NC State University, spring 2025

What is "Victorian literature"? What does it mean, in our 21st-century present, to study the period of Queen Victoria's reign? Our semester will begin with these questions as we both aim to understand the characteristics of nineteenth-century British literature from the 1830s to the end of the century, and take up recent calls to "undiscipline" the field of Victorian Studies. Such calls have asked us to "move away from narrow versions of disciplinarity" and take a race-conscious approach to literature from a period that consolidated our modern ideas of race (Chatterjee, Christoff, & Wong). This class seeks to "form" and "reform" our ideas of Victorian literature. We will study the function of form in the novel and poetry as it contributes to particular conceptions of selfhood and society; explore how nineteenth-century British texts both formed ideas of the "Victorian" and challenged those ideas through their own attempts at reform; and consider how media in our present imagines or reimagines our understanding of the Victorian past.

We'll begin by examining our cultural ideas of the Victorian and canonical examples of Victorian literature, with a particular focus on the form of the novel (Jane Eyre and Great Expectations) as it shaped modern conceptions of a (white, liberal) self. We'll move on to an in-depth analysis of four Victorian poems (by Christina Rossetti, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Toro Dutt) that promoted various types of social reform. We will take a frank look at Victorian imperialism and ideas of race (the statue of the Greek Slave in the Great Exhibition, writings by Mary Seacole and Olive Schreiner). And we'll end the semester by considering the phenomena of adaptation and neo-Victorian fiction: how have we reimagined the Victorians in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries?

Read the article I wrote about this course for Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature here.

NC State University, spring 2023

This class uses the concept of "containment" as a springboard for discussions about a series of major works of Victorian novel form. Our guiding questions will include:

• What gets contained (or not!) in the term "The Victorian Novel"? "Victorian"? How do we contain Victorian novels in generic categories?
• How do Victorian novels explore themes of entrapment, imprisonment, enslavement, social immobility, marital confinement, national/imperial boundaries, and the boundaries of self?
• How does the form of the novel experiment with containment and the boundaries of representation, for instance with frame narratives, serial parts, and the inclusion/exclusion of documents?
• How do issues such as race, gender, and class create spaces of containment and exclusion in these texts?
• How do complex Victorian novels contain so much?!
• What gets contained or excluded in academic discourse around our readings?

NC State University, fall 2025, fall 2026

This course initiates students into ways of thinking and practicing in English literary studies. We will explore critical traditions, research methods, and emerging approaches, including literary criticism and theory, globalization, transnationalism, and postcolonialism in literature, together with introductions to cultural studies, rhetoric, composition, film studies, and media studies as they influenced literary criticism and theories. The course also prepares students to begin formulating their own academic and professional pathways with attention to practical considerations of how to become a professional in graduate school. You will become familiar with faculty from the department, develop research plans, and discover resources to start trajectories that include careers in writing, media, and teaching.

NC State University, fall 2021

In this class we will explore how British novelists and other writers shaped what it meant to be a self in the nineteenth century, and to what extent gender shaped representations of that selfhood for women. Our reading will include some familiar names (e.g., Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Bram Stoker) and some who are perhaps less familiar (e.g. Amy Levy, Olive Schreiner, the anonymous author of The Woman of Colour). We will explore our literary texts in light of nineteenth-century theories of selfhood, the mind, mental health, domestic ideology, and legal personhood in order to understand how these novels contributed to modern theories of identity and individual agency, and we will ask how gender, class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality shaped the Victorians' representations of selfhood and subjectivity.

Duquesne University, fall 2016

How do we account for the popularity and persistence of gothic tropes in the history of the novel? What exactly is the gothic, and what are its cultural and literary functions? These questions will guide our journey into gothic fiction in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Britain. We will begin with the earliest "gothic story," Horace Walpole's The Mystery of Otranto, and investigate the emergence of gothic fiction out of a medieval past and alongside the birth of the novel. Then we'll consider how the gothic gets domesticated at the beginning of the nineteenth century by writers like Ann Radcliffe and Jane Austen. Our nineteenth-century reading will lead us to investigate the role of the gothic in an era of rationality, individualism, and realism. We'll examine the relationship between gothic and Realism in Wuthering Heights, consider the psychological effects of gothic narratives in Poe and Freud, and explore how gothic tropes and narratives get transformed in sensation stories, detective tales, and medical narratives. We'll finish off the semester with that masterpiece of late-gothic novels, Dracula, and with a brief foray into the future of the gothic with the 2015 movie Crimson Peak.

