In fall of 2020, I was accepted as a HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory) 2018-2020 Scholar. Check out some of the work I have contributed to!
Summer 2019: Collaborative Book Discussion on Jacqueline Wernimont’s Numbered Lives. Check out my portion here, and the rest of the discussion here!
“Although Wernimont does not elaborate much on this favoring of quantum media and those who wield it, I suggest that it resulted in highly gendered ways of knowing, privileging quantitative positivism over qualitative, situated knowledges. This is, I think, one of Wernimont’s most important points, that historicizing epistemologies reveal what the knowledge regimes we have inherited conceal—the lives, bodies, and deaths of those invisible to much of Western history.”
In spring 2019, Julie Sorge Way and I presented on “Making Meaning with Digital Tools: Practical and Inclusive Strategies ” Initially conceptualized as a presentation about moving beyond the traditional paper in our pedagogy, Julie and I began discussing ways that digital tools can help deconstruct some of the power structures in the classroom, and parts of this discussion bore fruit as this webinar discusses ways our use of the digital can be more inclusive and practical. Check out the webinar and my full recap here!
Check out more of my work and ideas from my blog below!
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 created and maintained their own blogs for the course. I also used assignments that I haven’t used before. I blogged about preparing a podcast assignment here and here, but...
read more“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 recently-arrested-for-murder Minnie Wright. Mr. Peters, the Sheriff. The county attorney Mr. Hale, found the body Mrs. Peters, married to the law Mrs. Hale, friend of Minnie’s, come to see what...
read morePodcast 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 to snippets and discuss what works and what doesn’t work about each podcast. 2.This will allow us to create standards for our own course podcast. I have decided that this...
read moreTrying 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 notebook in OneNote to document issues I’m having with assignment design or to make note of a lesson that went over really well or a reading that students react strongly to. As...
read moreGetting 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 me with dread. I pour most of who I am into the courses I teach. I spend weekends and evenings planning and researching, and I wrap up most of my work days grading or assessing work....
read morePodcasting
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 original Sherlock Holmes canon, but it will also explore the longevity and pervasiveness of the character invented by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. As a necessary part of that legacy, we will...
read moreCurrent Research
Currently, I’m working on a paper on the way country music playlists construct a rhetoric of hetero-normative masculinity. The paper has been accepted at the ACA/PCA conference in April 2019. More to come!
read more