Teaching

My primary goal as an instructor of both Composition and Rhetoric courses is to help students see the reach, applications, and presence of these fields in their lives. I want students to see the writing and composing they regularly engage in as important rhetorical acts that are not so different from the ones we study in the classroom. I want students to think about and understand writing and rhetoric more broadly, especially to see how writing and rhetoric affect the world around them. My hope is that, through engaging with the readings and assignments in my courses, students will learn to think rhetorically about the choices they make in their own compositions in and outside of the classroom. To accomplish this, both my upper- and lower-level courses are planned around three key features: relevance, application, and reflection. Through my pedagogy, I aim to help students see how the readings are relevant and applicable to their lives and experiences; through my assignments, I aim to help students grapple with the course material and establish their own connections to it; and through guided reflections, I aim to help students think about what they have learned and how it might be helpful to them in the future.


Upper Level Writing & Rhetoric Courses

ENG265A Writing for the Health Professions

This course, designed for majors in the College of Nursing and the College of Health Professions, uses a Writing About Writing approach to help prepare students for the writing they will do in their majors and in the health professions they hope to go into. Projects include an investigation into the communication skills needed for their major/profession, a rhetorical analysis of health documents for multiple audiences, and a team-based health public health campaign.

ENG265A Digital Writing and Rhetoric

This course introduces students to the concepts and practices that are vital to composing in digital environments, like genre, rhetorical velocity, circulation, and assemblage. Students engage in projects that develop skills for both the analysis and production of digital texts, including podcasts, videos, websites, and more. Projects include a digital literacy narrative, an investigation into an online community, and an assemblage/remix project.

ENG265A Writing in the Real World

This course introduces students to scholarship on Everyday Writing and public writing, in order to help them better understand how writing—especially mundane writing—shapes the world around us. Students began by studying their own everyday writing practices to develop their own definition, then did a case study on an artifact of everyday writing, and then worked together to create a series of texts that would circulate and enact change in the real world.

RHET125 Writing in a Digital World

This course introduces students to the concepts and practices that are vital to composing in digital environments, especially concepts like medium, genre, audience, circulation, and assemblage. Students engage in projects that develop skills for both the analysis and production of digital texts, including online discussions, a digital map tracking the circulation of a text, a digital assemblage, a community-oriented media campaign that combines and enacts the major course concepts, and an ePortfolio.

ENC3021 Rhetoric

This course introduces students to the history and major theories/theorists of Western rhetoric, beginning with Ancient Greece and ending with Contemporary Rhetorics (including visual, digital, and multimodal rhetorics). Students establish connections between rhetoric and language, rhetoric and knowledge, rhetoric and media, and rhetoric and the world they live in. Assignments include discussion board posts, a multimodal exploration of a key term, and an analysis of a rhetorical artifact. Description

ENC3416 Writing and Editing in Print and Online

This course introduces students to the principles of composing and editing across different media environments, paying particular attention to print, digital, and networked texts. A special focus is on how composing is affected when writers work in, with, and for different contexts, materials and genres, and audiences. Assignments include journals and discussion board posts, a physical/print project, a digital assemblage and remediation, a coordinated multimedia campaign, and an ePortfolio.

RHET399 Independent Studies

These Independent Study courses allow students in Trinity’s Rhetoric, Writing, and Media Studies Minor to design their own course on a given topic. Students work with me to plan the readings and assignments for the course, and we meet regularly to discuss those readings and assess their progress. Topics for Spring 2019 include “Spreadable Media and Lifestyle Blogging” and “The Politicization of Contemporary Popular Media.”


First Year Composition Courses

FYWS 125 First Year Writing Seminar

This course introduces students to major theories of rhetoric and composition, which they use as lenses to analyze both their own writing practices and the practices of other discourse communities. Students learn to research, write, and revise through the process of investigating the way writing intersects with their own interests. Assignments include multiple researched essays, multimedia projects, and ePortfolios.

RHET103 College Writing

This course introduces first year students to the principles of rhetorical situations, discourse communities, and genre, which they use as lenses to analyze both their own writing practices and the writing practices of the discourse community they hope to join in college and beyond. Assignments include multiple researched essays, multimedia projects, and ePortfolios.

ENC2135 Research, Genre, and Context

This course, introduces first-year students and sophomores to the principles of genrefosters the development of critical reading, writing, and thinking skills for effectively communicating ideas for specific purposes, occasions, and audiences. Assignments include multiple researched essays, multimedia projects, and ePortfolios.

ENC1145 Writing About Nothing: Seinfeld and Cultural Theory

This course introduces first-year students to the principles of writing researched essays using the special topics of Seinfeld and Cultural Theory. Students learn theories of popular culture (e.g. Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Slavoj Zizek), which they use as a lens to analyze the show Seinfeld. Assignments include written research papers, digital compositions (such as original videos and websites), and a final ePortfolio.

ENC1145 Writing About Comic Books

This course introduces first-year students to the principles of writing researched essays using the special topics of graphic novels, comics, and visual rhetoric. Students learned theories of Visual Narrative (Will Eisner) and Comics Theory (Scott McCloud), which they use as lens to analyze comics and graphic novels. Assignments include written research papers and journals as well as a collaborative, multimodal comic anthology that collects comics around a theme of the student’s choosing.

ENC1101 First Year Composition and Rhetoric

This course introduces first year writers to writing expository essays and research papers at the college level. Assignments include multiple expository and sourced essays, journals, multimedia projects, and ePortfolios.

ENC1102: First Year Writing & Research

This course introduces first year writers to writing researched essays at the college level. Assignments include multiple research essays, journals, multimedia projects, and ePortfolios.