Literature as a starting point

TEACHING
LITERATURE
& WRITING.

Teaching & mentorship

I believe students learn literary analysis by reading sophisticated texts and taking intellectual risks. In my courses, they weigh conflicting interpretations against the evidence of a text and develop original, defensible claims.

The classroom

Composition courses / Taught

EVIDENCE.
INTERPRETATION.
ARGUMENT.

I ask students to reassess transgressive female characters such as Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and Lady Macbeth through close reading and thesis-driven arguments. Students compare these representations with the work of later female authors, including Emily Dickinson and Maya Angelou, and test familiar critical interpretations against textual evidence.

2026English Composition IUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham · EH 101

Instructor of record, Fall 2026. First-year composition focused on evaluating evidence, developing arguments, and revising with a clear purpose.

Composition · Currently teaching

Spring 2024
Fall 2023
Spring 2023Ecocritical ShakespeareUniversity of Miami · ENG 106

At the intersection of literature and environmental studies, students read Shakespeare’s plays alongside modern performances and films to develop rhetorical arguments about environmental ethics. Work by Walt Whitman, Claudia Rankine, Northrop Frye, and Julie Taymor helped them consider how literary interpretation shapes our understanding of the natural world.

Composition · Previously taught

Fall 2022
Spring 2022
Fall 2020First-Year Writing IUniversity of Miami · WRS 105

In this introductory course in university writing, I asked students to think and write critically about a variety of topics.

Composition · Previously taught

Spring 2021
Fall 2021Bad Women in Medieval and Early Modern LiteratureUniversity of Miami · ENG 106

I ask students to reassess transgressive female characters such as Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and Lady Macbeth through close reading and thesis-driven arguments. Students compare these representations with the work of later female authors, including Emily Dickinson and Maya Angelou, and test familiar critical interpretations against textual evidence.

Read the course

Composition · Previously taught

My teaching experience also includes mentorship for first-generation college students and writing center tutoring.

Research meets the classroom

HOW DO WE
COME TO KNOW?

My dissertation examines how Shakespeare and other dramatists used live performance to produce knowledge about the female body.

Read about the research

Teaching, mentorship & conversation

Birmingham, Alabama

LET’S TALK.

For research collaborations, teaching, and scholarly conversation.

sms512@miami.edu