Teaching is an important part of my scholarly practice and praxis.

I came to feminism before I came to teaching, but I’d like to think that one led me to the other. My work as a teacher is one of the most important parts of my practice as a queer and feminist scholar within American Studies. Through my work in the interdisciplinary classroom, I support and guide students as they learn to take up different theories, archives, and other forms of evidence in service of plotting out their orientations toward the world.

I believe that the feminist classroom can be a space where students can articulate, assert, and challenge their views about the world. My goals as a teacher are in service to that vision – to expose students to perspectives from people and places that have been historically marginalized or silenced; to develop students’ confidence in working with theory and doing their own theorizing; to hone skills for seeking out, curating, analyzing, and applying evidence to do interdisciplinary work; and to support their growth as writers within and beyond our classroom. In particular, I see the emphasis on writing in my courses as critical to my practice as a feminist teacher. I believe that every student should leave my class with the tools they need to share their own ideas and stories about the world and where they see their place in it.

I am trained in active learning pedagogies and have completed summer intensives on undergraduate teaching through the National Humanities Center’s Graduate Student Summer Residency Program and the Center for Faculty Excellence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to graduate school, I completed a Peer Heath Education certification through the National Association of Student Affairs Professionals (NASPA) as part of my training as a Sexual Health Educator at Wellesley College. In a previous professional capacity, I also developed and delivered workshops on rural community organizing and vacant, abandoned, and dilapidated buildings in West Virginia for community audiences.

Courses I’ve designed and taught
Land and Feminisms (in-person, seminar)
Historical Approaches to American Studies - the 1970s (remote, mostly asynchronous)
Historical Approaches to American Studies - Queer Stories (in-person)

Courses for which I have served as a Teaching Assistant
Animal Studies (Sharon P. Holland)
Crimes and Punishments (Seth Kotch)
Visual Culture (Bernard Herman)
Ethics and Standup Comedy (Michelle Robinson)
Historical Approaches to Southern Studies (Seth Kotch)
Intersectionality Supercourse (Michelle Robinson, Tanya Shields, Enrique Neblett)
Emergence of Modern American/Introduction to American Studies (Sharon P. Holland)


You may find examples from my teaching linked below.

Course Syllabus:
Land and Feminisms

Course Syllabus: Historical Approaches to American Studies - Queer Stories

This course takes up queer methods in the context of doing historical work in the field of American Studies. Intended for an undergraduate audience, the course traces the development of queer history and theory in the Academy. Over the course of the semester, students develop an original research project using methods derived from the course. View syllabus here.

Inside the Classroom: Teaching with Primary Sources

This is an exercise I designed as a Teaching Assistant for the Historical Approaches to Southern Studies course at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Addressed to a lecture course of about 80 students, this activity demonstrates how to engage with and analyze primary source material using archival documents associated with the Greensboro Massacre in 1979. I have adapted this assignment for use in additional courses with thematically appropriate archives. You can peruse this assignment here.