TEACHING
In my two decades of teaching, I have worked with more than a thousand students of different ages, backgrounds, and perspectives. My breadth of experience has reinforced my belief that, while no two students are alike, all share an innate curiosity that deepens when coursework connects meaningfully to their own lives. Nurturing that curiosity is the foundation of what I call compassionate teaching—an approach that emphasizes collaboration, flexibility, and authentic engagement. I see my role as creating multiple pathways for students to build expertise while pursuing questions that matter to them. When learning takes place in a collaborative and supportive environment, students are more willing to take intellectual risks, navigate challenging material, and respond constructively to feedback. To foster this environment, I design courses that treat students as whole people while encouraging them to recognize and value the same in one another. Through peer-led discussions, engagement-based grading, and opportunities to highlight one another’s contributions, students learn to prioritize collective success and shared discovery.
Here are some of my recent and representative courses:
WRITING IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES (ENGL 105i)
UNC-Chapel Hill, Fall 2025, Spring 2025 , Fall 2024, Spring 2021, Fall 2019, Spring 2018, Spring 2017, Fall 2014)
A specialized version of UNC’s skills-based rhetoric and composition courses, this class introduces students to several genres of academic and professional composition in the social sciences. Students learn how to compose in traditional academic formats, such as literature reviews and annotated bibliographies, in addition to building crucial multimedia composition skills necessary for professionalization in the 21st century workforce. By the end of the semester, students complete a minimum of two digital assignments, which might include podcasts, infographics, and/or webpages.
FILM & CULTURE (ENGL 143) (UNC-Chapel Hill, Fall, 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2020)
This course explores how cinema reflects and shapes cultural identities, ideologies, and values through visual storytelling and genre conventions. Film is a highly-collaborative audiovisual medium, and composing a film requires many steps and many forms of composition. For this reason, I ask my students to produce work, both alone and collaboratively, in a variety of genres and formats. In addition to a midterm and final exam, students complete twice weekly screenings and reflection posts, one short analytical paper, a storyboard, and a group video essay.
FILM GENRES: SCIENCE FICTION FILM (CMPL 280) (UNC-Chapel Hill, Fall 2024)
This course focuses on science fiction, one of the most enduring genres in the history of cinema. Science fiction films explore the imaginative limits of time and space while speaking to the cultural, political, technological, and economic conditions of the present. Class discussions focus on the relationships between aesthetics, form, content, and sociohistorical context. In addition to a midterm and final exam, students complete twice weekly screenings and reflection posts, one short analytical paper, one longer comparative paper, and a group video essay.
THE ART OF THE VIDEO ESSAY (ENGL 495, Independent Study) (UNC-Chapel Hill, Fall 2024)
All media hold formal properties that determine what information can and cannot be shared, who will be likely or even able to access media objects, and what revenue models work best for creating, distributing, and shaping content. In the age of social media, the traditional gatekeepers of artistic and scholarly content have ceded ground to the interests of marketing and algorithms. While this poses obvious challenges to the promotion of critical humanistic inquiry, it also poses opportunities for students to participate in the growing field of public-facing scholarship. This course explores what it means to consume and compose audiovisual analytical content. First, students analyze the rhetorical strategies of a range of video essayists; then, they develop their own video essays.
FILM ANALYSIS (ENGL 142) (UNC-Chapel Hill, Summer 2024)
This course introduces students to the techniques, vocabulary, and, ultimately, the “rhetoric” of cinema. It begins by exploring the formal components of filmmaking in terms of the effects these techniques produce. Why would a given director use a wide-angle lens, and what does such a lens accomplish? How might a long take or a series of abrupt cuts change the meaning of a scene? These and other similar questions govern the first half of the course. The second half then shifts to considerations of narrative and genre. In addition to a midterm and final exam, students complete regular screenings and reflection posts, one short analytical paper, one longer comparative paper, and a video essay.
WRITING IN THE DISCIPLINES (ENGL 105) (UNC-Chapel Hill, Spring 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Spring 2022, Spring 2020, Fall 2014, Spring 2014, Fall 2013, Spring 2013)
This course introduces students to academic writing across the disciplines of the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Students develop advanced composition skills that focus on identifying how genres, styles of writing, arguments, and forms of evidence differ across disciplines, audiences, formats, and purposes. My section of this course has a heavy focus on media literacy and multimedia composition. By the end of the semester, students complete a minimum of three digital assignments, which might include podcasts, video essays, infographics, and/or webpages.
WRITING IN THE HUMANITIES (ENGL 105i) (UNC-Chapel Hill, Spring 2021)
A specialized version of UNC’s skills-based rhetoric and composition courses, this class introduces students to several genres of academic and professional composition in the humanities. Students learn how to compose in traditional academic formats, such as analytical essays annotated bibliographies, in addition to building crucial multimedia composition skills necessary for professionalization in the 21st century workforce. By the end of the semester, students complete a minimum of two digital assignments, including podcasts and webpages.
GREAT IDEAS I & II (LIBS 111 & LIBS 112)
(Roosevelt University, 2009–2011)
To view courses taught at Night School Bar, see here.
LITERATURE AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY (ENGL 129)(UNC-Chapel Hill, Fall 2016)
This course examines texts produced by individuals from a range of ethnic, racial, social, and religious backgrounds. My section of this course focused on recently-released American speculative fiction. The course asked students to consider the possibility that narratives about other times, worlds, and systems in fact help us look more critically at our own. What kinds of political and analytical possibilities are enabled by the speculative capacities of fiction? What do these texts teach us about the role of cultural difference in the American experience?