At Clemson University I’ve taught graduate and undergraduate seminars on topics ranging from Life Writing, and The American Novel to Representations of Slavery. I especially love teaching English 3980, an American Literature Survey class from the beginnings (whatever that might be) to 1900.
Along with student teams, I have conducted original research with real world impact; mentoring students so that they might build well-sourced Wikipedia pages, working with them to design an extensive digital museum exhibit, presenting with them at conferences, and co-authoring with them in professional venues. One of these collaborative endeavors even resulted in a collection, I Belong in South Carolina: South Carolina Slave Narratives that won an American Library Association “Choice” award as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2010.
In 2008 I was awarded the Clemson University-wide Phil and Mary Faculty Bradley Award for Mentoring in Creative Inquiry —a prize given to outstanding work in teaching and mentoring undergraduates in research.
As a scholar of book history, my first work was on authorship and collaboration and I’ve taken that expertise into everything I do. While collaboration is never frictionless and does occasionally fail, I believe it is always an effort worth pursuing and I have consistently sought to see students as collaborators with the goal of always pushing inquiry farther, together.
