Teaching and Research

Digital and Material Engagement: Examples from Sherlock Holmes

This semester, I taught a class called The Case of the Consulting Detective: Cultural Legacies of Sherlock Holmes. In the course, students read stories and novels from Doyle’s original work as well as adaptations like Laurie King’s The Beekeeper’s Apprentice.  They submitted textual analysis with peer-reviewed sources, led discussions, and...

“Trifles” and the Gender Divide

An interesting thing happened this week when I taught Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles,” resulting in an not-so-unexpected gender divide. “Trifles” is an early 20th century play set in the cold Midwest. In it, five characters are at the home of recently-murdered John Wright to look for evidence and to gather some things for...

Podcast Planning Update

    In an earlier post, I mentioned that I was planning a class podcast for the first time. As I continue planning the course and the assignments, my own inexperience has led me to the following decisions.     1.Early in the semester, I’ll ask students to find a podcast they love and a podcast they dislike. In class, we’ll listen...

Trying New Things

Good teachers are always prowling about for ways to better communicate their material. Since I try hard to be a good teacher, I constantly revise my course syllabi, assignments, and lesson plans. On occasion, I’ve gotten up in the middle of the night to write down an idea I had about a course. During the semester that I teach a class, I also keep an open...

Getting Student Feedback

When I was a student, I never thought about how my course evaluations would affect anyone. I viewed evaluations as the time to “let rip” against whatever I thought was wrong with the course, the professor, the content, or the pedagogy. So naturally, as a professor, receiving that link telling me I can access the results of my own course evals fills...

Podcasting

In the spring, I am teaching a class on the cultural legacy of Sherlock Holmes and plan to have students use digital tools and methods in their work with all things Holmesian. I plan to have students create a bi-monthly podcast to work through and present what they’re learning. The course will focus on the cultural values of the Victorian period and the...