After teaching for the past decade at different institutions, I have honed several effective pedagogical strategies to meet the needs of my students. For instance, I employ scaffolding, where I assign readings that conceptually and thematically build upon each other, and I enforce a daily lightning round at the start of each class session, where each student highlights at least one moment in the text that is provocative, confusing, or evocative of our previous readings. I create a welcoming and safe space in my classroom by ensuring that each student speaks at the start of class and feels empowered to interrogate our reading materials.
Here is the list of courses I have taught, arranged by institution.
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville:
Assistant Professor of English
- English 111: GAME course for Black Male Freshmen
- English 342: African American Autobiography
Assistant Professor
- African-American Literature
- Seminar on Black Masculinity
- Narratives of Enslavement
- Honors Literature III (topics course in Passing Narratives)
- Honors Literature IV (topics course in African-American Narratives)
- Freshman Writing
- Critical Literary Theory (focusing on African-American Literary Theory)
- Rhetoric & Logic
- Senior Essay
- Writing Labs II, III, and IV
- American Literature Survey I: Beginnings to 1865
- Methods of Literary Analysis
- Senior Thesis Preparation
- Independent Study (for eight Whitney Young Honors students)
- Africana Intellectual Thought (online summer class)
- Studies in African Culture (online summer class)
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Africana, Puerto Rican, and Latino Studies Department, Spring 2015-Present
“Literatures of the African Diaspora”
I teach this class online or in person each summer. In the class, we explore the long and rich tradition of African Diasporic Literature. Our discussions include questions of colonialism, tourism, religion, travel as transformation, internal and external slavery, violence, tradition versus modernity, fluid notions of sexuality, generational differences, and the various uses of language.
Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Summer Coordinator, July 2012 – Present
“Graduate School Boot Camp”
Each summer, I mentor and prepare Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship students for graduate study in the humanities. These students come from four CUNY schools, Hunter College, Brooklyn College, Queens College and City College of New York, who are under-represented college juniors and seniors seeking doctoral degrees in the humanities. We discuss all aspects of graduate study, including how to apply and how to have successful graduate careers. More importantly, I work with the Mellon Fellows as they prepare their graduate school applications.
Instructor, English Department
Revisiting Racial Passing in the Twenty-First Century (Senior seminar), Summer 2013
Race and Ethnicity (Writing intensive course for transfer students), Spring 2013
Introduction to Expository Writing (University-wide writing course), 2010-2011
