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Courses Taught

This section details the courses that I have taught.  The First-Year Writing Seminars* are courses that I designed, and for which I was the primary instructor of record.  This list is ordered temporally, from most recent to least recent.

Materials available for each course include:  syllabus, essay prompts, student evaluations with a summary cover sheet, and my end-of-semester reflections on the class.  Where possible, I have also included observation reports.

To see materials related to a specific class, click the inverted caret (  ) next to the course semester that you wish to examine.

Medieval Civilizations (HTY 202)
University of Maine, Orono, ME 

  • Taught:  Fall, 2023
  • Description:  A survey class offering a broad look at medieval history in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa from 400 CE through 1350 CE.

The Early Middle Ages (HTY 403)
University of Maine, Orono, ME 

  • Taught:  Fall, 2023
  • Description:  A senior-level class taking an in-depth look at the history of Europe from 400 CE to 1000 CE.

Let’s Take a Walk: A History of Walking and Writing
Cornell University, Ithaca NY 

  • Taught:  2 sections, Spring, 2023
  • Description:  A First-Year Writing Seminar* that aims to help students develop a critical appreciation for maps as storytelling devices. Students mix course readings with analysis of historic and modern maps to learn to ask questions about the methods and intent of maps and mapmakers.

How to Lie with Maps: From Carto-Curiuos to Carto-Critical
Cornell University, Ithaca NY 

  • Taught:  Fall, 2022
  • Description:  A First-Year Writing Seminar* that aims to help students develop a critical appreciation for maps as storytelling devices. Students mix course readings with analysis of historic and modern maps to learn to ask questions about the methods and intent of maps and mapmakers.

Rewriting the Past: How History Gets Made
Cornell University, Ithaca NY 

  • Taught:  Fall, 2022
  • Description:  A First-Year Writing Seminar* that serves as an introduction to historiography. This course aims to help students become aware of the constructed nature of historical narratives, and to help them be critical of popular claims of historicity. Students will examine the role of history in identity-making and boundary setting, and will discuss the how the past is always conditioned by the present.

One Foot in Front of the Other: A Walking History of Walking
Cornell University, Ithaca NY 

  • Taught:  Fall, 2020
  • Description:  A First-Year Writing Seminar* exploring the role of walking in both our day-to-day lives and in our culture more broadly. The course is organized around a series of readings that consider walking in a variety of contexts, with the purpose of guiding students towards thinking critically about the role of walking in modern life. In keeping with the theme of the seminar, part of this course be taught in motion, while walking. Designated class discussion sessions will meet on tracks and trails, and those classes are spent walking and talking.
  • Class Materials and Evaluations:

One Foot in Front of the Other: A Walking History of Walking
Cornell University, Ithaca NY 

  • Taught:  Fall, 2018
  • Description:  A First-Year Writing Seminar* exploring the role of walking in both our day-to-day lives and in our culture more broadly. The course is organized around a series of readings that consider walking in a variety of contexts, with the purpose of guiding students towards thinking critically about the role of walking in modern life. In keeping with the theme of the seminar, part of this course be taught in motion, while walking. Designated class discussion sessions will meet on tracks and trails, and we and those classes will be spent walking and talking.
  • Class Materials and Evaluations:

Orbis Terrarum:  The Medieval Earth was a Globe
Cornell University, Ithaca NY 

  • Taught:  Spring, 2018
  • Description:  A First-Year Writing Seminar* in medieval history, focusing on the ways that medieval European people constructed their image of the world experientially.  This class takes as a starting point the modern perception that medieval people believed that the world was flat, and uses the 19th and 20th century creation of that myth to investigate the social power of historical interoperation.
  • Class Materials and Evaluations:

The Britons’ Britain:  Constructing Medieval England
Cornell University, Ithaca NY

  • Taught:  Fall 2016  | Spring 2017
  • Description:  A First-Year Writing Seminar* in medieval history, examining the means by which medieval English people created their sense of national self through the construction of history, geography, and traditions.  The class reads Bede, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Gerald of Wales, and uses Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities as the primary pieces of theoretical framing.
  • Class Materials and Evaluations:

Writing 7100:  Teaching Writing
Cornell University, Ithaca NY

    • Taught:  Fall 2015
    • Role:  Co-facilitator with a member of the Knight Institute Staff
  • Description:   This course prepares graduate instructors of Cornell’s First-Year Writing Seminars to teach courses that both introduce undergraduates to particular fields of study and help them develop writing skills they will need throughout their undergraduate careers. Seminar discussions and readings on pedagogical theories and practices provide an overview of the teaching of writing within a disciplinary context. Participants develop written assignments to be used in their own First-Year Writing Seminars.
  • Class Materials and Evaluations:

Where the World Ends:  Foundations of Medieval Geographies
Cornell University, Ithaca NY

  • Taught:  Fall 2015
  • Description:  A First-Year Writing Seminar* in medieval history, focusing on the ways that theory and received knowledge influenced the ways that medieval European people imagined their world.  The class reads from the Bible, Plato’s Timaeus, Strabo, Eratosthenes, Macrobius, Isidore, and Bede, before considering how these theories of space and geography play out in medieval maps and in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.
  • Class Materials and Evaluations:

Mapquest:  Space, Place, and Movement in Medieval Europe
Cornell University, Ithaca NY

  • Taught:  Fall 2014 | Spring 2015
  • Description: A First-Year Writing Seminar* in medieval history, focusing on the ways that medieval European people constructed their image of the world experientially.  The class takes Victor and Edith Turner’s concepts of liminality and communitas as framing mechanisms to examine medieval and modern pilgrimages, both as social phenomena and as literary events.  The class reads a number of pilgrim itineraries, spending the most time with William Weys’ journey to Jerusalem, and also reads The Travels of Sir John Mandeville and Marco Polo’s Travels.
  • Class Materials and Evaluations:

* The First-Year Writing Seminar (FWS) is a central part of Cornell University’s “Writing in the Disciplines” program. The purpose of these classes is to teach composition as it is practiced in the instructor’s field. FWS classes must spend close to half of in-class time on writing, have a limit of 75 pages per week on reading assignments, and require a minimum of five graded writing assignments per semester.

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