Projects

Publications, Classes Taught, Talks, Conference Presentations, and more

I see my teaching and my research as existing within a continuum: teaching provides me the opportunity to apply the insights I gain in my research and the necessary criticism to refine my own scholarly pursuits.

Teaching the Grateful Dead, Happenings, & Spontaneous Pedagogy

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, vol. 9 no. 1 & 2, February 2022.

To teach a course on the Grateful Dead I developed a praxis I call “spontaneous pedagogy” that pairs academic rigor with flexible curriculum details to enable creativity and engagement among students in a truly student-centered classroom. The pairing of spontaneous pedagogy with the Grateful Dead course worked well because the subject emphasizes improvisation, which initially inspired and—during the course—paralleled my praxis. I had developed this praxis previously, implementing it each semester from 2007 to 2010 for one Composition II unit on definitional arguments entitled, “The Nature of Reality.” Students were asked to define what they consider as real and apply that definition to a mythological creature. Utilizing spontaneous pedagogy in this unit was successful: students gained agency in the classroom, guiding our activities towards topics that were important topics for them, and produced unique and excellent work. Following this success, I taught a topic-based intersession class (80 hours in three weeks) on the Grateful Dead in 2011, relying on spontaneous pedagogy and allowing students more agency to determine our curriculum. But something unusual happened: as the students determined the topics for class discussion, they also began assigning themselves additional homework and reading tasks, including their own essay assignments and their submission of their own oral and multimodal presentations on topics of their choosing. I found that spontaneous pedagogy in the Grateful Dead classroom achieved a truly student-centered learning experience as students willingly took over the roles of curriculum and assignment design, leaving me to prepare the classes and participate in them as a guide. In addition to the knowledge of the topic students gained in the class, they also gained a unique experience of a spontaneous atmosphere in an academic setting that paralleled a Grateful Dead improvisation or show experience.

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“John Steinbeck’s To a God Unknown: The Clearing Cycle & the Monterey Metaphysics of Ricketts, Steinbeck, and Campbell”

Steinbeck Review, vol. 17 no. 2, Penn State UP, Fall 2020.

This article discusses an early Steinbeck novel written during his time living in Monterey—To a God Unknown (1933)—as a hermeneutic for assessing his metaphysics, developed out of his observations of natural cycles with marine biologist Ed Ricketts, and a young Joseph Campbell. Described as “speculative metaphysics” by Steinbeck in The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951), their philosophical approach to the world emphasizes holism: spiritually, ecologically, and psychologically. Steinbeck articulates this conception of reality in To a God Unknown. This article shows how these beliefs and the vocabulary Steinbeck uses to describe them are heavily influenced by the company he kept—Ricketts and Campbell. It then close reads Steinbeck’s novel, illuminating the author’s use of a cyclical organizing schema in the form of a recurring trope: a pine glade embedded with spirit, that provides an ebbing and flowing pattern to the characters’ psychological behavior and physical actions. The cyclical return of this important trope has thus far escaped critical attention but is an important demonstration of Steinbeck’s speculative metaphysics. This organizational schema is consistent throughout and provides a subtle, yet persuasive alternative reading of the book, in contrast to the erratic demarcated chapter breaks. In addition to elements of biographical and historical context, the critical lens in this article calls on Jungian psychoanalysis, Campbell’s myth theories, Deep Ecology, and Anthropocene approaches, as each is appropriate to explicate the unique approach to holism in physical, metaphysical, and psychological nature within Steinbeck’s work.

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“Foreword.” 14th Annual Grateful Dead Scholars Caucus Program

Forthcoming online at the Center for Counterculture Studies

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“And Closed My Eyes To See: Buddhist Resonances in the Grateful Dead’s Lyrics.”

Reading the Grateful Dead: a Critical Survey, ed. Nicholas Meriwether, 2012

The Grateful Dead, as a cultural force, was conceived amidst the countercultural heterogeneity of 1965 San Francisco. Buddhism accounted for one of the aggregates of this heterogeneous counterculture; and the Grateful Dead, as both a product of this culture and an agent of its propagation, circuitously reflected this amalgamation and informed it.  This chapter uses Buddhist ideas as a hermeneutic device to read the Dead through, and uses the Dead as a historically specific phenomenon through which to read Buddhism in America.

