Departmental affiliation: The Writing Center

My main role at the college is helping students develop as writers through one-on-one sessions and through a wide variety of workshops held in the Writing Center, as well as in classrooms, in support of First Year Seminars and other courses (by request). I also offer Writing Counseling, which helps students perform closer to their potential by improving their approaches and attitudes towards writing, as well as their management of time.

I seem to have circled back to Amherst College after a couple of decades as a student of literature and as a teacher of literature and writing, at institutions including Saint Lawrence University, Miss Porter's School, UC-Santa Cruz, the University of New Hampshire, and SUNY-Binghamton. My research has focused on issues of race, gender, and sexuality in early modern texts, from paintings of Queen Elizabeth I to anti-tobacco tracts to the works of Shakespeare. My dissertation examined early modern English notions of race through a focus on representations of “alien incorporations”—both taking in and being taken in by foreigners and/or foreign territory.

My literary scholarship is currently on hold, as I focus on teaching the art of the academic essay and on developing my skills as a Writing Counselor. I am especially interested in learning how best to help those who really struggle to get words on the page and how to advise students in managing their sometimes overwhelming reading loads. I have been wondering lately how many pages of different sorts of texts one "ought" to be able to read.

Education

University of California, Santa Cruz Ph.D. in Literature,  2002
  Dissertation, “Alien Incorporations: Fantasies and Nightmares of Racialization in Early Modern England.”

University of New Hampshire M.A. in English Literature, 1994
    M.A. Thesis, “Performing Subjection and Deploying Gender: Strategies of Resistance
        and Domination in The Merchant of Venice and The Taming of the Shrew.”

SUNY-Binghamton M.A. in Comparative Literature, 1990

Amherst College B.A. in English and Spanish, 1988

Publications and Selected Conference Papers

“Inhaling the Alien: Race and Tobacco in Early Modern England.” In Global Traffic: Discourses and Practices of Trade in English Literature and Culture from 1550 to 1700. Ed. Barbara Sebek and Stephen Deng. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, April 2008. 157-78.

“A Feminine ‘Writing that Conquers’: Elizabethan Encounters with the New World.” Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 48.2 (Spring 2006): 227-262. Published Spring 2008.

“Discovering Melibea: La Celestina’s Uncontainable Doncella Encerrada.” Celestinesca 24 (2000): 95-114.

“Readers, Authors, and Characters in Don Quijote.” Cervantes 12 (Spring 1992): 73-92.

“Under The Armes of the Tobachonists: Race, Sexuality, and the Consumption of Foreign Goods.” “Looking Sideways: Queer Perspectives on Heterosexuality.” Annual Meeting, Shakespeare Association of America. Philadelphia. April 2006.

“Nostalgic Eclipses: Michael Hoffman’s Treatment of Shakespearean Reverie in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” “Teaching Shakespeare on Film.” Annual Meeting, SAA. New Orleans. April 2004.

“Gentling Jessica: Racialization and the Matter of Blood in The Merchant of Venice.” Open Competition Session. Annual Meeting, Shakespeare Association of America. Victoria, B.C. April 12, 2003.

“Manipulating the Mermaid: Pleasure and Power in Gower’s Armada Portrait.”
Wrinkles in Time: Ruptures and Continuities in the Writings of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
University of Pennsylvania. October 7, 2000.

“Race in Shakespeare: An Annotated Syllabus.” Workshop: “Teaching Race in the Renaissance Classroom.” Annual Meeting, Shakespeare Association of America. Montreal. April 6, 2000.