Literature as Inquiry

I am certainly not the first to place inquiry at the center of academic activity. However, I do place special weight on the value of inquiry as being at the core of how I design and implement my instruction and research. In my teaching of literature and composition, this commitment means placing the cultivation of self-motivated student inquiry as being at the center of how every student accumulates knowledge and develops skill. In my research, this commitment means celebrating literature as being an exploration into not just what we can think and speak but also into what frustrates our efforts to know and to represent. To learn more about how, in practice, my inquiry-centered approach produces distinctive features within my teaching and research, please feel free to explore the pages below.

Teaching

I have experience teaching across the American literature curriculum, British literature from romanticism to the present, and composition.

Research

My published research considers African American literature, American novels and poetry, and modernism.

Law

I am an experienced attorney who has represented individuals, businesses, and municipalities in a broad range of legal matters.

About

I have extensive training and experience in literature, the law, journal editing and administration, and civic engagement.


“For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.”

Plutarch. Plutarch’s Moralia. Edited by E. H. Warmington, Translated by Frank Cole Babbitt, vol. 1, Harvard UP, 1969, pp. 258–59.