Courses

ENGL 5900: Composition Pedagogy, Theory, and Practice.  This graduate-level course offers a research- and scholarship-based background in composition pedagogy and theory, in addition to practical guidance in course design; assignment sequencing; class planning, assessment, and grading; and other elements of teaching first-year writing.  This course draws inspiration from similar courses designed by Melanie Kill (in terms of modeling and teaching demonstrations) and Jon Ostenson and Amy Williams (in terms of readings and reflections).  My approach adds greater emphasis on threshold concepts of writing studies (similar to Johnson, 2019), as well as employing a framework for teaching effectiveness (based in part on Follmer, Ward, and Colyott, 2020 and Barbeau & Cornejo Happel, 2023).

ENGL 393: Technical Writing.  This junior-level course leads students through familiar workplace genres such as cover letters, resumes, proposals, descriptions, instructions, technical reports, and ePortfolios.  My approach to this course follows my emphasis on fostering student motivation by inviting students to choose which readings to complete (something I piloted in my rhetorical theory course) and by providing multiple means of demonstrating learning (something I piloted in my digital rhetoric and rhetorical style courses).  My approach is also informed by studies of writing transfer, threshold concepts, and Ann Berthoff's Forming/Thinking/Writing.

ENGL 282: How Rhetoric Works.  This course introduces rhetorical theory to students in the University of Maryland Rhetoric and Professional Writing Minors.  Whereas many instructors teach this course as a chronological history of Western European and North American rhetorics, I taught the course with a broader focus on global and comparative rhetorics, both with the readings and the examples that we encountered.

ENGL 291: Writing, Revising, Persuading.  The purpose of this intermediate writing class is to help students develop their critical language awareness, or “the ability to reflect on language expectations in a given context or of a given audience and make thoughtful, informed language choices” (Gere et al., 2021, p. 395).  We work on honing our skills in studying the persuasive effect of stylistic choices and producing rhetorically attuned, well-styled prose.  As we engage in deeper study of rhetorical theory and its application to a wide variety of arguments and situations, we also consider techniques of revision.

ENGL 293: Writing in the Wireless World.  In this introductory course we practice writing in wireless environments and explore the properties and accidents of digital composition.  These properties and accidents include questions of identity, our relationships with other people, and how we can leverage writing in our efforts to make the world a better place.

ENGL 281: Standard English Grammar, Usage, and Diction.  I teach this course with a rhetorical grammar focus.  Each week, we introduce and practice identifying grammatical principles, and edit for and practice that principle.  We study concepts such as word formations, sentence elements and structures, and conventions of punctuation, as well as the social aspects of grammatical choices.  Through all of this, my emphasis is primarily on identifying and explaining grammar transformations, rather than on merely acquiring a declarative knowledge of grammatical terminology.  

ENGL 101A: Academic Writing.   First-year composition at the University of Maryland guides students through an extended process of inquiry in which students engage with questions of academic and public writing.   Students begin practicing listening by composing summaries and analysis.  This inquiry process continues with an annotated bibliography, stasis theory analysis, and finally a position paper and public remediation project.  This particular section was geared toward students who desired more guidance, and included two writing tutors who were assigned to our course.