I come to Kalamazoo College from Michigan State University, where I earned my Ph.D. in American Literature and Film in the spring of 2007.  My dissertation concentrates on textual adaptation, primarily film adaptations from literary sources.  My teaching and research interests center on film, media studies, and American popular culture. 

I want my classes to facilitate a transformative experience, changing how students view texts and cultures while reshaping their models for rhetoric and analysis.  Each syllabus I create focuses on the course materials’ interdependence, and one of my central goals is to enable students to see these connections between and among the things we are studying, as well as to connect those concepts to their own lives and interests.

While I have refined my approach as an instructor, my teaching philosophy is not a fixed and immutable thing.  My teaching and research are complementary, and in many ways I approach my teaching as research.  I enjoy striving to find new ways of sparking students’ interest and improving my courses to reflect what I have learned while teaching.