Although this course traces a specific literary genre in a specific literary period, it is designed to introduce graduate students interested in a variety of literary fields to questions about genre, the relationship between literature and science, and the capacity of fiction to question and shape the psychological and social characteristics of modern individuals. In asking why an exaggerated version of a pre-modern past congeals as a literary style during a historical period that ostensibly favored realism, rationalism, and reform, we will be engaging in discussions about historicism, literary form, psychology, interdisciplinary, and the relationship between individuals and their complex social, evolutionary, and cultural milieus. Students will give brief presentations, develop a final paper with opportunities for feedback, and present a shortened version of their work in a mini-conference at the end of the semester.

Duquesne University, spring 2016

This graduate class will introduce you to many of the key features of Victorian literature, with a particular focus on the major literary forms of the period (including the multiplot novel, the dramatic monologue, serial installments, and sensation and detective fiction). Our subtitle – "the one and the many" – ties together many of the texts we will be reading this semester. Consequently, our questions might include the following: What is the relationship between the individual and society in Victorian literature? Is the individual conceived as one contained self or as many interrelated components? How do we understand a whole text or a single installment in relation to a novel's many serial parts? How do the plots of a multiplot novel relate to one another? How does this era consider its relationship to an increasingly expanding evolutionary past?

Our reading method in this class will be a little unusual. We will begin the semester in the 1840s with Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Robert Browning's dramatic monologues and end the semester in the 1890s with science fiction. In the middle, we will read like the Victorians: serially. Our central texts will be George Eliot's Middlemarch and a Wilkie Collins sensation novel (The Woman in White or The Moonstone, depending on the class's preference). We will read both novels in installments simultaneously, along with some short excerpts from contextual non-fiction from the period, contemporary reviews, and critical pieces. Along the way, we will reflect upon the experience of serial reading, evaluating how attention to publication and reception impacts our understanding of literary form.

You will write regular reading responses, present on a contextual topic related to the course material, and write a final paper of 15-20 pages. We will dedicate one class towards the end of the semester to a "mini conference," in which you will each present a short conference-style version of / section from your final project to receive feedback on your work-in-progress from the class.

Duquesne University, fall 2014

In this seminar we will explore the role of perspective – in particular the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity – in Victorian literature and in our own critical work. Our approach will be threefold. First and foremost, we will consider how and to what effect Victorian novels use narrative perspectives – omniscience, the first-person, multiple narrators – to experiment with ways of constructing human subjectivity. Secondly, alongside these novels we will look at how Victorian scientific and cultural theorists thought about the relationship between objective, detached knowledge and subjective, bodily sensation. Finally, we will reflect upon our own critical practices of detachment and attachment, distance and closeness, in literary study. We will explore theories of distance and totality offered by writers as different as Georg Lukács, Michel Foucault, and Franco Moretti, and we will consider alternatives to critical distance imagined by Michel de Certeau, affect theorists, and Victorian literary critics themselves. This seminar requires active engagement from all participants in our discussions, and you will build up a research project in stages. Upper-level graduate seminar for Ph.D. students and second-year MA students only.

NC State University, fall 2024

This course will introduce you to the British novel in the nineteenth century by examining a series of pairings and oppositions in and between novels by authors including Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, and Robert Louis Stevenson. We'll consider how contrasts between opposing forces or categories function as the central tropes of our novels, from the pairing that structures the title of Pride and Prejudice to the geographical opposition of North and South, and from the uncanny repetitions of Wuthering Heights to the split personality of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. We will also ask what it means to craft our own juxtapositions between these novels, for instance by reading the anonymous The Woman of Color in response to Austen's marriage plot. As we explore the doublings and repetitions, the collisions and comparisons, that these novels generate, we'll consider the nineteenth-century contexts that underpin them: empire and race; industrialization, urbanization, and environmental change; class and poverty; and changing gender roles.

