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Courses Taught
University of California, Irvine (1992-1997)
Preparing for the Academic Job Market—A series of workshops on the professional skills required by advanced graduate schools, from CV and teaching portfolio preparation, to interview technique and negotiation skills. Later workshops cover course design and the administrative and service responsibilities of new faculty.
Teaching Assistant Consultant Program—The core of the program is a six day series of workshops training a select group of advanced TAs in active, experiential learning techniques; the TACs then train new TAs in their own disciplines. I design and conduct ongoing teaching development activities for TACs throughout the year, including assisting them in the design and implementation of the job search for the following year’s TACs.
E28 Teaching Development Workshops—A two-day series of workshops for literature TAs exploring creative teaching responses to the content and skills requirements of the English department’s introductory literature series.
WR 139 Science/Fiction: The Image of Science in Popular Culture—An upper division writing course that explores the way in which scientific controversies and worldviews are mediated by popular literature and film. Literary texts included Frankenstein (1818) and He, She and It (1991) by Marge Piercey. Films included: Metropolis (1926), Frankenstein (1931), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) and Blade Runner (1982).
E 28B Dying/Laughing: Tragic and Comic Vision—Part of a required three course introductory series for English majors that also serves as a campus breadth requirement. The course explored canonical notions of tragic and comic modes then challenged those assumptions through consideration of hybrid texts such as Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Wycherley's The Plain Dealer and Pratt's The Drunkard.
E 28A Chaos and Constancy: Change and the Poetic Imagination—Part of a required three course introductory series for English majors that also serves as a campus breadth requirement. As an introductory poetry survey this course also explored the idea of poetry as a response to social turmoil.
WR 39B Expository Writing—The first of two required lower division writing courses, WR 39B concentrates on basic principles of rhetorical analysis and exposition, taught through a variety of increasingly complex, culturally diverse texts.
CR 100A Literary Criticism—I assisted Professor John Carlos Rowe in this introductory survey of literary theory from Plato to Cixous. Graded essays; designed, administered, and graded exams; lectured on Sir Philip Sidney.
WR 39C Argument and Research—The second of two required lower division writing courses, WR 39C asks students to work intensively on a single public policy controversy for the entire quarter. Writing assignments explore various facets of major research projects such as issue definition, counter-argument, historical trends, and advocating solutions. I have also taught a special version of this course called Borders and Boundaries, designed in collaboration with several TAs and adjunct faculty.
In addition I have given guest lectures for Linda William's undergraduate course on film melodrama and her graduate seminar on race melodrama.
University of Canterbury (1987-89)
AMST 106 Postmodern Culture—A one semester introductory course that brought together the history, literature, politics and music of the period from the end of World War II to the early eighties. Conducted weekly discussion sections, graded papers and delivered occasional lectures.
HIST 110 American Thought and Writing Pre-1865—the first of two semester-long courses exploring the history and literature of the United States through broadly defined intellectual movements from Puritanism to Romanticism. Conducted weekly discussion sessions and graded papers.
HIST 112 American Thought and Writing Post-1865—A continuation of the above course that traced U.S. literary and historical development from naturalism through to the neo-conservatism of the early 1980s. Conducted weekly discussion sessions and graded papers.
AMST 101 Introduction to American History—A year-long introductory survey required of all American Studies majors. The course covered the period from 1600-1980 and took a strongly interdisciplinary approach to the teaching of history. I conducted weekly discussion sessions and graded papers.
AMST 102 Introduction to American Literature—A year-long introductory survey required of all American Studies majors. The course usually began with Franklin's Autobiography and covered a wide variety of fiction and poetry up to the present. I conducted weekly discussion sessions and graded papers.