Research Interests
My research
interests lie at the intersection of moral vision and modern engagement with archaic
myth, especially in terms of how our vision of the
other and the self, shaped by culturally received lenses and stories, links to
variously defined ‘ills’ of modernity and secularization. My first book, which
grows out of my dissertation, examines Woolf’s commentary on contemporary
society through mythic allusions in three of her novels. An early book chapter on
Iris Murdoch similarly investigates the role of mythic allusions in Murdoch’s
exploration of moral vision in her novels.
While completing my first book I discovered a persistent thread in my work, which became the focus of my second book project. That book grows directly out of ideas in two chapters of the Woolf book, my work on Iris Murdoch, and an in-progress article about Ralph Ellison’s use of the Siren motif to establish empathy across racial and gender lines. In all of those projects, I was interested in the role of myth in what Murdoch terms consolation, the practice by which we protect ourselves from the messy realities of the world and the threat they pose to the ego, particularly in the context of rationalist, materialist secular modernity. In other words, I ask, what are the ethical stakes of our attempts to fill what Hans Blumenberg calls ‘the god-shaped hole’ with symbolic images of other people and the world?
I have also developed a significant interest in Asian literature, both in teaching and scholarship. I regularly teach Asian literature courses, and I have co-translated two collections of short stories by contemporary Korean writer Seo Hajin. I am currently writing an article, with a colleague in American literature, discussing one of these stories and The Awakening in terms of care ethics and mothering. As a comparativist trained in an interdisciplinary program, I have a deep commitment to promoting interdisciplinary scholarship. Most recently, I became co-editor of the Lamar Journal of the Humanities, an interdisciplinary journal housed in the College of Arts & Sciences at Lamar University. In that capacity, I draw on skills I gained as managing editor and issue editor of Crossings: A Counter-Disciplinary Journal and as issue co-editor of the Virginia Woolf Miscellany.
In the past three years I have developed an interest in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). I have successfully completed a research project, funded by an external grant, that has produced data for three articles. In that study, I investigated the impact of a scaffolded approach to writing on students’ argumentation skills in a large online course, and the impact of small learning communities on the quality of peer review and on student persistence in the course. My work is featured on Faculty ecommons, and I am currently completing the first article to come out of this study. A project I created for my Honors Composition and Literature course, the Lamar Critical Editions project, will be presented at CCCC in March, 2015. I have also been asked to propose a presentation of this project to the National Collegiate Honors Council in 2015. I plan to write an article about this project for submission to College English. My work in SoTL extends beyond my own classroom. At Lamar University, I have taken a leadership role in faculty development. In that capacity, I am co-editing a collection of essays by Lamar faculty that highlight successful implementation of active learning strategies across the curriculum at the university. This collection will be published by our university press in 2015.
In all of my scholarly endeavors I seek to have an impact on both my scholarly community and my campus community. Combining my strengths in literary studies, ethics, and theories of archaic myth, religion, and modernity allows me to offer an unusual perspective on modern literature, which in turn enriches my classroom offerings and shapes my work with undergraduate and graduate researchers. Likewise, my use of innovative techniques in the classroom and campus leadership in Faculty Development form the basis of a robust research agenda in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
While completing my first book I discovered a persistent thread in my work, which became the focus of my second book project. That book grows directly out of ideas in two chapters of the Woolf book, my work on Iris Murdoch, and an in-progress article about Ralph Ellison’s use of the Siren motif to establish empathy across racial and gender lines. In all of those projects, I was interested in the role of myth in what Murdoch terms consolation, the practice by which we protect ourselves from the messy realities of the world and the threat they pose to the ego, particularly in the context of rationalist, materialist secular modernity. In other words, I ask, what are the ethical stakes of our attempts to fill what Hans Blumenberg calls ‘the god-shaped hole’ with symbolic images of other people and the world?
I have also developed a significant interest in Asian literature, both in teaching and scholarship. I regularly teach Asian literature courses, and I have co-translated two collections of short stories by contemporary Korean writer Seo Hajin. I am currently writing an article, with a colleague in American literature, discussing one of these stories and The Awakening in terms of care ethics and mothering. As a comparativist trained in an interdisciplinary program, I have a deep commitment to promoting interdisciplinary scholarship. Most recently, I became co-editor of the Lamar Journal of the Humanities, an interdisciplinary journal housed in the College of Arts & Sciences at Lamar University. In that capacity, I draw on skills I gained as managing editor and issue editor of Crossings: A Counter-Disciplinary Journal and as issue co-editor of the Virginia Woolf Miscellany.
In the past three years I have developed an interest in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). I have successfully completed a research project, funded by an external grant, that has produced data for three articles. In that study, I investigated the impact of a scaffolded approach to writing on students’ argumentation skills in a large online course, and the impact of small learning communities on the quality of peer review and on student persistence in the course. My work is featured on Faculty ecommons, and I am currently completing the first article to come out of this study. A project I created for my Honors Composition and Literature course, the Lamar Critical Editions project, will be presented at CCCC in March, 2015. I have also been asked to propose a presentation of this project to the National Collegiate Honors Council in 2015. I plan to write an article about this project for submission to College English. My work in SoTL extends beyond my own classroom. At Lamar University, I have taken a leadership role in faculty development. In that capacity, I am co-editing a collection of essays by Lamar faculty that highlight successful implementation of active learning strategies across the curriculum at the university. This collection will be published by our university press in 2015.
In all of my scholarly endeavors I seek to have an impact on both my scholarly community and my campus community. Combining my strengths in literary studies, ethics, and theories of archaic myth, religion, and modernity allows me to offer an unusual perspective on modern literature, which in turn enriches my classroom offerings and shapes my work with undergraduate and graduate researchers. Likewise, my use of innovative techniques in the classroom and campus leadership in Faculty Development form the basis of a robust research agenda in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
