I begin this statement with a dead language and an epiphany.
In struggling—in graduate school—with both articulating my philosophy of teaching and with Latin grammar, I realized that (despite its difficulties), Latin has, surprisingly, helped me to articulate what drives my teaching. For me, liber—the Latin for both “a free person, one who is not a slave,” and also the word for “book”—epitomizes my understanding of education’s power, a power rooted in the connections between freedom and knowledge. I start with my liber-epiphany because I believe that attention to the historical ground from which our educational system and values grow is as key to elucidating what we do as teacher-scholars as it is to the foundation of my own pedagogical aims and methods. These connections illuminate for me the elements—humor and open discussion, critical and creative thinking, appreciation of multiple perspectives, confidence, and transdisciplinary inquiry—that I seek to foster in my students….
Teaching Interests:
Medieval Literature (all levels), Fairies, Magic, and Otherworlds, Medieval Romance, Chaucer, Medievalism, British Literature I Survey, Early Modern British Literature, Shakespeare, Speculative Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, World Mythology, Folklore, Introduction to Film, Composition.