Teaching Experience

English 450: Daily Themes
Writing Tutor, Instructor

English 114: Writing Seminar, “Other Futures: Marginalized Futurity”
4.9/5 student rating

How does one imagine the future when “the future” doesn’t include you? In this class we will explore works that imagine the future as it emerges from the “Other”—the marginalized, the disempowered, the erased. We recognize that these efforts by minoritized groups and people of color are not escapism or fantasy—they are important ways of thinking into and out of the problems of the present. We start with Afrofuturism and its legacies, from Sun Ra and Samuel R. Delany to Janelle Monáe and Black Panther.

We touch on queer utopias, cyborg feminism, Black feminist post-apocalypses, future-oriented politics and policy, Asian-American futurisms, Latinx futurism, as well as immersive art and interactive games made by marginalized creators. Familiarity with any of these is not necessary, since we are ultimately asking the question: how do I envision a future for myself—and what needs to change for that future to happen? Readings will be supplemented by music, visual art, video, and other forms of creative expression.

English 120: Reading and Writing the Modern Essay
4.8/5 student rating

Creative nonfiction is everywhere these days: print and online magazines, blogs, social media. While in the past there might have been a certain idea of what the essay could be and its proper styles and venues, the last few decades have seen the genre explode into a newfound cultural relevance. The nonfiction essay, which is a public, persuasive genre as much as it is a personal and introspective one, has become an essential part of contemporary discourse, especially that of the Internet, which is full of personal narratives, unsolicited reviews, hot takes and/or takedowns, and cultural critique. In this widening of a reading public also comes a widening of styles and subjects, and a diversifying of both authors and audiences.

By reading deeply into the craft of representative essays, both contemporary and historical, personal and political, in a positive light and in a negative one, we will examine the rhetorical strategies used by authors and apply them to our own writing. This will help us develop an experimental vocabulary for enriching and growing our skills as communicators.

English 114: Writing Seminar, “Serious Play”
4.6/5 student rating

What is play? When is it serious? The meaning of the word is multiform: playing a game, playing around, playing to win, playing with fire. Play is an aspect of cognition, a way for the mind to explore the world within constraints. But the playfulness of this can hide the real stakes behind it. Jazz theorist Albert Murray wrote that play “not only conditions people to cope with disjuncture and change but also provides them with a basic survival technique.”

In this class we explore this sort of serious play, where playing, games, and improvisational performance help to do things like frame identity, overcome trauma, or preserve cultural survival for marginalized peoples. When the recovering addict in James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” improvises on the piano, he’s playing more than just music—he’s playing, as Louis Armstrong said, life. In class we will consider how even genres like improv comedy and video games participate in this sort of work in their own ways. Readings come from music (jazz, R&B, hip hop), literature, theater, performance studies, comedy writing, cognitive science, cultural studies, and gaming. We will riff and improvise and ask ourselves, are we playing around? Or are we playing for real?

Lecturer in Sophomore English
Dulwich International College

English 220: Milton
Teaching Fellow for John Roberts                                                               

English 230: “Selfhood: Race, Class, and Gender”
Teaching Fellow for Marta Figlerowicz and Ayesha Ramachandran