Teaching

I have taught classes on the short story in world literature, banned books, African literatures, and English composition and rhetoric. Whether teaching literature or writing, my aim is to introduce students to the ways in which language–whether literary or otherwise–affects our reality. Balancing questions of language and aesthetics with sociopolitical context is therefore central to my approach to teaching African and postcolonial literatures. I frequently set students short research assignments to help them familiarize themselves with the individual contexts that we study. At the same time, however, I place great importance on close-readings (often done in groups or as a class) and on close attention to the linguistic and formal nuances of texts. Trained as a comparatist, my favorite moments in the classroom are those when students begin making their own informed comparisons between texts written in distant parts of the world.

Courses Taught at AUB:

ENGL 307A: “What and When was the Postcolonial?” (grad course, spring 2020)

ENGL 220C: Contemporary Anglophone Literature, “Introduction to African Literatures” (spring 2020)

ENGL 243C: Postcolonial Literature, “Writing the Postcolonial City” (fall 2019)

Courses Taught at Penn State:

CMLIT 184/ENGL 184: The Short Story (spring 2017 and spring 2019).

CMLIT 130: Banned Books (fall 2018).

ENGL 015: Rhetoric and Composition (fall 2017 and spring 2018).