Teaching

At UCLA, I enjoy teaching widely in early medieval literature and culture, from introductory Old English to a lecture class on "Distractions and Noonday Demons" to a community-engaged learning course on "Refugee Literature Then and Now," for which my Spring 2019 class worked together on a collaborative book project and related efforts, such as the video to the right.

I am committed to pedagogy and have written about revivifying Old English verse for beginning students in an essay in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching. I am also a three-time winner of Harvard's Certificate of Distinction and Excellence in Teaching and a former Teaching Fellow for the Breakthrough Collaborative in Norfolk, VA.

Interests

Old English and Anglo-Latin language and literature
British literature, Beowulf to Milton
Poetry and Poetics
Literary Theory and Practices of Reading
Affect Studies
Theories of Cognition
Enigmatic Literature and Detective Fiction
Southern Literature
Refugee Literature
The History of the English Language

Courses

(J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. 66, fol. 56)

L’estoire de Merlin, France, c. 1316. (British Library, Add MS 10292, fol. 213r)

(Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11, fol. 3)

(Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley MS Laud Misc. 733, fol. 18r)

(The Big Lebowski. Dir. Joel and Ethan Coen. Gramercy Pictures, 1998. Film.)

Distractions and Noonday Demons
Lecture Course (UCLA, Fall 2018)

It is a common assumption that we live in an increasingly—and uniquely—distracted world. As this course demonstrates, however, medieval readers, writers, and thinkers faced similar concerns. Indeed, distraction posed one of the most significant spiritual dangers of the Middle Ages. But was it an affect, a pathology, a demonic temptation, or, worse, possession? And how does distraction relate to curiosity, incredulity, and wonder—or to heresy, conversion, and dissent? Moving from The Psychomachia or “Battle within the Soul” to Titivillus, the “patron demon” of medieval scribes, we will read widely in medieval theories about cognition and concentration; demonological treatises; restorative charms; scribal curses on inattentive readers; and poems and plays about the dangers of digression, boredom, and daydreaming as we work to understand the perils (and pleasures!) of getting distracted in the Middle Ages.

Feeling Better in the Early Middle Ages
Seminar (UCLA, Fall 2019)

What did it mean to “feel down” or to help someone “feel better” in the Middle Ages? And how did medieval people conceive of and work through their emotions—or related concepts like individual mental health or interpersonal intimacy? In exploring these questions, this seminar will provide an introduction to affect theory and the history of the emotions by way of one of the most popular genres of the period: the “consolation” or “book of comfort.” Centuries before the rise of self-help guides, these texts helped readers process their trauma, depression, anxiety, and grief. As we work to feel better in and with the literature of the past, we will read consolations alongside letters between exes, medical remedies for troubled minds, mourning guides, confessional manuals, and notes on the dangers of touch as well as work by contemporary literary theorists.

Introduction to Old English: Riddles, Dreams, Wonders
Lecture Course (Harvard, Fall 2016)

In this course, you will learn to read English as it was written a thousand years ago, beginning with a grammatical overview and ultimately translating a wide array of the earliest English literature, from riddles and dream guides to monastic sign language and explanations of elephants for people who would never get to see them. Throughout, we will examine varying assumptions about knowledge and knowledge production, literature and literary theory then and now, focusing in particular on texts that instruct their readers in how to read them—from magical incantations to manuals on how to predict the future.

Refugee Literature Then and Now
Service-Learning Course (UCLA, Spring 2019)

Over sixty-eight million people are currently displaced by violence and environmental destruction. This course will focus on their stories. Throughout the quarter, we will volunteer with community organizations in greater Los Angeles to support recently resettled refugees as well as immigrant rights more broadly. At the same time, we will read contemporary stories of exile and migration alongside nineteenth-century slave narratives and medieval accounts, pushing back at the notion that there has ever been a nation “apart.” As we will see, much medieval English literature was resolutely engaged with enduring questions of displacement and hospitality, while ongoing projects like Refugee Tales evoke a deep archive of Anglophone writing by and about asylum seekers. Authors will include Gloria Anzaldúa, Hannah Arendt, Geoffrey Chaucer, Edwidge Danticat, Amitav Ghosh, Harriet Jacobs, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Ocean Vuong as well as several anonymous medieval poets.

Suspicious Characters: Postmodern Detectives and Critics
Seminar for Honors English Majors (Harvard, Fall 2016)

Should we be suspicious of what we read? Where might we look for evidence? And, wherever we find our clues, how should we assemble them? In engaging these questions, this course will examine a key genre in postmodern fiction: the metaphysical detective novel, which asks us not just to solve the crime but also to understand the process of reading and interpretation behind any solution. The “theory of the novel” justifiably continues to spark debate, but we will turn our attention instead to what I would call “novels of theory”: experimental works that self-consciously exploit the mystery genre to interrogate textual interpretation and hermeneutics writ large, from The Big Sleep to The Big Lebowski.