TEACHING &
MENTORING
As a teacher-advisor-mentor, I am invested in students’ holistic development, supporting their sense of exploration and discovery, engagement in opportunities inside and outside the classroom, and in co-creating knowledge.
A FEW HIGHLIGHTS
MENTORING
As a research mentor, I collaborate with students as they design projects, hone questions, and develop methodological skills to explore issues in which they are invested as individuals and members of communities.
A FEW PAST & PRESENT STUDENT PROJECTS:
COURSES I'VE TAUGHT
Monumental Change (First-Year Seminar)
The removal of the Confederate statues lining Richmond’s Monument Avenue between summer 2020 and fall 2021 marked, for many, a moment of “monumental change,” gesturing to a transformation in the city’s built environment and reckoning with its past. While the symbolic power of the statues’ removal is indisputable, in this course you will consider: · What constitutes so-called “monumental change”? · How does change take place? · What role can we, as individuals and collectives, play in making change?
Cops, Crime, and Popular Culture (First-Year Seminar)
Throughout this course, you will build a critical toolkit to analyze different media as they represent stories of crime and criminality in public culture. The central thesis of this class is simple but crucial: media matter, shaping how we view the world. Rather than judge the media you consume, this class seeks to introduce you to different ways of seeing, listening, and thinking about how crime is represented. Using your toolkit, I invite you to see yourself as an active contributor to this media landscape – a producer and critic.
Critical Popular Culture Studies
Often dismissed as “mere entertainment” degrading the minds of the masses, popular culture has been condemned for creating cultural dupes. In this course, you will be introduced to the history of popular culture, its champions and detractors, and provided with a critical toolkit for analyzing a variety of popular texts, from television to film to music (among other forms). As critics, you will design research projects that explore the meaning of popular culture in contemporary society.
Just Cities (Sophomore Scholars in Residence)
Taught with Dr. Amy Howard
Cities are sites of economic ingenuity, creativity, tourism, and growth. They are also places of wealth inequalities, persistent poverty, and institutional racism. Taken together, these realities point to the importance of understanding the history, policies, and practices that have shaped U.S. cities as they are much more than “just” cities. And for many people living in urban areas over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, cities have been anything but “just.” In this course, we will examine American cities through an interdisciplinary exploration of the interwoven themes of community, commemoration, conscience, and place-making. We will examine questions about “just cities” with a range of tools taken from history, urban policy, urban planning, American studies, sociology, and cultural studies. Over the course of the year, you will learn to analyze and engage with a range of texts to understand the role and importance of cities, the complexities of their development, and the challenges of creating just cities.
Memory & Memorializing in the City of Richmond
Taking the city of Richmond as its point of departure, together we will examine various sites of memory production and contestation within the city. Through an analysis of these sites, ranging from museums commemorating Richmond’s past to specific artifacts housed within their collections, we will consider memory not only as a tool utilized in the reconstruction of history but as an entity open to reinterpretation and negotiation.
Digital Memory & the Archive
How do we move studies of the past into the digital realm? Throughout the semester, we will grapple with fundamental curatorial questions necessary to build an archive – a dynamic space for the preservation, storage, and accessing of historic artifacts. Complicating notions of the “archive” as a natural and transparent space, we will contribute to and reflect on the creation of resources for the Race and Racism at the University of Richmond Project.
Introduction to American Studies
Who or what is “American”? How have Americans understood what it means to be “American”? This course introduces you to these central questions in the study of American culture through an exploration of key concepts in American Studies such as identity, empire, performance, nation, race, and citizenship. Course texts will include original historical documents – short stories, paintings, music, film – and secondary studies by scholars from an array of academic disciplines. In addition to working with a range of texts in the classroom, you will have an opportunity to engage several “field investigations” – opportunities to apply course concepts to activities on and (possibly) off campus. Through reading, discussion, writing, and field investigations, you will bring a range of methods and analytical frameworks to bear on the study of American culture and society.
Streets, Spaces, and Structures
In recent years, college campuses across the United States have been compelled to confront the question, “What’s in a name?” As the Chronicle of Higher Education summarized, “And what is a university’s responsibility when the name on a statue, building, or program on campus is a painful reminder of hard to a specific racial group?” Joining a national conversation surrounding the meaning of the names of streets, spaces, and structures, the University of Richmond considers a response to calls to rename Ryland and Freeman Halls on campus. Over the course of the semester, you will engage the debates surrounding building renamings by focusing on a particular case study on the University of Richmond campus: Freeman Hall. Engaging with a range of primary source documents and contributing to the growing inquiry into Freeman’s life, you will explore the many Douglas Southall Freemans in public circulation, reading them within the context of the Lost Cause in popular and public culture.
HOW I APPROACH ADVISING
Fusing developmental and appreciative models of advising, the particulars of my approach to advising largely depend on a student’s stage in their academic career and what I have learned about their needs.
I typically begin by developing relationships with my advisees moving through the first two phases of appreciative advising: “disarm” and “discover.” I try to get to know my students, learning about what brought them to the University, things they are proud of, concerns they have, and affirming that they are not alone and indeed part of “the web.” I often share a bit about my own (non-linear) path and why I do what I do. I reiterate my commitment to their success – to being an advocate.
Yet, like my approach to the classroom, I seek to develop an advising environment where students know that the advisor-advisee relationship is not one where I have all the answers.
In the same way I view the classroom as a space of knowledge co-creation, where my expertise is one dimension of and contributor to our collective experience, I want students to know that our meetings are places to talk through goals and, when the time is right, make concrete plans to move us closer to those goals.
While I work with students to devise course plans, to explore opportunities, and to consider different pathways, I also provide the resources to empower students to take ownership of their educational experience. I want my advisees to be active in shaping their paths, while remaining open to new experiences and possibilities.