Pedagogy
Courses Taught
Introduction to Theatre
Western Theatre History I & II
Theatre History: 1660-1875
Theatre & Social movements in 20th C. America
dramaturgy & Script Analysis
performance and social media
theatre and drama of the global majority
introduction to theatricality
Writing for the Stage
Introduction to Ethnography
English Composition
Fundamentals of Human Communication
Public Speaking
Please contact me if you would like a sample syllabus.
Teaching Statement
There are two quotations that summarize the core of my teaching philosophy. The first is from black feminist scholar and activist bell hooks. She writes in Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom: “The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility within the academy.”[1]
I include this powerful statement at the top of every syllabus I craft and on the first day of class, as my students and I begin to form our semester-long community, we parse its meaning together. Each class comes to its own unique conclusions about this statement. For me, it is always a poignant reminder that regardless of the discipline, when my students and I meet in a classroom, there is great potential for discovery, growth, and change. As such, one of my goals is to serve as a bridge-maker and not a gatekeeper for my students, ensuring access to, and inclusion in, that “radical space,” and not to mistake intolerance for rigor, or habit for pedagogy.
Of course, my scholarly discipline is the humanities, specifically theatre, and it is from that rich subject that I draw the second quotation. In her seminal essay, theatre scholar Elinor Fuchs advises an approach to play analysis that considers that “a play is not a flat work of literature, not a description in poetry of another world, but is in itself another world passing before you in time and space.”[2]
I teach a lot of play-scripts and it is likely my students will encounter this quotation, if not Fuchs’ full essay. If, as Fuchs’ argues, plays are self-contained small planets, then my role as a professor of theatre is to guide my students in the many ways to access and explore these worlds. The only way to accomplish this is to train students to think beyond their individual perspectives of this world, and to encourage in them empathy, curiosity, and a willingness to learn. As I introduce concepts and methods specific to theatre history and theatre making into my courses, my overarching goal for students is to create a classroom community that encourages their ability to contextualize and think critically about the human experience. Interestingly, whether I am teaching history, writing, speech communication, or another topic, my goals can most often be met by encouraging an empathetic world view in my students, and that worldview is attained by cultivating what Geoff Proehl calls a “dramaturgical sensibility.”[3] To me, that means cultivating a sense of curiosity about the structural, contextual, social, and spatial components of the many worlds we encounter in our work. I do this through the completion of four objectives:
1) Utilize dramaturgical principles and methods to enable students to think, speak, and write critically – and cultivate a dramaturgical sensibility.
Example: Students give a research presentation, in which I ask them to position themselves as the dramaturg for one of the plays we read for the course. This positioning activates the assignment by placing the student’s critical thinking skills at the center of the project as they consider not only elements like the writer’s biography and the time period in which the play was written, but also the significance of references within the play and explanations of the play’s elements that might be confusing to the producers. Rather than a simple book report-style recitation, the presentations become active explorations of the “world of the play.”
2) Integrate empathy into the course, beginning (but not ending) with the syllabus.
Example: My syllabus includes statements on accessibility, on basic needs security, on identities, on class atmosphere, as well as a land acknowledgement. I openly commit my courses to an anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-supremacist world. On the first day of the course, we discuss these statements and how they translate into the work ahead of us. While emphasizing that they take the lead in their learning experience, I create moments throughout the semester to check-in with students’ well-being beyond their academic lives. I provide time to transition between their lives beyond the classroom to their lives together in our class by opening with questions about what news stories are capturing their attention or what local events they are thinking about or campus activities they are involved with.
As “radical spaces of possibility,” our classroom is a place where discomfort may be part of the learning experience, but a denial of a person’s humanity is not. We will encounter plots and themes that will be disturbing, but we will not treat each other in ways that are disturbing. For instance, I will support the ways in which students self-identify and I will correct those who mis- gender another student. Or I will alert students when we may be encountering material that they find traumatic, and I check in with students who may be withdrawn from discussions of challenging material. Finally, I am conscious of the scholars, theorists, writers, and theatre- makers I bring into the classroom. Students must be introduced a variety of voices, styles, methodologies, and stories. Not because I reject an established cannon of work, but because I am establishing with students an actual cannon of work – one that re-covers and re-remembers how diverse our history actually is and does not take as a given a single narrative on the history of the theatre. I continue to learn new things about this discipline, and I make that explicit to students – sharing my joy in discovering a facet of the world I was previously unfamiliar with. I am a life-long learner and I encourage the same impulse in my students.
3) Encourage in students the collaborative spirit they will need for professional success.
Example: Students develop and deliver group presentations at the end of the semester on one of the plays we read as a class. In theatre history this presentation may be divided into sections of dramaturgical research, production concepts, and the performance of scene from the group’s chosen play. In a seminar this may take the form of a group devised work based on theories studied throughout the semester.
4) Provide a variety of opportunities and methods for students to contribute to class learning as they engage in problem-solving.
Example: I emphasize engagement over attendance in my courses and I grade accordingly. While being present is important, so is a student’s presence in the course. We take the time to agree on what it means to be engaged in the course and that agreement is what I highlight over the semester. For instance, engagement means being willing to test out new ideas and not being afraid of saying “the wrong thing,” which means I will never belittle a student for an incorrect or misguided answer. Engagement means being an active contributor during partner or group work rather than relying on one person to complete group work, which means that I will regularly offer these working configurations so that students have opportunities to speak to one or a few classmates rather than the entire class. Engagement means responding to discussion posts in a substantive way, which means I will make written assignments available for students whose strength lies in written over verbal communication, even as I encourage their skills in all areas.
My classroom is a balance between providing students with the necessary knowledge of the discipline and the skills that are inherent to theatre but that are also necessary to the professional world of the 21st century: critical thinking, empathy, problem solving, a collaborative spirit. Cultivating a dramaturgical sensibility in my students is an effective pedagogical approach to accomplishing these larger goals. While I have utilized these methods in my courses on theatre history, script analysis, playwriting, and speech communication, this philosophy is an expansive and useful approach for teaching directing and acting classes, as well as humanities subjects beyond theatre and performance studies. Or, rather, by helping students develop a dramaturgical sensibility within that radical space of the classroom, they may find it an easy muscle to use beyond the classroom as they create their own radical spaces of possibility.
[1] bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994), 12.
[2] Elinor Fuchs, “EF’s Visit to a Small Planet: Some Questions to Ask a Play,” Theater 34, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 6.
[3] Geoff Proehl, Toward A Dramaturgical Sensibility (Lanham, Maryland: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2012) 22.