Teaching

African American Literature, I have found, encourages students to productively engage issues concerning race, gender, class, sexual orientation, religion, and other socially constructed frameworks of difference, while learning critical thinking skills and honing their ability to write. Given the fragility of the contemporary moment in the United States and the polarity of these subject matters, I have developed an inclusive and collaborative teaching pedagogy, whereby we—as scholars, students, and citizens—can gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for diversity of thought and experiences.

I view the classroom as a cooperative, discursive space, where I call upon students to examine not only the texts we read, but how they can use literature to make tangible contributions to society. When teaching African American literature and culture, I take advantage of the diverse sets of intersecting socio-cultural experiences my students bring to the classroom by asking them to consider how their background informs their access to and evaluation of literature. As an instructor, my goals are to teach my students critical thinking skills, literary analysis approaches, and research methodologies, while having them leave my class more aware of who they are and how they can make the world a better place by understanding and respecting others who may have different perspectives. As an instructor, I intentionally design courses with a variety of ways to meet students where they are, while challenging them to think more critically and encourage them to deal with delicate issues of structural difference.

Course Descriptions

ENGL 4092/5092: #BlackVoicesMatter: African American Literary Responses to Enduring Injustices

#BlackVoicesMatter sits in the wake of the recent surge of born digital protest movements spurned by a highly polarized America. Our current era, marked by #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, #SayHerName, and numerous other causes with digital roots, builds upon longstanding protest traditions in African American history. This history has indelibly influenced some of the greatest pieces of African American literature.

Together, we will use African American literature to consider how Black writers have chosen to respond to enduring injustices. We will critically engage fiction and nonfiction texts, paying close attention to how socio-economic and historical moments have impacted what and how African Americans write. #BlackVoicesMatter will draw literature from four moments of great civil or social unrest in African American history; the late slave period, the New Negro Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement, and the current digital rights moment. 

Download the syllabus HERE

ENGL 4093/5093: Black Women Writers

In the wake of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement and moments of reckoning like #MeToo, the intersection of race and gender has become one of the most contentious spaces in contemporary times, especially for Black women. Authors, theorists, and critics writing as and in service to Black women over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have provided critical entrees into the thoughts, hopes, and disappointments that come with being Black and a woman. This course seeks to understand the thoughts, concerns, and words of Black women through literature. A variety of fiction and non-fiction readings by and about Black women will highlight the ways race, class, gender and other socially constructed forms of difference combine, intersect, and complicate narratives of Blackness and femininity. Special attention will be paid to Black women as agents in their lives, Black women as thinkers and theorizers, and the various ways in which Black women in the U.S. have reimagined our world.

Download the syllabus HERE

ENGL 2091: Watching the Wire: America’s Other Story

HBO’s crime drama, The Wire (2002-2008) has been lauded as one of the most powerful television programs of all time for its ability to humanize the 1980s urban drug epidemic. Set in Baltimore “Murderland” and loosely based on real events, the show tackles the difficult subjects of urban blight, mass incarceration, the de-industrialization of America, the school to prison pipeline, and the corruption of state and local politics. The Wire blurs the line between history and fiction with stunningly impactful results.

Download the syllabus HERE

ENGL 6090: Black Romance in Popular Imagination

Have you seen #BlackGirlsRock, #BlackBoyJoy, or #BlackGirlMagic floating around Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook and pondered their significance? In this course we will use virtual and classroom space to critically engage how contemporary culture producers are re-imagining black love. Hashtags, memes, and GIFs are endemic of a wider effort to combat negativity being associated with people of color during this racially turbulent national moment. We will consider the utility of contemporary theoretical frameworks aimed at conceptualizing the present moment by applying them to novels, audiovisual albums, films, and poetry. This course specifically pulls from African American Studies, Women and Gender Studies, and English to glean a better cultural understanding on how African Americans are creatively envisioning love and romance in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Era. In addition to classroom lectures and discussions we will construct a shared blog, use specific twitter hashtags, and collect relevant real-time articles on Tumblr.

Download the syllabus HERE

ENGL 6090: Hip Hop’s Literature

Hip Hop’s Literature considers the cultural spread of a youth expressive movement turned billion-dollar global industry through a prism of contemporary African American literature. Focusing novels like The Coldest Winter Ever and Flyy Girl and seminal historical texts like Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop, this course will chart how hip hop used raps on wax and print narratives to illuminate the plight of urban America while charting new directions in Black cultural expression that revolutionized entertainment and the arts. We will consider how hip hop catalyzed technological advances in sound and streaming media. This course will also take up important theoretical debates such as the pairing of feminism and hip hop to help students understand the ways hip hop created and defined American culture. Our explorations will ask students to consider how the historiographical “schools” of Hip Hop were conversant with the social, political, and economic concerns of the late twentieth century and the early twenty-first century. 

Download the syllabus HERE

ENGL 6390: Womanism, Black Feminism, & Other Ways of Knowing

In this course students will explore various fiction and non-fiction literature that form the basis of Black women’s self-articulated ways of knowing and navigating the world. Together we will consider how intersections of race, gender, and other socially constructed differences manifest in the writings and intellectual thoughts pertaining to Black women’s experiences.

Download the syllabus HERE

ENGL 2071: Survey of African American Literature I

This course will introduce students to early African American literature and letters. Beginning with narratives detailing the Middle Passage, moving to impassioned speeches for abolition, and ending with important early twentieth century questions about how to move “Up From Slavery” and what makes the “Souls of Black Folk.” Together, we will explore how people who once were denied the abilities to read and write used paper and pen to advocate for change. We will read poetry, short stories, slave narratives, and explore digital resources like the Slave Voyages database of slave ship records.

Download the syllabus HERE