I have designed and instructed a number of college classes as a graduate instructor at Indiana University, Bloomington and Purdue University. For a more detailed list of my teaching, administrative, editorial, and professional experience, see my CV.
INDIANA UNIVERSITY, BLOOMINGTON
Courses Taught at the Collins Living Learning Center
The Collins Living-Learning Center is a unique campus experience. The courses in this department are chosen by a committee of undergraduates and faculty in a competitive process that looks for cutting-edge and interdisciplinary content. I have been honored to have the maximum two courses selected by this committee.
Wilderness: What Is It Good For? (Spring 2020)
This class teaches an ideological history of wilderness in the American context from the 19th century to now. It goes beyond the classroom by providing practical and hands-on experience with wilderness: students engage in contemporary debates about the value of wilderness, confronting criticisms from ecologists, feminist scholars, and historians; in addition, they will have a chance to ework on a service project for the Charles C. Deam Wilderness in the Hoosier National Forest.
Adventure Literature (Spring 2019)
This course is an introduction to humanist inquiry through a detailed exploration of the historical and ideological roots of the adventure narrative from the 13th century onward, but focused on parallels between the 19th and 20th/21st centuries in the American and British context. Course topics included the connection between scientific exploration and adventure literature, the memoir boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s and its impact on “sites of adventure” like American national parks and long-distance hiking trails, and the ways that the adventurer figure can be both magnetic and repulsive as an individual.
Courses Taught in the English Department
Professional Writing Skills, ENG-W231 (Fall 2019)
Professional Writing Skills introduces students to genres of writing and situations that they could expect to encounter in the professional world after college. This course puts heavy emphasis on the necessity to understand the rhetorical situation of professional genres, and therefore cultivates a more empathetic and understanding method of communication that gives students the tools to be easily understood in the workplace and beyond.
Introduction to World Literature in English (Online), ENG-L224 (Fall 2019, TA)
As Professor Vivian Halloran’s teaching assistant, I helped teach and grade for this online course.
Introduction to Argumentative Writing, ENG-W170 (Fall 2018, 2 Sections)
Introduction to Argumentative Writing is the advanced Introductory Composition course at IU. As an instructor, teaching this class is subject to a rigorous admissions process that involves attending workshops and submitting an original syllabus for review. Students interrogate a single question or theme while learning the basics of argumentative writing and college discourse. My syllabus was called “The Big Trip: Representations of Adventure in Contemporary American Discourse.”
Student final projects ranged from the “adventurous” discourse surrounding criticism of the recent addition of speed climbing as an Olympic sport, the colonialist urge of “dark travel” tourists and slum tourism, and the ways that travelling business people can use the concept of “microadventures” to make work travel more meaningful.
Reading, Writing, and Inquiry, ENG-W131 (2017-2018, 2 Sections)
This is the standard introduction to college discourse, research, and writing at Indiana University required of every student. Centered around a single “keystone essay,” students produce analyses of films, academic writing, photographs, and contemporary problems.
My W131 classes have centered around William Cronon’s “The Trouble With Wilderness” and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s “Monster Culture: Seven Theses.”
Courses Taught in International Studies Department
Global Connections, INTL-I220 (2017, TA)
As the teaching assistant to “Global Connections,” I was responsible for grading and performed two lectures to a class of 60 students. I was also consulted for input on day-to-day classroom planning and mentored students during their final group project.
PURDUE UNIVERSITY
English 106, Introductory Composition
English 620, Classroom Communication for International Graduate Students
