On a sticky September day in 2024, I took 15 new Duke freshmen on a field trip to a cemetery. They were given time to respectfully roam, taking in the endless rolling hills of graves until they each independently settled on one that caught their eye. Then they sat in the noonday sun, speckled dots of color in a sea of tombstones, sketching their chosen grave and writing reflectively in their journals. 

 

This might seem like a strange way to start an English course –– encouraging a class of wide-eyed eighteen-year-olds to contemplate their mortality in their first few weeks of college. But, as it turns out, my students were hungry to wrestle with and face the big existentialist questions; hungry to link heady academic knowledge to the reality and meaning of their lives. Enough so to sign up for my weighty writing course: “Death & The Afterlife.” 

 

This belief –– that literature can and should be the meeting ground of philosophical ideas and human experience –– is central to my teaching philosophy. Whether this meeting of the abstract and the tangible happens in a cemetery, an art museum, a park, or behind a wooden desk in a traditional classroom, my students come away seeing why the things they read (old or new, “classic” or obscure) should matter to them and can change their lives.

 

Multi-Modal Learning

 

One of the ways I try to connect course content to real life is by encouraging my students to participate in multi-modal, multi-dimensional learning. English classes tend to be narrative-centric, but narratives are not only found in novels. In past classes I have taught, students have learned to analyze pieces of art, films, song lyrics, poems, essays, plays, short stories, autobiographies, photographs, and more. By engaging with various forms of storytelling, my students become adept at noticing thematic trends, differences in audience, authorial intent, and modes of expression. 

 

Additionally, I usually ask my students to attempt creatively diverse projects themselves. One common assignment in my courses is to create an original piece in response to a text we’ve discussed in class. Here, students have the opportunity to use their unique talents and skills, creating anything from a new musical instrument to a new recipe, a podcast to architecture, mathematical equations to a comic book. Last year, one of my students (a computer science major) coded a video game from scratch, with decision-making in the video game reflecting the plot of a novel we read as a class. I believe in invention as reflection –– the idea that hands-on original creation is one of the most effective ways to discover and process one’s own thoughts. Rather than regurgitate facts or strive to sound articulate without any meaningful convictions, students are given the time to personally wrestle with the texts at hand and produce an original response. 

 

Besides assignments and readings, I try to make the classroom itself a space for varied learning. I typically start my lessons with some kind of presentation and give a short lecture on the historical, authorial context of the work we’re reading; this helps provide a framework for thinking about the text, and also gives students who learn visually (or by listening/observing) the opportunity to meaningfully engage with the material. Then, for the remainder of class, I open it up to a seminar discussion, with guiding questions prepared to help shephard conversation; this offers students who think out loud, or who learn best by dialoguing, the chance to connect with the content in their own right. Additionally, I will often provide opportunities in class to work in small groups, have independent work time, or time to engage 1:1 with me.

 

Authentic Connection

 

One of the greatest privileges of teaching is the ability to mentor students as they face many changes and challenges in adult life. I prioritize building genuine relationships with my students, both inside and outside the classroom. I typically use the first 5 minutes of class to connect with my students and allow them to connect with each other –– I ask them about their weekends, what they did over break, and how their other classes are going. By two weeks in, the classroom is a buzz with conversation by the time I enter, as students become comfortable with each other and with a classroom environment that allows for noise and fun. 

 

I’ve also attempted to make my students (especially new freshmen) feel cared for by noting people’s birthdays/half-birthdays on the first of the semester and bringing their favorite snack to class on that day to celebrate. I’ve also made it a habit to leave each of my students with an encouraging note at the end of the year, propelling them forward with confidence into the next semester. I’ve found that such attention to the details of my students' lives makes them feel understood, valued, and affirmed, especially when the university is new to them.

 

My office hours are often a great space for fostering authentic connections too. Last year, not one slot of time for office hours was empty, with students coming alone or in groups to chat about class assignments, big philosophical questions, or just to ask life advice. Though I’d offer everyone their own 1:1 meeting with me, my students would often come in groups, having fostered such strong bonds with each other that they were happy to cram into my tiny office space, many of them contentedly sitting on the floor. This comradery, I believe, is due to the philosophy of “generous interpretation & gentle debate” that I encourage in the classroom –– creating an environment where respectful freedom of expression is encouraged and students know how to listen to each other well.

 

Lastly, my hope is that students not only cultivate an authentic connection with each other, but with themselves. My courses typically encourage “writing as thinking” –– in addition to longer research papers, my students engage in regular writing assignments that demand reflective thought. I generally ask that these assignments be done by-hand in a physical journal as a method of slowing down and writing without distraction. A way of synthesizing thought and engaging with materials regularly, these journal entries are pass/fail to encourage authenticity (the submission is graded, not the content). I’ve had several of my students say that, though still an academic exercise, these writing assignments were profound occasions for personal reflection, allowing students to develop a more secure sense of self in an increasingly loud and confusing world (course evaluations here).

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Future Teaching & Collaboration

 

With every class I've taught, I have enjoyed having my colleagues in the English department step in as guest lecturers at least once in the semester. I value collaborating with other scholars and instructors, and I believe it is a gift to my students to experience different teaching methods and hear from different voices. When I taught Death & The Afterlife, my friend and PhD classmate, Lieutenant Colonel Trivius Caldwell, came to speak to my class about his experiences in combat and the ways that he wrestles with his mortality in the army. Later, when I taught Christian Literary Tradition, I invited my friend and colleague, Ejuerleigh Jones, to come guest-lecture twice during our study of both Middle Ages & Renaissance authors, sharing her expertise on the topic of religious literature and culture. My students appreciated hearing from experts besides myself and gained a lot from dialoging with such thinkers. I hope to continue having generous working relationships with my colleagues post-PhD, prioritizing partnership in and outside of the classroom.

 

As I look forward to future teaching roles, I anticipate being able to step into a range of classes. I have successfully taught survey courses (as seen in Christian Literary Tradition), introductory writing courses (as seen in Death & The Afterlife), and multi-media courses (as seen in Warping Time in Film & Fiction). I could foresee myself teaching future courses on topics such as:

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1. A survey of 19th-century American literature

2. A survey of 20th-century American literature

3. A survey of British and American Gothic literature

4. A survey of Christian literature (patristic period to present)

5. Southern Writers: Faulkner, O'Connor, Morrison, and others

6. Women writers in America (19th-20th century)

7. Slavery, abolition, and antebellum politics 

8. Dante and his long literary influence (or, Heaven, Hell, and literary explorations of the afterlife)

9. Doubles, doppelgangers, and alter-egos

10. The Soul: a literary appraisal

11. Single author study: Edgar Allan Poe

12. Single author study: Emily Dickinson

13. Single author study: Nathaniel Hawthorne

14. Single author study: Flannery O'Connor