NC State University, spring 2024

Ours is a culture of serial storytelling. Whether it's the television shows we're hooked on, the podcasts we listen to, the interactive video games we immerse ourselves in, or the book series we love, so many of the stories we enjoy today are told in parts. But how do we approach these serial texts as literary critics when we are so used to discussing texts as "whole" forms? In this class we will take up this and other questions related to seriality by investigating the history and conventions of serial and multiplot storytelling. We will spend most of our time in the heyday of serial fiction: the Victorian era. But we'll journey all the way back to early story cycles like One Thousand and One Nights, in which sequential storytelling is nothing short of life-saving, and we'll finish in the present moment with TV shows and graphic stories. Along the way, you will experience what it was like to be a Victorian reader consuming one of the most popular serial detective novels of the day, Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, in parts over many weeks. We will spend some time with the most famous serial novelist, Charles Dickens, by reading his unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood alongside the notes he kept for himself as he wrote the first few installments of the novel. Projects will include a final paper and a collaborative application of your learning about serial form to your own serial narrative.

Questions we will be asking this semester might include: How do the plots and parts of serial stories relate to one another and to the notion of a "whole text"? What role do theories of reading and technologies of production play in the history of serial storytelling? What is the relationship between serial storytelling and the history of mystery and detection as genres? Do our theories of serial narrative change when we move from one medium (e.g. serial novel) to another (e.g. television series)? What can attention to seriality teach us about narrative form in general? Edwin Drood Assignment · Group Serial Project

NC State University, spring 2019, spring 2023

We are used to thinking about science and literature as two separate "cultures" with contrasting approaches to the central questions of human existence. But was it always this way? And what happens when we put literature and science into conversation with one another? This will be our task this semester as we examine the imaginative potentials, social repercussions, and interdisciplinary mixing of literature and science from the sixteenth century to the present. Our focus will be the period between the early nineteenth century, when we begin to see the establishment of scientific disciplines, and the mid-twentieth century, when English physicist and novelist C.P. Snow famously lamented the dangerous split between science and literary life. In this class we will read primary sources from scientific writers alongside literary texts, examining how different historical contexts produce new connections between the literary and the scientific disciplines. Our scientific readings will draw from a range of scientific disciplines, but we will focus most of our attention on the development of a scientific theory that continues to spark debate today: evolution. Authors will include Margaret Cavendish, Erasmus Darwin, Mary Shelley, Alfred Tennyson, Charles Darwin, Thomas Hardy, H.G. Wells, Francis Galton, Aldous Huxley, and Ted Chiang. No prior scientific/technical knowledge is required.

NC State University, fall 2022

In this course we will investigate a peculiar Victorian phenomenon: sensation. At the heart of our syllabus will be the genre from the 1860s and 70s that came to be known as "sensation fiction," epitomized by novels like Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret and Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. Full of intrigue adapted from popular trials and news, these page-turners focused on adultery, madness, theft, murder, or intrigue, and it is perhaps no surprise that they were some of the earliest detective stories. But while we focus on these fictional "sensation" stories and the public response that surrounded them, we will also investigate just what "sensation" in the Victorian era has to do with both bodily sensation and popular interest and excitement. We will consider Victorian psychology's take on the relationship between mind and body and ask what light this can shine on the fiction we read, and we will discuss that way particular bodies were marked as racially "other," unstable, or otherwise sensationally different. We will learn about sensations in the British media in the second half of the nineteenth century, which will take us from the excitement surrounding the Great Exhibition of 1851 to the rise of photography, and from coverage of the "Jack-the-Ripper" murders to the trial of Oscar Wilde at the end of the century. In addition to a final research project, you will take charge of "curating" a sensational event or object from the Victorian era. Class Exhibit

