In this section of my teaching portfolio, I have included assignment sheets for a number of original assignments I have used in my Composition I, Composition II, American literature survey, Studies in Popular Culture, and Film and Literature courses.
Composition I
The below assignment sheets are selected assignments from my themed Composition I course "Rock N Roll Composition." In the class, I use popular music as a thematic link to discuss writing in various genres. In the Personal Essay, students are asked to discuss their personal relationship to a specific song or playlist of songs. In the Cultural Criticism essay, students are asked to relate a specific song, musician, or musical movement to their unique historical time period. In the final project for the course, students work in groups to do the rhetorical work necessary to "creating a band" and must defend their choices through an essay and subsequent presentation.
Personal Essay
Cultural Criticism Essay
Making the Band Group Project
Composition II
The below assignment sheets are selected assignments from my themed Composition II course "Comedy & Composition." In the class, I use American popular comedy as a body of knowledge for students to study, navigate, and eventually relate to their final research project. The Reading Responses are the first step in the scaffolding of the class. In Reading Responses, students are asked to argumentatively engage with various philosophical theories of comedy from Plato to Kant to Freud. In the Paper Proposal, students are asked to propose a research topic related to our thematic focus of comedy and test the waters regarding available research on their potential topic of choice.
Reading Responses
Paper Proposal
American Literature
The below assignment sheets are selected assignments from my American Literature survey course. In my survey course, students model the different types of academic discourse surrounding literature and literary studies. In Leading Class Discussion, each student is asked to initiate and guide conversation regarding a specific text studied that day. In Position Papers, students are asked to defend unique interpretations of specific texts throughout the semester. As the final project, students write a Critical Essay Annotated Bibliography in which they find appropriate academic sources and write the introduction and general outline for a prospective literary analysis research essay.
Leading Class Discussion
Position Papers
Critical Essay Annotated Bibliography
Studies in Popular Culture
The below assignment sheets are selected assignments from my Studies in Popular Culture course. In this course, students learn a historical overview of American popular culture from 1828 to present as well understand and apply theoretical lenses used to study popular culture. In the three essay prompts below, students move from analyze the usage of a specific term in popular culture, modeled after Raymond Williams' Keywords, to analyzing a historical artifact, and finally to proposing an original interpretation of a pop culture text (in this case The Dark Knight as viewed through the lens of Slavoj Zizek's Welcome to the Desert of the Real. In their final group project, students present a popular culture text from the past ten years and use the theoretical lenses studied throughout the course to interpret it.
Essay #1
Essay #2
Essay #3
Group Presentation
Film and Literature
The below assignment sheets are selected assignments from my Film and Literature course. In this course, students study the history of American detective fiction from hardboiled crime novels to film noir to contemporary uses of noir. In the two essay prompts below, students are asked to analyze latter-day generic variations of the detective novel and noir from slacker noir of Inherent Vice and The Big Lebowski to the metaphysical detective story of Memento and Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy.
Essay #3
Essay #4
Composition I
The below assignment sheets are selected assignments from my themed Composition I course "Rock N Roll Composition." In the class, I use popular music as a thematic link to discuss writing in various genres. In the Personal Essay, students are asked to discuss their personal relationship to a specific song or playlist of songs. In the Cultural Criticism essay, students are asked to relate a specific song, musician, or musical movement to their unique historical time period. In the final project for the course, students work in groups to do the rhetorical work necessary to "creating a band" and must defend their choices through an essay and subsequent presentation.
Personal Essay
Cultural Criticism Essay
Making the Band Group Project
Composition II
The below assignment sheets are selected assignments from my themed Composition II course "Comedy & Composition." In the class, I use American popular comedy as a body of knowledge for students to study, navigate, and eventually relate to their final research project. The Reading Responses are the first step in the scaffolding of the class. In Reading Responses, students are asked to argumentatively engage with various philosophical theories of comedy from Plato to Kant to Freud. In the Paper Proposal, students are asked to propose a research topic related to our thematic focus of comedy and test the waters regarding available research on their potential topic of choice.
Reading Responses
Paper Proposal
American Literature
The below assignment sheets are selected assignments from my American Literature survey course. In my survey course, students model the different types of academic discourse surrounding literature and literary studies. In Leading Class Discussion, each student is asked to initiate and guide conversation regarding a specific text studied that day. In Position Papers, students are asked to defend unique interpretations of specific texts throughout the semester. As the final project, students write a Critical Essay Annotated Bibliography in which they find appropriate academic sources and write the introduction and general outline for a prospective literary analysis research essay.
Leading Class Discussion
Position Papers
Critical Essay Annotated Bibliography
Studies in Popular Culture
The below assignment sheets are selected assignments from my Studies in Popular Culture course. In this course, students learn a historical overview of American popular culture from 1828 to present as well understand and apply theoretical lenses used to study popular culture. In the three essay prompts below, students move from analyze the usage of a specific term in popular culture, modeled after Raymond Williams' Keywords, to analyzing a historical artifact, and finally to proposing an original interpretation of a pop culture text (in this case The Dark Knight as viewed through the lens of Slavoj Zizek's Welcome to the Desert of the Real. In their final group project, students present a popular culture text from the past ten years and use the theoretical lenses studied throughout the course to interpret it.
Essay #1
Essay #2
Essay #3
Group Presentation
Film and Literature
The below assignment sheets are selected assignments from my Film and Literature course. In this course, students study the history of American detective fiction from hardboiled crime novels to film noir to contemporary uses of noir. In the two essay prompts below, students are asked to analyze latter-day generic variations of the detective novel and noir from slacker noir of Inherent Vice and The Big Lebowski to the metaphysical detective story of Memento and Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy.
Essay #3
Essay #4
