Below are descriptions of some classes I teach. Reach out to me for copies of syllabi or to talk shop.
- “Conflict and Contradiction in Early American Literature”
I’ve become a true believer in the survey course. My approach to the early American lit survey focuses on conflict as a way to teach both the political and cultural contradictions at the heart of American literary texts (mythologizing settler contact versus the reality of native dispossession, Jeffersonian rhetoric versus racial slavery, etc.) and literary methodology. So by reading the 1776 Maryland Gazette, for example, which contains republican screeds immediately next to runaway slave advertisements (hat tip to my teaching mentor Randy Ontiveros for that activity), students complicate their received ideas and practice how to read texts for the kinds of tensions that create literary meaning.
- “Protesting American Literature”
In the second American literature survey, I use protest literature as a way to illustrate literary history and movements. For instance, placing Wright, Baldwin, and Himes in conversation enables us to discuss elements of Realism and Naturalism; Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead opens up space for exploring (and critiquing) literary Modernism; and Ishmael Reed’s The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda introduces students to hallmarks of literary Postmodernism. We also devote a lot of time to genre fiction and comics. Ultimately, the focus on protest literature helps students understand literary history as well as the longue durée of social justice movements in the US.
- “Are Prisons Obsolete?”
I teach a themed version of the introduction to college composition course that takes its title from and key text as Angela Davis’s Are Prisons Obsolete? Students learn the fundamentals of academic writing—including paragraphing and topic sentences, rhetoric, and revision—by reading and writing on the subjects of mass incarceration and prison abolition. In addition to Davis, students read and watch texts by scholars, activists, and imprisoned people themselves. The provocative course theme gives students something substantive to engage with—which, in my experience, is crucial to a meaningful composition course.
- “As Black as Resistance”
I take this class’s title and premise from the book of the same name by Zoé Samudzi and William C. Anderson. I find that students already know about Black joy in deeply personal ways, but they’re very much looking for historical and literary examples of Black resistance. Thus my version of the African American literature survey begins the literary tradition with Toussaint L’Ouverture’s Constitution and depictions of the Haitian Revolution. We end with our own present, with the Black Lives Matter era, and with a range of cultural texts that include the music and activism of Noname and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Friday Black.
- Developmental Reading and Writing
I take an integrated approach to teaching “developmental” reading and writing, meaning that students best learn these not as separate skills but as a continuous, mutually reinforcing activity. In my approach to this course, I give students substantive essays to read that are also socially relevant and perhaps surprising to them; topics range from the political economy of Tik Toks, film reviews of Joker, and “digital blackface.” I believe that students best learn reading and writing skills when presented with serious and meaningful cultural material. I also make sure to draw readings from the types of online publications and formats that students are likely to encounter in their daily lives.
- Black Diasporic Literature and Culture
This course introduced students to the scholarly study of the Black Diaspora. In order to avoid tokenizing geographic areas, experiences, or histories while covering such a vast subject, I organized the course around key concepts and terms. Students learned about Black (cultural) nationalism by engaging with the work of Abbey Lincoln, Paul Robeson, and Amiri Baraka; through readings by Esi Edugyan and Sadiya Hartman, students learned about the diversity of Black diasporic experiences.
- “Writing the University of Maryland”
While a graduate instructor at the University of Maryland, College Park, I taught a version of the intro to college composition course that I themed around UMD itself. Students developed their writing skills through learning about the history and present of their campus. In particular, I organized the course around issues of race, gender, and class. For instance, students began the course by learning about the University’s founding connections to Maryland slavery. As students grappled with UMD’s legacy of white supremacy, they would further engage with the campus’s present of racist violence and administration. I hope to eventually replicate this themed approach at my current institution.