ENGL1013 Global Literatures in English
Global Literatures in English is a transnational and cross-period unit that examines how literary and cultural works from different periods from across the world engage with world historical events and social political structures operating on a global scale, with a particular emphasis on the representation of Empire and its legacies.
ENGL2654 Novel Worlds
This unit of study explores the rise of novel reading in English as an educative, aesthetic and passionate practice from the 17th century to the present. The unit moves chronologically to examine how novels and the world came to be understood as mutually constitutive, how novels create and sustain attachments amongst their readers, how the genre of the novel became available for interrogations of national, gendered, “racial”, sexual and class identity, of liberty and intellectual emancipation, and of pleasure.
ENGL2672 Postcolonial Modernisms/Modernities
This unit examines literary and cultural expressions of modernism/modernity in sites that were or continue to be colonised. We will study how notions such as race, gender, class, sexuality, nation, and religion shape ideas of being modern, and how 20th and 21st century aesthetic works register the contradictory yet interconnected experiences of modernity.
ENGL3709 Global Literatures and Times of Perpetual War
This unit explores how literary and cultural works address the state of perpetual war of the historical present. Focusing on Third World decolonisation contexts, we will consider how writers and artists interrogate the gender, racial, and national ideologies that fuel violence, and how literary, cultural analysis contributes towards understanding the global, unevenly distributed effects of war.
ENGL6103: Approaches to Global English Literatures
This is a core unit for the Master of English Studies. Students will familiarise themselves with critical approaches to a range of literary works written throughout the world in the English language, and they will critically examine ways in which theories of globalisation and place have come to inflect paradigms of local and national identity. Students will evaluate contemporary understandings of the meaning and significance of “English” literature in a new global environment.
At Queens College, I taught courses in literature, college writing and digital composition. Here are two taught courses:
Global Literature and Times of Endless War
Spring 2014
The history of the twentieth-century consists of an unending series of wars fought around the world that continues unabated today. This course examines the ways in which this global state of endless war is refracted in literary and visual depictions of twentieth-century military conflicts in the Asia Pacific and Africa, and their repercussions elsewhere. We will begin by considering how war has shaped literary and visual forms of expression, and, in turn, how literature and visual media shape our understanding of war. We will then investigate how the theme of refuge emerges in our readings and consider how it serves as a means of critically engaging with the complex relationship between war and nationalism. The word, “refuge,” connotes the idea of home, and states often evoke this image to describe the nation in order to justify war—for e.g., following the September 11, 2001 attacks, President George W. Bush began referring to the United States as “the homeland” to justify the “Global War on Terror” as a means of securing its freedom. Indeed, the popular support of war is driven by nationalist or patriotic sentiment. At the same time, the destructive forces of war also lead to the proliferation of refugees, whose very condition of statelessness the international framework of nation-states is theoretically designated to prevent. By illuminating this paradoxical condition of refuge, how might the literary and visual texts we consider shape our understanding of the issues that perpetuate the global state of endless war?
Global Literatures in English
Fall 2013
A historical study of the diversity of modern and contemporary Anglophone and related literatures translated into English encompassing the complex transnational and postcolonial nature of much modern writing in English.
As an Instructional Technology Fellow at Macaulay Honors College, I worked with faculty members and students to integrate digital technology into teaching and learning in their interdisciplinary honors seminars.
Here are recent samples of:
The Peopling of Astoria, NY
Spring 2014
Website
Making it in New York City
Spring 2013
Website