Statement of Teaching Philosophy:

My goal as a teacher is to provide an environment that encourages students to take language and literature seriously. In both composition and literature classrooms, I urge my students to pay close attention to the content as well as the form of any given text, so that they may understand how language functions. I see quality class discussions as a crucial step toward such understanding because it teaches students to take responsibility for their own articulation as they analyze another's. In class, I often posit deliberately provocative ideas rather than asking direct questions; I believe that giving my students the opportunity to agree or disagree with me or, even better, with each other is more likely to improve their capacity for critical thinking, self-expression, and argumentation than sending them on a quest for the one "right" answer that will please the teacher. In an attempt to teach the various skills students need to analyze the texts they encounter, I have them examine a variety of genres and often introduce visual and aural support material.

As I believe in a balance between student-oriented and instructor-oriented teaching, I spend some periods lecturing, especially when I introduce a new topic. Doing so, I carefully attend to historical, racial, ethnic, and gender contexts, always striving to convey that there is no single valid approach to language, literature, and culture. Such lectures, along with the classroom interaction, provide the basis for my students' writing, which I require them to do on a daily basis. Their assignments range from the short personal response to the various drafts and final version of the fully developed argumentative essay. Electronic newsgroups and web boards have proven useful as they provide an additional forum of written expression and a means of communication outside the classroom and office hours.

Whenever possible, I combine my teaching with my research. Doing so, I believe I can convey that literature and language are personally and socially meaningful. My articles and conference papers have consequently often been a continuation of ideas developed in the classroom; conversely, my research projects have frequently enhanced and transformed the methodologies and materials I employ in the classroom. For example, my most recent work in progress, an essay on Judith Ortiz Cofer's cultural ambiguity, developed parallel to class discussions during which neither I nor my students were comfortable categorizing her as an American or a Puerto Rican poet. When I succeed in resisting what I often find to be an unnecessary boundary between teaching and scholarship, I teach more effectively because I can communicate my enthusiasm for the material we examine.

COURSES TAUGHT:

ENG 620: Major American Poets.

ENG 563: American Fiction from its Beginnings to the Present.

ENG 477T: Twentieth-Century American Novel: "The Quest for a Durable Self."

ENG 476T: "From Imagism to Language Poetry: American Poetic Theories and Practices of the Twentieth Century."

ENG 466: Major American Poets.

ENG 348: African-American Literature: The Legacies of Slavery and Freedom."

ENG 344: The Short Story and Novel.

ENG 342: American Literature since 1865.

ENG 341: American Literature from its Beginnings to 1865.

ENG 330: Expatriate Writers in Paris.

WST 273: Introduction to Women's Studies.

ENG 238H: Honors American Literature from 1865 to the Present.

ENG 234G: American Literature from 1865 to the Present.

ENG 232G: English Literature from 1700 to the Present, computer-assisted.

ENG 220: Approaches to Literature: "Wars: Military and Verbal."

ENG 105H: Honors Literature and Composition: "Pushing the Limits of Genre."

FRE 105: Introduction to French Culture.

ENG 102M: Multicultural English Composition: "Cultural Encounters and Clashes."

ENG 102: Survey of American, British, and World Literature, regular and computer-assisted.

ENG 101: Composition and Rhetoric, regular and computer-assisted.

ENG 100: Writing I.

ENG 099R: Review of Written English.

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