NC State University, spring 2021

In this class we will explore women's literature, and women in literature, from the nineteenth century to the present by using as our thematic focus the idea of home. Our broad theme will allow us to explore how texts from a variety of cultural contexts address what it means to be at home (or not at home) in a space, a body, a community, a nation, a social category, a mind. We will consider how our chosen literary texts explore questions about domesticity, entrapment, and marginalization; about belonging, identity, and citizenship; about femininity, privacy, and secrecy; about safety, comfort, and stability. We will explore the topic of gender as it intersects with sex, sexuality, race, ethnicity, age, class, citizenship, and mental health. Authors will include: Charlotte Brontë, Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Kate Chopin, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton, Sandra Cisneros, Margaret Atwood, Yaa Ngasi, and Beyoncé. The course will meet synchronously over Zoom and include asynchronous work on Moodle. Final Project

NC State University, spring 2020

Ours is a culture of serial storytelling. Whether it's the television shows we're hooked on, the podcasts we listen to, the interactive video games we immerse ourselves in, or the book series we love, so many of the stories we enjoy today are told in parts. But how do we approach these serial texts as literary critics when we are so used to discussing texts as "whole" forms? In this class we will take up this and other questions related to seriality by investigating the history and conventions of serial and multiplot storytelling. We will spend most of our time in the heyday of serial fiction: the Victorian era. But we'll journey all the way back to early story cycles like One Thousand and One Nights, in which sequential storytelling is nothing short of life-saving, and we'll finish in the present moment with television shows and a contemporary novel-in-stories that examines the strange sequences and cycles that structure our world (Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing). Along the way, you will experience what it was like to be a Victorian reader consuming one of the most popular serial detective novels of the day, Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, in parts over many weeks. We will spend some time with the most famous serial novelist, Charles Dickens, by reading his masterpiece Bleak House alongside the notes he kept for himself as he wrote the novel over 19 months. In addition to writing a final research paper, you will contribute to an ongoing research project on Dickens's working notes by making your own set of annotations on a single serial installment, and you will work with a small group to create a project on a popular serial narrative (television show, podcast, film series, book series, graphic novel, video game, etc.) of your choice. Questions we will be asking this semester might include: How do the plots and parts of serial stories relate to one another and to the notion of a "whole text"? What role do theories of reading and technologies of production play in the history of serial storytelling? What is the relationship between serial storytelling and the history of mystery and detection as genres? Do our theories of serial narrative change when we move from one medium (e.g. serial novel) to another (e.g. television series)? What can attention to seriality teach us about narrative form in general? Bleak House Annotation Project

Duquesne University, fall 2017

In this course we will investigate a peculiar Victorian phenomenon: sensation! At the heart of our syllabus will be the genre of fiction that came to be known in the 1860s and 70s as "sensation fiction," epitomized by Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White and Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley Secret. Full of intrigue adapted from popular trials and news, these page-turners focused on adultery, madness, murder, or intrigue, and it is perhaps no surprise that they were some of the earliest detective stories. But while we focus on these fictional "sensation" stories and the public response that surrounded them, we will also investigate just what "sensation" in the Victorian era has to do with both bodily sensation and popular interest and excitement. We will consider the relationship between mind and body in Victorian psychology and ask what light this might shed on with the fiction we read. And we will learn about sensations in the British media in the second half of the nineteenth century, which will take us from the excitement surrounding the Great Exhibition of 1851 to the rise of photography, and from coverage of the "Jack the Ripper" murders to the trial of Oscar Wilde at the end of the century. In addition to our sensational texts, we will also read canonical fiction by George Eliot ("The Lifted Veil"), Arthur Conan Doyle ("A Study in Scarlet"), and Wilde himself (The Picture of Dorian Gray). You will have two main assignments in this class. In addition to a traditional research paper, which you will build up across the second half of the semester with an opportunity for revision based on feedback, you will also take charge of "curating" an event or object from the Victorian era as part of our class Victorian Sensations web exhibit.

Duquesne University, spring 2015 & spring 2017

This course will survey British literature in the major genres (poetry, essay, novel, and drama) from the late eighteenth century to the mid twentieth century, with a particular focus on how writers across this period explore the relationship between self and world. In closely reading key individual works, we will study important practices and revisions of literary tradition and form. We will also keep one eye toward writers' common practices to group them into the following literary "movements": Romantic, Victorian, and modernist. Studying the works in the context of these movements will allow us to listen to the writers' conversations—and disagreements—across and within movements and to situate those conversations within the changing landscape of British cultural history. Requirements will include class participation, short papers, a wiki project, an essay, and two exams.