Preview

Courses Taught

 
Edmon Low Library

Edmon Low Library

Oklahoma State University

4000/5000 Level

3000 Level

Oklahoma State’s Doel Reed Center in Taos, Leisure Learning Courses

  • Folktales & Enchantment (Summer 2024).

  • Taos & the Western (Summer 2023).

Invited Speaker

  • “La Llorona: Just a Ghost Story, or More?” Doel Reed Center Virtual Lecture Series. Spring, 2024.

  • “Rudolfo Anaya & the New Mexican Western.” Doel Reed Center Virtual Lecture Series. Spring, 2023.

  • “John Steinbeck’s Spiritual Ecology.” Honors Faculty Research Symposium. Spring, 2021.

Senior Projects Directed

  • Kate Battershell. Spring, 2024.

Semester-Long Faculty Mentorship Program: Training Graduate Students in Pedagogy

Mentees:

  • Jennifer Lobaugh-Conner. Fall, 2019.

  • Minho Maeng. Fall, 2018.

McFarlin Library

McFarlin Library

The University of Tulsa

3000 Level

  • Technical Writing for the Professions: Business.

  • Technical Writing for the Professions: Engineering.

    1000 Level

  • Exposition and Argumentation (Composition).

  • Exposition and Argumentation: Non-Native Speakers.

Invited Speaker

  • “On Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima.” Bellwether Fellows Research Panel. 2017.

TU Writing Program Practicum Leader

  • “Oral Presentations.”

  • “Multilingualism/ World English.”

  • “Service Learning.”

  • “Evaluating Student Writing.”

  • “Second Language Writing.”

  • “Teaching Rewriting.”

  • “Working with Student-Athletes.”

  • “Writing Prompts.”

Bizzell Memorial Library

Bizzell Memorial Library

The University of Oklahoma

3000 Level

Campus Presentations

  • How to Propose and Teach Intersession Courses. Workshop.

  • First Year Composition Training Video.

  • Teaching From the Heart. TA/Adjunct Workshop.

Selected Conference Presentations

  • “Patterning Wildness in Steinbeck’s To a God Unknown.” American Literature Association Symposium. Santa Fe, NM. October, 2023.

  • “Jack Kerouac’s Market Street Vision through Successive Drafts.” Invited Speaker. Dylan & The Beats: Rolling Under the Stars Symposium. The Center for Bob Dylan Studies. Tulsa, OK. June, 2022.

  • “The Making of On The Road.” Invited Session Organizer. Dylan & The Beats: Rolling Under the Stars Symposium. The Center for Bob Dylan Studies. Tulsa, OK. June, 2022.

  • “Organizational Mysticism in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.” Modern Language Association. Washington D.C. January, 2022.

  • “‘Diamond Eye Jack: Jack Kerouac, Robert Hunter, and American Spiritual Nature Writing.” Southwest Popular Culture & American Culture Association Conference. Albuquerque, NM. February, 2020.

  • “Jack Kerouac: ‘Really a Scholar, a Hip Mystic.’” American Literature Association Conference. Boston, MA. May, 2019.

  • “Revisiting Steinbeck’s Early Novels.” Panel Co-organizer. American Literature Association Conference. Boston, MA. May, 2017.

  • “On To a God Unknown.” American Literature Association Conference. Boston, MA. May, 2017.

  • “Jack Kerouac and ‘The Magic Mothswarm of Heaven.’” Sacred Literature, Secular Religion: A Conference on Cultural Practices. Syracuse, NY. October, 2015.

  •  “Annus Mirabilis: Thoreau in 1860.” Panel Co-organizer. Annual Gathering of the Thoreau Society. Concord, MA. July, 2014.

  •  “Adopting the Method of Nature: Henry David Thoreau and John Joseph Matthews as Spiritual Stewards of the Land” Annual Gathering of the Thoreau Society. Concord, MA. July, 2014.

  •  “Spatial Literary Boundaries” Panel Moderator. University of Tulsa English Graduate Conference: Traversing the Transnational. Tulsa, OK. April, 2014.

  •  “Style and Dreams in Kerouac’s On the Road and McCarthy’s The Road.” University of Tulsa English Graduate Student Conference. Tulsa, OK. October, 2012.