Associate Professor & Acting Chair of English
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CONTACT INFORMATION Contact Information Office: 339 Tillinghast Hall Teaching and Research Interests
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Personal Statement
In my dozen years of teaching at the college and secondary school level, and I've been continually fascinated watching how literature opens up the world for me and for my students. Literature jolts us out of our familiar assumptions and understandings, forcing us to confront the world anew. As a teacher, my focus has always been on giving my students the tools to refashion their understanding of the world, helping them attend to the nuances of language and the complicated cultural forces in which literature takes shape. My research in American literature has focused on how people have used writing to reshape their own environments, both natural and social, particularly across cultural lines, and I've brought the same perspective to the classroom. I use literature to challenge students (and teachers of students) to confront the limits of their assumptions and to wrestle with worlds of difference literature embodies.