Duquesne University, fall 2016

Strange events, gloomy villains, persecuted heroines, crumbling mansions, the occasional vampire – these are the tropes we tend to associate with gothic fiction. But what exactly is the gothic, and why was (and is) it so popular? In this class we will be investigating the rise of the gothic from the late eighteenth and into the nineteenth century in Britain, with a brief foray into our twenty-first century future. We'll explore what the gothic is and does, what it has to do with "Realism," and whether fiction can expose dark and hidden aspects of modern psychology and society that we might not otherwise confront. We'll begin our reading with the "first" gothic story, Walpole's The Castle of Otranto; spend a little time with Romantic poets writing about dangerous and persecuted women; and then enter the nineteenth century with Jane Austen's parody of gothic fiction, Northanger Abbey. As we move into the Victorian era we will see how gothic tropes make an appearance on the Yorkshire moors in Wuthering Heights, investigate the psychological horror of Edgar Allan Poe, and look at what happens when the gothic meets science in sensation and detective stories. We'll end the semester with a masterpiece of late-gothic fiction, Dracula, before skipping forward to a modern movie adaptation of gothic romance, Crimson Peak.

Duquesne University, fall 2015

"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." So wrote Percy Shelley in 1821, hopeful about the capacities of poetry to get at the heart of what he called the "spirit of the age." In this class we will explore nature and functions of poetry in the Romantic and Victorian periods of Britain in order to better understand the relationship between poetry and the "spirit of the age." We will read this poetry closely and critically, unpacking its form and considering its aesthetic, social, and even political impacts. How does poetry grapple with everything from imagination to industrialization, from the natural world to the nation state? How do poets craft new ways to think about gender and class in a time of shifting boundaries and new ways to explore the relationship between God and humans in a time of increased skepticism?

Duquesne University, spring 2015

This course surveys British literature in the nineteenth-century by focusing on novels, poetry, and prose dealing with progress and change, including works by authors such as William Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Matthew Arnold, Alfred Tennyson, Charles Darwin, and George Eliot. The nineteenth-century has been labeled "The Age of Progress" in Britain; it was a time of massive population growth, industrial and technological advancement, new scientific theories, imperial expansion, and rapid cultural change. By examining the literature of this period, we explore just what "progress" meant in the Romantic and Victorian periods. What, or who, was excluded from this progressive history? This engages us in questions about gender, class, imperialism, science, religion, and art.

NC State University
In-person: spring 2019, spring 2020, spring 2022
Online: summer 2020, fall 2020, summer I 2021, spring 2023, summer 2023, fall 2023, spring 2024, summer 2024, spring 2025, summer 2025

This survey of English literature begins in the 1790s and brings to the present, taking us on a journey through the poetry, fiction, and prose of major British writers. Along the way we will focus most of our attention on three literary periods: the Romantic, the Victorian, and Twentieth-Century Modernism and Postmodernism. Studying works of literature in the context of these eras will allow us to listen to the writers' conversations and disagreements across and within these literary periods and to situate these conversations within the changing landscape of British cultural history. How did literary texts respond to massive social changes such as industrialization, a growing population, the rise of cities, shifting gender roles and social classes, and two world wars? And how did these texts shape people's experiences of such changes? How did writers across this time period offer new ways of thinking about the relationship between self and world? How do these texts reflect, shape, and/or critique aspects of the social contexts in which they were written, including race, class, gender, nation, empire, and "Britishness"/"Englishness"? We will ask these questions as we read works by William Wordsworth, John Keats, Percy Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, Mary Prince, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Christina Rossetti, Alfred Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, W.H. Auden, Jean Rhys, Chinua Achebe, and Warsan Shire.

NC State University College of Humanities & Social Sciences
In-person: fall 2021–fall 2025 (two sections each fall, one section each spring)
Online asynchronous: fall 2020, spring 2021

HSS120 class is designed to welcome you to the intellectual life of our College, a community within the larger institution of NC State University. It is designed specifically for entering first-semester students with majors in the Humanities or Social Sciences.

This course has three goals, each of which we will approach through our topical focus: the social and cultural meanings of American higher education.

