My courses provide a traditional humanities education informed by feminist pedagogies that prioritize diverse texts, inclusive communications, and student-focused pedagogies. For example, at Western Michigan University and the University of South Florida, my students analyzed traditional literary canons, including texts by Chaucer and Shakespeare, tempered by lively interactions with marginalized perspectives, such as Margery Kempe and Patience Agbabi, whose texts challenge dominant cultural narratives and ideologies. As a result, my students develop informed perspectives as they actively participate in critical conversations. In all of my courses I promote inclusive writing and public speaking methods so that students’ work is easily accessible across cultures and to differently-abled audiences. My students develop refined writing styles with minimal colloquialisms to facilitate communication with audiences for whom English is not their first language. My students construct multi-modal digital texts that pair images with alt text or captions to improve accessibility for visually impaired readers. Additionally, I tailor courses that will serve students beyond my classroom. At Duquesne University and Clarion University I developed classes specific to cohorts of students, including texts and assignments that intersected with their professional goals. I work closely with students to generate projects that will add nuance to the topics about which they are passionate. Building on their experiences, my students evolve as informed scholars, thoughtful writers, and conscientious global citizens.

My syllabi contain all of the information students require to complete the course successfully. I include standard information like a detailed class schedule with all reading and writing assignments clearly indicated, policies maintained by the university and myself, and a description of every graded assignment, criteria, and rubrics. I provide a concise guide for how to use the libraries’ online database because my class includes a research component. And finally, I supplement every syllabus with the titles and contact information for campus resources like Student Health Services and the Counseling Center. Most students are operating under enormous expectations and anxiety; they experience numerous changes in a very short amount of time. I remind them that I want them to succeed and that our campus provides services for maintaining health and happiness. Explicitly citing this information on the first day of our class reminds students to be kind to themselves, and that one of the goals of a humanities education is to appreciate the human experience. My syllabi grant students’ immediate access to tools and information that will ensure their success in my class and more broadly during their academic career.

After introducing students to the expectations of the class, I acclimate them to both my teaching style, and one of the skills we will be refining over the term: reading critically. Students are supplied with the Mind Map below, and they are introduced to the basic principles of composing a Mind Map (begin with a central idea; then, connect subtopics that inform our understanding of the central idea). This particular Mind Map guides students through the expectations of a typical reading assignment for my class. Following this overview, the first graded assignment is to read and annotate a short text that I photocopy and distribute. They are instructed to annotate this text and submit it to me for comments and grading by the next class. Many of our first-year students are not comfortable writing in books or trusting their own reactions and interpretations. They assume that readers are passive, merely absorbing information. My goal is to cultivate active readers and critical thinkers, because these skills are valuable to them beyond my classroom. This assignment encourages students to underline, annotate, and comment on specific passages, so that they consciously participate in the process of making meaning. By submitting their annotations for a grade, students are challenged on the very first day of class and I am able to review and to refine their initial approach to texts.

We also perform a group annotation in class to model critical reading as a skill that requires practice. For this exercise I introduce students to “Sex without Love” by Sharon Olds via the overhead projector. We read the poem one line at a time, paraphrasing as we go, because this particular text requires audiences to slow down and parse the meaning of individual lines and images. We mark anything that stands out in our reading, and we identify features of diction, syntax, and figurative language. I ask students to explain the argument that the poem constructs, and to identify the components of this argument, which fruitfully leads to conflicting interpretations because the speakers’ position is fluid. Finally, the themes of the poem challenge traditional values, requiring students to distinguish between what the text literally says and the meaning they tend to impose upon it. Multiple students indicate that they expect the poem to argue that sex without love is bad, that the metaphor referencing a priest and God implicates a religious aspect that confirms this moralizing, and that the speaker is a woman commenting on her heterosexual relationship. A deliberate reading of the poem challenges these assumptions, exposing the literal meaning of the text, and interrogating audiences’ preconceived values. Through this exercise, students become conscious of their participation in the process of making meaning. They practice reading critically, questioning their assumptions, and employing textual evidence to support their claims. Additionally, by analyzing a nontraditional—even provocative—text, we dismantle students’ aversion to literary criticism. They do not think of literature as archaic and needlessly complicated. Instead, they learn to appreciate poetry as nuanced and exciting.

Then, students are challenged to compose their own critical arguments in response to a text that we have read. These assignments anticipate the final paper, and because writing itself is a process, we approach argumentation as a skill that is developed recursively. First, I ask students to work with a group to compose a statement about a text that begins with “I argue that…” We use the duration of this class to refine the groups’ statements, thus demonstrating proper argumentation and thesis writing, how to revise one’s own writing, and, by means of the assignment, we grapple with the deeper meanings and implications of the course material. Then, during a later class period, I provide students with a worksheet like the example attached below. They are expected to evaluate the thesis statement that I have provided, adopt it as their own, and think about how they would compose this research paper. Students use some of the class time to gather textual evidence to support the argument, generate possible counterarguments and refutations, and to organize the elements that compose this paper. We reconvene and outline the project as a class, discussing the text, thesis statements, and the requirements of a thoughtful purpose-driven argument.