teaching

Here is a summary of the courses that I have taught so far, or, in other words, my writing and literature teaching experience in detail.

Instructional Assistant Professor, Illinois State University, August 2015 – May 2016

English 101: Composition as Critical Inquiry (6 sections)
This writing-intensive course combined writing process theory and genre studies approach. The combined approach intended to help students become holistic writers by reflecting on their writing process and by carrying out genre analysis. Students completed four writing projects in this course. First two projects (a personal narrative and a hybrid of research/informative essay) followed the traditional mode of written text. In the last two projects (a photo essay and a local history writing project), students took a multimodal approach to producing text.

English 229: Introduction to Literary Genre (1 section)
This Gen-Ed literature course introduced students to the history and characteristics of various literary genres such as novel, play, memoir, short stories, poetry, and graphic novel. By studying closely the aspects of each genre and comparing genres, students developed a broader understanding of how each genre produces different rhetorical results and narrative effects. Secondly, the thematic focus of this course was women’s rights and gender disparity. By studying texts about women’s experiences in different cultures and parts of the world, students were sensitized to women’s struggle and the socio-historic context of their marginalization. Major assignments of the course were a short expository paper and a long critical analysis paper.

Graduate Teaching Assistant, Illinois State University, August 2010 - May 2015

English 101: Composition as Critical Inquiry (9 sections) A writing-intensive course for the freshmen with emphasis on genre-centric writing approach. Usually students tackled four to five writing genres as diverse as personal essay, opinion essay, short story, research article (modeled after How Stuff Works), humor essay, travel writing, etc. The students developed skills like analyzing a writing genre, identifying its conventions, challenges and rhetorical purpose, conducting research, and write/revise drafts in that genre.

English 101.10: Composition as Critical Inquiry (2 sections) This course was similar to ENG 101 except for the added responsibility of mentoring the incoming graduate students whose role was to assist me as the primary instructor for the course. The challenge was to make the teaching process collaborative and seamless, while at the same time creating enough opportunities for the new graduate students to test their pedagogical strengths and gain enough experience to become independent instructors.

English 145: Writing in the Academic Disciplines (1 section) The objective of this course was to help the students become better writers and researchers in their discipline. The learning process developed through the stages of analyzing various academic writings in one’s discipline, identifying the genre conventions, identifying the purpose, intended audience, affect/effect of the conventions, developing genre-specific writing strategies, conducting independent research, developing original content by employing relevant writing strategies, and finally, revising, revisiting and modifying not only the content but also the writing strategies. The writing assignments that the students undertook are conference paper, research paper, and literature review.

English 125: Literary Narrative (3 sections) A Gen-Ed course, the emphasis was on introducing students to various forms of literary narratives, and exploring their purpose and effect. In the first two sections, the theme was how writers from different cultural backgrounds were influenced by their respective storytelling traditions. For example, how Kafka’s works were shaped by the popular Yiddish Theater of his time? How Márquez’s most popular book was influenced by the imaginative aptitude of Colombian folk legends, popular lore, fairytales, and myths/superstitions? Apart from literary criticism, this course allowed for analysis of writing techniques and learning of elemental narrative concepts pertaining to characterization, time/order, setting, and plot.

In the last iteration of this course, the theme was upheaval. Students studied texts like Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Junot Díaz’s This is How You Lose Her, Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones to contextualize violence, disturbance, resistance, and coping mechanisms in various cultural and social contexts.

English 227: Introduction to Creative Writing (1 section) As an introductory level creative writing class, students worked in three major genres such as fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. Students were encouraged to experiment and take risks in various genres through craft-related writing exercises, which were a mix of open-ended and constraint-based exercises. The purpose was to make students aware of the experimentation potential available to them to generate creative content and learn writing techniques.

English 241: Growth and Structure of English Language (2 sections) This course introduced students to the history of English language from Old English to Middle English to Modern English period. The emphasis of the course was not simply to track the variation in the language over time but isolate the historic contexts that motivated various changes. As one of the teaching assistants in this course my primary responsibility was to grade the quizzes and assignments. I also instructed one class for this course identifying the political pressure and historic context that led to the introduction of English language under the colonial rule in India.

English 247.02: Intermediate Creative Writing: Fiction (1 section) This intermediate fiction writing class followed predominantly a constraint-based writing approach. Most of the writing assignments demanded of students to tackle one or more writing constraints. For example, the flash fiction writing assignment was limited to 500 words. In one of the short story exercises, students were asked to produce content by selecting a writing constraint like lipogram or acrostics; or writing a story without adjective, comma, or period; or writing a story where each sentence is a question or has increasing/decreasing word count. Further, for revision students were asked to convert a freely written story beforehand to a single scene story. The purpose of such writing challenges was to raise students’ awareness of craft, provide students options to experiment, and make their writing processes more deliberate.

Adjunct Lecturer, North Carolina State University, Summer 2009

English 208: Studies in Fiction (1 section) This introductory level, Gen-Ed class aimed to develop in students critical appreciation for various fiction genres like classic, realism, sci-fi, fantasy, and different prose forms such as short story, novella, and novel. Students’ performances were evaluated on class participation, creative writing, critical writing, and quizzes.

Teaching Technician, North Carolina State University, Spring 2009

English 288: Fiction Writing (1 section) An introductory level creative writing class, where the basic narrative concepts were explained and techniques were practiced. After tackling several writing exercises, students wrote two short stories of varying lengths and their works were subsequently peer reviewed in a traditional workshop format.