My teaching is largely informed by my training in U.S.- and U.S. South-focused interdisciplinary studies programs which taught me that to get at the complexity of this world we must attempt to understand the experiences and histories of diverse individuals and the ways in which individuals and groups have been
subjected to and have confronted systems of oppression. Furthermore, using multiple disciplinary lenses and approaches to do so—coming from history, literary studies, art/ music, sociology, religious studies, ethnic studies, women’s gender, and sexuality studies, and more—leads to layered and nuanced intersectional understandings. In all of my courses, students read an array of texts (reading and text being broadly defined) by a diverse set of authors and scholars. Informed by a commitment to raising student awareness about social issues, I select topics and texts that can be challenging at times, given that many works we read or watch expose students to the struggles that various populations have endured—especially as tied to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status—and the policies and institutional structures that have contributed to those struggles. Many of our course texts put into question notions that students have always assumed to be true or notions that they have always held dear. The first two years of undergraduate studies are exactly the right time for students to be wrangling with the complexities and contradictions of U.S. history, society, and culture. I meet these students at an ideal point in their lives: they are on the cusp of adulthood, eager to confront those complexities and contradictions, and many of them have only recently become eligible to vote. Having them read about, discuss, and listen to the experiences of those who are, in some instances, different and, in other instances, not so different from themselves leads to greater awareness of the circumstances that individuals and groups have faced and continue to face in this society and the significant means by which they have endured and persevered. This in turn can lead to students having greater empathy that provokes reflection on how their actions and decisionmaking might affect those around them.

I am also meeting these students at an overwhelming developmental point in their lives, complicated even more by the pandemic and the many challenging events of the past decade. I do not shy away from bringing new ideas and potentially difficult topics to them, but I also offer the support structures that will prevent wilt or apathy. With principles of inclusive and anti-racist teaching always at the forefront of my mind and informing what I do within my courses, I offer students structure, clarity, organization, flexibility, and transparency in my teaching in addition to passion, joy, enthusiasm, and humor. I believe in the importance of being available to students, of reaching reach out to them both when I am concerned, when I am impressed, or when I see or read something that makes me think of something they said in class. I believe in offering prompt and thorough feedback—always offering a word of praise first and then sharing ways to improve their writing or level of class engagement. I believe in the importance of telling students I believe in them even when they already believe in themselves and especially when they do not. This is what my “best” and “favorite” teachers did for me: they saw me, heard me, responded to me, inspired me to be more curious, encouraged me to ask hard questions, pushed me to move out of my comfort zone, and made me never want to leave school (which I haven’t).

In my early years of teaching, my approach—I now realize—was akin to the banking model described by Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed in which student are “‘receptacles’ to be ‘filled’ by the teacher” (72). Although I had read inspiring pedagogical work that encouraged me to take a different approach and although I believed at the time I was doing something different, I see now that I was focused on coverage and reliant on traditional approaches to teaching that, as Cathy Davidson points out in The New Education, no longer work for the students we are teaching today. In recent years, I have shifted my approach to teaching significantly— towards active learning and towards seeing myself as learning with students but also away from an adversarial or combative stance, a stance I felt I had to adopt as a young woman in the professoriate.

No longer am I as interested in imparting a foundational body of knowledge as I used to be, in making sure I “get through everything,” or in policing grammar to ensure my students are traditionally “polished” writers. Now, I am driven much more by 1) a pedagogy of curiosity, meaning approaching students with topics, texts, resources, assignments, questions, vulnerability, and an openness that encourages and inspires them to explore, take chances, ask more questions, and find connections to the real-life circumstances surrounding them and 2) what Catherine Denial termed in her pandemic-inspired article, a “pedagogy of kindness,” or the pedagogical act of “believing people and believing in people.” “To extend kindness,” Denial writers, “means recognizing that our students possess innate humanity, which directly undermines the transactional educational model to which too many of our institutions lean, if not cleave.” With curiosity, kindness, and inclusion in mind, I give students the opportunity, whether in an American Studies or Visual Culture or literature course, to engage with new ideas, to gain confidence in discussing those ideas with their peers, to create new ideas from what they learn, and to have a space in which they can try and try again. Simply put, I seek to help them find the liberation and freedom they were promised they would find within the liberal arts learning community of Oxford College.