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

  • Modern Drama

    Upper-level lit

  • Playwriting

    Upper-level workshop

  • Theatre Design

    Intro course

  • Hamilton

    Honors Seminar

  • Stagecraft

    Intro course

  • US Drama

    Upper-level lit

  • Amateur Performance

    Capstone

  • Harry Potter & British Empire

    Honors Seminar

  • Performing the Nation

    Honors Seminar

  • Intro to Theatre

    Intro course

  • US Theatre History

    History 200-level

  • Postcolonial Drama

    Upper-level lit

  • American Drama 1

    Upper-level lit

  • American Drama 2

    Upper-level lit

  • Themes in Shakespeare

    Core Lit

  • College Writing - Florence Campus

    First-year course

  • College Writing - Political Performance

    First-year course

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