Teaching

I am a visiting professor of English at Lafayette College and currently teaching one section of English 110 (College Writing) in the fall 2007 semester. The topic of this section is the American Dream. Prior to working at Lafayette, I taught feature writing and news writing classes for three years at Northampton Community College in Bethlehem, PA.

In my 110 sections, we read, discuss and analyze a number of different texts—from songs to personal essays to journalism to films to poems--in order to illuminate the ideas surrounding the American Dream. In essence, we take a look at a cultural myth and examine over the course of the semester what that myth is and conversely, what the reality is, of the American Dream. We read a lot, write a lot, talk a lot and think a lot, in an effort to give you many opportunities to connect with these texts and the ideas they suggest, which in turn gives you multiple methods of improving your writing and critical thinking skills. Writing, in my 110 sections, consists of many short, informal assignments in and outside of class, longer essays in both third and first person, poems, film analysis and blog entries—we use the Lafayette blog, Soapbox, extensively, as a way to extend the classroom experience beyond our thrice-weekly meetings.