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Teaching: I like to do it, I work hard at it, and I ask students to work hard too.
I come from a family of teachers: my mother taught high school English, art, and drama for three decades in Vermont (they named the theater after her when she retired) and my brother teaches high school science in Seattle. We take this stuff seriously... And as a college teacher, I think and work very hard to help students develop the independent critical thinking and writing skills you'll need to thrive on your own. I will push you (skip a trip to Rate My Professor and let me just tell you that) but I also support you and work really hard to design assignments and activities and readings that will unlock the full potential of our course topics, as well as your abilities to use them!
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Undergraduate Courses:
COM 100 -- Rhetoric & Society -- Taught in the fall semester, introduction to rhetorical and rhetorical analysis of significant speeches in US History. I am one of several COM faculty who teaches this class in rotation.
COM 270 - Discourse & Sport -- A class I designed and introduced to our department, now offered online as well. I love sport, and I identify as an athlete, but sport and sport comm also drive me nuts sometimes! Using critical rhetorical approaches we explore these contradictions, paradoxes, and tensions. COM 310 -- Rhetorical Crticism -- Taught every semester, a W class that really focuses on writing: we'll write a lot, but we also revise papers, workshop papers, talk about writing process, anxiety etc. I teach this regularly. COM 342 -- Rhetoric of Social Movements -- Offered occasionally, and I teach this in rotation with other COM faculty. Rhetorical tactics of social movements, their leaders, and the institutions they seek to change. Fascinating stuff! COM 467 -- Advanced Topics in Sport Rhetoric -- In this special topics class, I bring a focus from my current research. One year it was sport bodies and material rhetoric, another year it might be sport, protest & politics. You'll do research with me and have opportunities to present your work on campus or beyond. COM 499 -- Capstone Seminar -- Taught every term, required for majors, I teach this often. This course asks seniors to reflect on their COM career then design and execute a final, culminating project that showcases their overall learning. |
Graduate Courses:COM 541 -- Contemporary Rhetorical Theory -- Survey of important theories informing the practice of rhetorical studies today, emphasizing the critical turn and the scholarship it helped produce. This class culminates with a major research paper in which students engage, and hopefully advance, pressing questions within rhetorical theory.
COM 548 -- Rhetorical Criticism -- A writing focused-course, introducing students to core questions of criticism and an array of methodological choices. This class culminates in a longer piece of stand-alone criticism that balances insight into artifact with advancing our use or understanding of criticism methods. COM 567 -- Rhetoric & Social Change -- A special topics course, in the Spring 2018 version of this class students began with a foundation in the ways COM/rhetoric studies social protest and social movements, but finished with a final project in which they designed a protest/change movement for a real topic. We heard from guest speakers who do social change in a variety of ways: nonprofits, faith based, grass roots, and via archival collections. CIS 605 -- Critical Cultural Rhetorical Theory -- Offered in fall to doctoral and master's students, I teach this in rotation also. In my version we situate ourselves at the intersection of cultural studies and rhetoric, read primary sources on key theories of CCR, then explore vexing questions such as "what is the nature of power? or the nature of culture? what role does a critic play in these dynamic contexts?" |