Teaching

As a theatre historian and scenic designer housed in an English department, I am able to consistently create interdisciplinary classes that ask students to engage with text, space, and art. This page contains assorted syllabi from courses that I have taught, as well as a sampling of academic experiences which brought learning outside the classroom.

For a full list of courses, please see my CV.

Selected Syllabi

  • Global Drama

    Upper-level lit

    Syllabus

  • Humanity & Technology

    Capstone class

    Syllabus

  • Playwriting

    Upper-level workshop

    Syllabus

  • Theatre Design

    Intro course

    Syllabus

  • US Drama

    Upper-level lit

    Available fall 2023

  • Modern Drama

    Upper-level lit

    Syllabus

  • Hamilton

    Honors Seminar

    Syllabus

  • Stagecraft

    Intro course

    Syllabus

  • Amateur Performance

    Capstone

    Syllabus

  • Harry Potter & British Empire

    Honors Seminar

    Syllabus

  • Performing the Nation

    Honors Seminar

    Syllabus

  • Intro to Theatre

    Intro course

    Syllabus

  • US Theatre History

    History 200-level

    Syllabus

  • Postcolonial Drama

    Upper-level lit

    Syllabus

  • American Drama 1

    Upper-level lit

    Syllabus

  • American Drama 2

    Upper-level lit

    Syllabus

  • Themes in Shakespeare

    Core Lit

    Syllabus

  • College Writing - Florence Campus

    First-year course

    Syllabus

  • College Writing - Political Performance

    First-year course

    Syllabus

  • Event Management

    Project-based course

    Syllabus

Special Topics: Event Management

This project-based course asked students to conceive, market, and produce Riverside Ride Fest, a cycling-based fundraising and campus community-building event in conjunction with campus administrative offices and to co-produce a student research conference in conjunction with the Global Studies Program.

FFE: Writing for College - Performing Florence

Marist sends 30-50 first-year undergraduates to our Florence, Italy campus each fall for a full-year immersive study abroad experience. Main campus faculty go over in the fall to teach and assist with introducing the students to Marist. In 2015, I taught Writing for College: Performing Florence in the FFE program. We were able to explore traditional first-year composition course skills while discussing performance studies, as a field. The city of Florence became our classroom and provided numerous opportunities for observing and participating in traditional ritual performances, including Festa de Santa Reparata (left and above right) and Rificolona (below right).

Capping: Amateur Performance

This interdisciplinary fourth-year capstone course asked students to consider amateur performance, as amateur performers. After surveying theoretical, historical, and literary texts from and about amateur performance, students devised, wrote, and staged a series of modern cycle plays. This modernization included scenes from contemporary life, and a student-conceived and faculty-designed hell mouth which re-conceived seminal childhood memories (Where the Wild Things Are) into a passage out of college and protection and into the real world. 

Dramaturgy Independent Study

In the fall of 2014, I was asked by Dr. H. May to serve as Production Dramaturg for a performance of Tartuffe at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. I was able to include three of our theatre students as dramaturgy assistants during a semester-long group independent study in dramaturgy. Thanks to HWS Sound Designer Kelly Walker, we were able to Skype into rehearsal in a time before the pandemic made this commonplace, in addition to driving up to Geneva for technical rehearsals and the final production.

The team: Kim, Eileen, Sara & Essence