First, HSS-120 will help you identify opportunities and resources at NC State and in our College that will prepare you for rich, fulfilling, and successful college careers. You will reflect on the purposes of higher education in your own life and in society and culture more broadly.

Second, the class will introduce you to the programs, departments, and intellectual variety within our College. You will learn from faculty members from a variety of humanities and social science disciplines so that you can distinguish between the perspectives and methods of inquiry employed in these disciplines. You will explore the majors, minors, concentrations, and course options available within the college, learning about opportunities both here at NC State and beyond in various career paths.

Finally, through class discussions, readings, and assignments, you will hone your critical and creative thinking skills as you examine a variety of social and cultural issues surrounding the topic of higher education and apply your learning about different disciplinary approaches to topics of your choosing related to college life.

NC State University College of Humanities & Social Sciences, large lecture course
Fall 2018, spring 2019, spring 2020

HSS-120 is open to first-year entering College of Humanities and Social Sciences majors only. HSS-120 is designed to welcome you into the intellectual life of our College, a community within the larger institution we call NCSU. You will therefore have the opportunity to hear from, and interact with, four different professors in the humanities and social sciences whose research informs our course theme: Poverty and its intersections with other complex social issues (race, gender, religion, education, geography, food insecurity, crime, substance abuse, etc.).

Scholars from across the humanities and social sciences are interested in the "wicked problems" associated with a complex social issue like poverty, but they approach these problems using different tools and methods developed within their research traditions. HSS-120 will help you see that you're studying with people who are not only teachers, but knowledge creators. You will be reading published, peer-reviewed work by humanists and social scientists from our college, a challenge to which you will rise! By the end, you will understand how professors in different disciplines conduct research.

The course is also designed to show you how to succeed in college. We'll explore college and university resources, policies and procedures, and address skills for academic, personal, and career success. Through several short, relatively low-stakes assignments, you will learn to identify the types of arguments made by scholars in different disciplines and refine the precision of your own writing. You will be introduced to tools to help you reflect on your own thinking and learning. We will also discuss and make use of the university-wide TH!NK intellectual standards for critical thinking, part of NC State's effort to enhance students' critical and creative thinking skills. As the course proceeds, you will become adept at using the intellectual standards for critical and creative thinking in evaluating the work of others.

Duquesne University, fall 2017

In this class we will explore fiction that images how love suffers, survives, and even flourishes in dystopian worlds. Our readings each create fictional worlds that are strangely like our own but amplify the worst possibilities for our societies, economies, institutions, and environments. In each case we will ask what happens to love—sex; romance; love between friends and family; love for nation and creed; and love for objects and places—in a world that seems hostile and frightening. Many of the dystopias we will encounter in this class amplify the way our social and institutional structures treat and shape identities, communities, and relationships. We will read and watch a range of stories in this class, from classic dystopian fiction to more recent young adult and children's stories. Throughout the class we will examine how dystopian fictions interrogate our contemporary responses to gender, class, race, sexuality, and disability.

Duquesne University, fall 2014, spring 2016, spring 2017

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live," Joan Didion tells us. What does this mean? Is storytelling and fiction a part of who we are as humans? Do books make us better people? What role has fiction played in our understanding of ourselves as humans, individuals, citizens? These are some of the questions we will ask as we begin our conversation about how fiction works, why we read it, and how it shapes our understanding of human selves. We will consider whether science can explain storytelling, investigate the art of the short story, explore the personal and critical ways in which we can respond to fiction, and evaluate the role of the novel in telling stories about identity. We will also discuss reading for pleasure, and you will get to vote in groups on a "guilty pleasure" read. Our reading journey will begin with children's literature and short stories (by Poe, Jewett, Marquez, Baldwin, and Atwood) and continue with two novels (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go) and two films. Assignments will include short written responses, two exams, and a final group project.

Duquesne University, spring 2015 & fall 2016

Why do we read books? Why and how do we love (or hate) books? And how can we use books as tools for social justice? AMOR students will explore these questions as we investigate the cultural meaning of books, from criticism to celebration and from book collecting to book burning. We will discuss popularity, "relatability," critical interpretation, and the difference between reading for fun and literary criticism. We will delve into some book history, consider the impact of technology on books and reading, and discuss access to books. A central component of this class will be how books function in the face of violence and oppression. We will read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, The Narrative of Frederick Douglass, and Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran to examine the relationships between reading, love, and violence, and we will also work with Book'Em, an organization in Pittsburgh that sends books to prisoners throughout Pennsylvania.

