Museums: they're some of the most popular tourist attractions in any given city, they house priceless treasures, they provide some of the only jobs that students in history can imagine getting with their degrees. Why is it like this? How did museums become a standard feature of our landscape? Why do they look the way they do?

This course explores the cultural histories and traditions of the museum, the colonial and psychic roots of British museum culture, and teaches students how to analyze not just the things inside museums, but the way in which those things are curated, displayed, and described. We will practice critical examination of museum exhibits and understand those exhibits as products of cultural trends and preoccupations. 

What could be sexier than a big thick juicy book of cultural theory? Since the beginning of cultural studies as a discipline, issues of sexuality have occupied a place of particular interest. When and why is sex taboo? Who gets to determine what kind of sexuality is acceptable? How does sex relate to power? How do representations of sex in media affect people's well-being?

In this course, we will be unpacking the work of philosophers and cultural studies theorists who have written about sex, and asking what they can tell us about culture today. We will be giving a particular focus to cultural theory and narratives related to monogamy and non-monogamy. You will practice reading and interpreting cultural theory, while also becoming familiar with different schools of thought about sexuality, and applying theory to your own analysis of cultural texts.

The year is 1914 and war has been declared. No one yet knows that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand will set off a chain of events that will destroy the world as we knew it. Nothing would ever be the same, including literature. After the First World War, literary modernism burst onto the scene to sweep away the old and ring in the new. Or did it? Was it so different from what came before? What did come before?

In this course, we explore a variety of texts, popular and unpopular, in different styles and genres, from between 1910 and the First World War. From girl's literature to pornography, bad poetry to poetry about bad poetry, we will be looking at the literature of the last moments before the War. We will also explore the lasting impact of post-World War literary modernism, and imagine what our modern literary landscape might have looked like if different 1910s genres had taken hold.

Ah, the Middle Ages! Era of beautiful princesses, knights in shining armor, filthy streets crammed with self-flagellating priests and wailing plague victims, the occasional good old-fashioned witch burning. But wait… most witch trials took place long after the Middle Ages ended! And for that matter, Medieval personal hygiene standards may not have been all that bad… and did knights and princesses even dress like that? Why do so many people create art about the Middle Ages that just seems to be… wrong?

In this course, we will be consuming a range of Medievalist media from the nineteenth century to today. We will be asking questions like: Why have so many artists in history been so fascinated by the Middle Ages? What information does using a Medieval setting convey to readers and viewers? Where did mainstream ideas about the Middle Ages come from? And if they're not very historically accurate, then why do people keep using them? How do we determine historical accuracy and why does it matter to people — or doesn't it?

Propose and deliver seminar course to BA students in Anglistik and Teacher Training programmes.

What could be sexier than a big thick juicy book of cultural theory? Since the beginning of cultural studies as a discipline, issues of sexuality have occupied a place of particular interest. When and why is sex taboo? Who gets to determine what kind of sexuality is acceptable? How does sex relate to power? How do representations of sex in media affect people’s wellbeing?

In this course, we will be unpacking the work of philosophers and cultural studies theorists who have written about sex, and asking what they can tell us about culture today. You will practice reading and interpreting cultural theory, while also becoming familiar with different schools of thought about sexuality, and applying theory to your own analysis of cultural texts.

Proposed and delivered seminar course to BA students in Anglistik and Teacher Training programmes.

Victorian England might have a reputation for buttoned-up Anglicanism and religious conservatism, but did you know that England’s only Prime Minister of Jewish heritage was Prime Minister in the 1870s? Or that the 1880s saw a wave of Jewish refugees arriving into England from Eastern Europe — into the neighbourhood that became the site of the infamous Jack the Ripper murders?

This course explores the presence and work of Jewish writers in nineteenth-century England, and the echoes of their experiences in our modern world. We will be reading both Victorian-era and modern texts that deal with Victorian Jewish life. Through literary, cultural, and academic texts, we will practice doing original cultural studies research, and explore how Jewish Victorians dealt with and wrote about issues like love, crime, gender, and injustice.

Ran inclusive creative writing workshop with focus on kink and sexuality.

Proposed and delivered seminar course to BA students in Anglistik and Teacher Training programmes.

Swirling hoop skirts, frowning photographs, rib-crushing corsets, opium addictions, pious churchgoers, rigid gender roles, sexual repression, and people putting socks on pianos to hide their legs. For the past hundred years, England and Anglophone countries have looked back at the Victorian period with a mix of fascination, reverence, scorn, and disgust, using it either as an ideal to be emulated or a cautionary example of the "bad old days." Neo-Victorianism, the blanket term for content that harkens back to the Victorians, looks at the Victorian period through a modern lens, often with modern ethics.

In this class, we will explore various types of twentieth- and twenty-first century media dealing with Victorian England. Using these examples, participants will have the opportunity to practice the fundamentals of cultural studies, and explore how neo-Victorian media deals with issues like sex, power, and injustice.

Proposed and delivered seminar course to community students.

Did you know that the infamous Jack the Ripper murders took place in a Jewish neighborhood in London? Or that England’s only Prime Minister of Jewish heritage was Prime Minister in the 1870s? Victorian England’s reputation for buttoned-up Anglicanism masks a colorful world of Jewish culture. This course will dive into literature written by Jews in Victorian England as a means to explore this period of Jewish history. We will read authors ranging from Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli to first-generation immigrants in late-Victorian London, explore both famous and little-known writers, and ask ourselves how their writing explores the concerns and crises of the nineteenth century, in England and beyond.

Joined in seminar as experienced voice.

Prepared texts for online portal.

Developed creative writing exercises and led workshop.

Encouraged participants to write extemporaneously, share their writing, and give constructive feedback about ther participants' work.

Workshopped academic and creative writing at various stages of the writing process, most frequently at the rough draft stage.

Conducted one-on-one meetings, with a large percentage of international and English as Additional Language students.

Delivered lecture, including interactive exercises, on skills for success in the early stages of academic writing.

Lecture was developed for students in the Student Success Program, which targets students who entered university with low academic achievement scores.