond student learning. Courses like my Honors Service-Learning Seminar forge valuable alliances between the university and the city around it, advancing GSU’s strategic goal of placemaking.

My teaching expertise covers courses in queer and feminist literature, theory, and media; eco-feminism and the environmental humanities; introductory and advanced composition; creative writing, editing, and publishing; modern and contemporary literature; and introductions to literary study. In literature and writing courses, the themes I work with are broad and flexible, drawing students’ attention to subtler connections between the form or focus of a series of texts rather than period or genre. This prompts learners to construct alternative literary histories and archives that hold more meaning for them than do notions of canonicity or style. In my classes, students read works by living, often local writers, who blend or disrupt form and convention. Writers like Carmen Maria Machado, Ocean Vuong, Jericho Brown, or Maggie Nelson, whose work is timely and accessible—they, themselves, often accessible to developing writers at readings, signings, and literary festivals or on social media—both appeal to students and have much to teach them. Encountering contemporary works in an academic setting allows students to gain an understanding of the concerns of contemporary writers, who, like them, produce the work for which they find a present need.

As a first-generation scholar, I remind students that their diverse backgrounds and perspectives are not setbacks, but rather the very grounds of any interesting, lively community. Modeling a path of lifelong learning, I invigorate my classroom practice by routinely planning new courses around topics that pique my own curiosity. By approaching new texts and concepts as a fellow learner and partner in the process, I upset notions of hierarchy and expertise that can preempt deep and meaningful learning experiences. Working with the Honors College and EPIC (Experiential, Project-based Interdisciplinary Curriculum) has encouraged me to try new modes of instruction as well. Digital humanities projects I’ve designed, such as interactive mapping assignments and student zine libraries, not only empower students by demonstrating that they can become skilled producers of the kinds of texts they read and study, but also amplify their voices. Challenging both myself and my students to navigate the world as readable text and re/writable script, I hope to demonstrate how adopting an inquisitive, rather than acquisitive perspective can be rewarding and world-changing work.

[1] James Berlin. “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class.” College English, vol. 50, no. 5, 1998, pp. 477-494.

[2] George D. Kuh, “High-impact educational practices: What they are, who has access to them, and why they matter” (Report, Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2008), 13.