Teaching

Teaching Areas:  Literature and Culture of the American West; The Postwest in the Global South; Transnational Youth Studies; Gender & Race; Geography/Ethnography/Globalization.

For both undergrad and graduate teaching, I often take my lead for new classes from current political concerns and social trends which influence my sense of what students of literature and culture should know and what questions are new or important to ask.

Undergraduate Classes:  I want my classroom to be relaxed, engaging, and at the edge of where people are intellectually comfortable.   I like to push students, and push myself, to take risks and laugh when we mess up.  I like to be an example of messing up so people worry less about it.  But that does not mean our classroom is not serious.  Young people in the U.S. today in elite educational settings like Rice feel so much pressure to perform that they often can’t tell what an enormous gift we have of our time together, a time set aside just for learning and intellectual connections.  Most of the world’s young people only can wish for this chance to learn and to think.  I strive to create a classroom where we remember what a wonderful treasure it is to think new things together, where we laugh and mess up and go out the door wanting to talk with our friends about what we’ve been discussing in class.

Graduate Classes:   I want graduate students to remember in my seminars why they went to grad school.  At the same time students learn the differences between undergraduate education and that of an advanced student preparing for a profession that will be housed in an institution with its own logics and demands.  Lately I have been interested in the public humanities and fostering links between university life, community knowledges, and young scholars’ research.