Duquesne University, fall 2015

In this course we will explore the genre of life writing in theory and in practice. We will consider how writers construct the story of a life or a life experience and how we tell stories about ourselves. How do we use writing to construct our own or other people's identities? How are these stories affected by place and relationships or by gender, sexuality, race, nationality, and/or social status? How true are these stories, and how do we evaluate the relationship between storytelling and truth? We will read a range of life writing genres. Your assignments in this class will be both critical and creative. You will keep a portfolio of short writing assignments, including journals, short memoir pieces, and responses to our reading, and you will write one critical essay and one longer piece of life writing. We will regularly workshop our writing together in class, and you will have opportunities to revise your writing.

Duquesne University, spring 2015

This course is designed to introduce students to the practices of literary criticism. Students engage in close analysis of primary literary texts; discuss and research a text's historical and cultural contexts; and examine a range of scholarly approaches to a text. We also spend time learning how to use print and electronic resources available to literary scholars. As we grasp the practices of literary scholarship and try our hands at different approaches, we also reflect upon the purposes and goals of literary study. In addition to keeping a reading response "notebook," students join the scholarly conversation with other literary critics by proposing, researching, drafting, and revising their own research paper in order to develop the skills they will need for the English major: interpretive reading, critical thinking, research, and writing.

Duke University, fall 2012 (English major survey from Sophocles to Chandler)

Does literature make detectives of us? Are all literary works mysteries?

We will begin with these questions as we make our way from Greek tragedy (Oedipus Rex) to 21st-century popular television (Lost), dipping into some canonical texts (Twelfth Night, Jane Eyre) and classic mystery stories (from Sherlock Holmes to Agatha Christie) along the way. As we journey through a series of works we just can't put down (or switch off), we will consider how stories keep us "hooked" by carefully controlling our access to knowledge and meaning. Our reading will take us through several centuries, but we will pause as the detective story emerges in Britain and the US in the nineteenth century so that we can understand the formation of this genre in relation to a longer history of literary mystery and discovery. As we encounter a range of intriguing plots and narrative twists, we'll be asking:

What is so appealing about narratives that hide knowledge from us?
We will explore the role of mystery in narrative and investigate the common narrative threads that run through plays, stories, novels, and movies produced centuries and continents apart.

What kind of knowledge do they hide?
We will find mistaken identity, criminal behavior, mystery, murder, and intrigue throughout this class, but we will also think about how different time periods and literary forms reimagine what is hidden and dangerous in society. One of our primary tasks will be to understand how mystery narratives try to pin down what are often very slippery identities.

What do we discover? How do we discover it?
Do we approach a Shakespeare play and a movie differently? Throughout this class we will pay close attention to how we read – the perspectives we bring to these texts and how we find meaning in them.

Duke University, fall 2010 (elective for non-majors)

This course begins with a creature at the heart of our popular culture – the vampire, the monster, the clone, the inhuman "other" who is not one of us and yet is, at times, unsettlingly like us. We will study a range of texts that deal with the limits of the human, each of which raises questions about just what we mean by "human." What makes us individuals? What makes us different from animals? How do we conceive of identity and difference, self and other? How do we sympathize with others? Our course will be rooted in the nineteenth century, the age not just of Frankenstein's monster and the blood-thirsty Dracula, but also of Darwinian evolution. What kinds of questions get brought up at the borders of the human in, for example, Victorian texts, and how do these questions differ from the ones asked today? Although we might be studying the freaky and the fantastic, what we are really concerned with in this class is closer to home: what is human? Why is this question so difficult to answer? How do texts across periods and genres approach/answer the question? When science fiction imagines the "other," what becomes of the normative?

As we pursue these and other related questions through a variety of texts, we will return again and again to the intersections between science and the humanities. What does it mean to study "the human" in a literature class? What kinds of approaches to texts do we need to employ?