I am currently teaching and coordinating team-taught courses in the first-year Introduction to the Humanities Program (IHUM) at Stanford University.  I have also designed and taught undergraduate courses at Ithaca College, Elon University, and Duke University.  I invite you to view the following resources regarding my teaching experience.  Links to syllabi, descriptions, course homepages, and student evaluations are included below.

Courses at a Glance:

• Race, Gender, and the Arts of Survival
• Stanford University, IHUM, Fall 2004 & 2005
• Approaching Religion
• Stanford University, IHUM, Winter-Spring 2005, Spring 2005
  
• Women and Religion in Antiquity
  
• Ithaca College, History Department, Fall 2003
• Early Christianity
  
• Ithaca College, Philosophy and Religion Department, Fall 2003
• Paganism in the Roman Empire
  
• Ithaca College, History Department, Spring 2003
• Marriage and Sexuality in the New Testament
• Ithaca College, Philosophy and Religion Department, Spring 2003
• Duke University, Religion Department, Spring 1999
• Egypt of the Pharaohs
• Ithaca College, History Department, Fall 2002
• Introduction to the New Testament
• Elon University, Religious Studies Department, Fall 2001
• World Religions
• Elon University, Religious Studies Department, Fall 2001
• Religion of the Pharaohs
• Elon University, Religious Studies Department, Winter 2002
• Duke University, Department of Religion, Spring 2000

Race, Gender, and the Arts of Survival

• Description:  How do men and women survive—not just physically, but intellectually, creatively, spiritually—in the world? Our course examines texts that imaginatively model strategies to overcome physical deprivation (everything from enslavement to castration) and social oppression (from religious persecution to gender discrimination). The often brilliant and innovative strategies of survival represented in these works, which range from the twelfth century to the present, appear in diverse forms—sometimes as physical resistance, racial "passing," or political ultimatum and other times as artistic challenge, educational reform, or rhetorical suasion. The strategies take shape in similarly diverse genres: we will be reading and discussing drama, fiction, epistolaries, and a slave narrative.  These texts ask us to consider not only the many ways how to creatively survive the constraints of gender, of race, of nation, of history itself; they ask us as well to consider at what cost and for what greater purpose does one survive. Our readings thus not only explore the many arts of survival but also the possibilities for effecting social and personal change.  Texts include:  The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, Othello (Shakespeare), Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Harriet Jacobs), Mulatto (Langston Hughes), The Intuitionist (Colson Whitehead).
  
• In the innovative IHUM program, postdoctoral fellows join with prominent Stanford faculty to team-teach courses for first-year students, with faculty delivering lectures and fellows leading 3-hour/week seminars.  The Stanford faculty were Dr. Harry Elam (Drama) and Dr. Michele Elam (English).  I served as Course Coordinator, administrating and coordinating the practical aspects of the team-taught course.

Approaching Religion

• Description:  One cannot open a newspaper in these first years of the new millennium without encountering the serious challenges posed to the contemporary world by religion, or in the name of religion. Less visible, but no less important, are the challenges posed by the contemporary world to the world’s religious traditions and communities.  Such challenges to religious traditions are not unique to the modern world. In fact, all major religious traditions have grappled with controversy and dissent since their founding moments. But the modern experience in religious transformation has been marked by the number of such challenges. Science, politics, feminism, a world grown much smaller—these and other factors have conspired against the religious status quo, forcing the world’s religious leaders and adherents to wonder whether religion can keep pace. Can the world’s faiths be transformed rapidly enough to meet the many challenges they face right now? And can they make the changes required while remaining true to all they have stood for in the past?  This course sequence will equip you to begin addressing these questions. Focusing on three religious traditions, we will investigate a founding moment in each tradition, followed by an instance of premodern transformation—thus emphasizing that religions have faced the problem of change long before the advent of the modern world.  Finally, we will investigate the various responses offered by the world’s religions to the challenges of the present.
• In 2005, the three religious traditions were Judaism, Christianity, and Buddhism.  The challenges of the present included pluralism, feminism, religious violence, science, and fundamentalism.
• In 2006, the three religious traditions will be Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam.  The challenges of the present will include the rise of the nation-state, new notions of the self, and tolerance and pluralism in the face of difference.
• In the innovative IHUM program, postdoctoral fellows join with prominent Stanford faculty to team-teach courses for first-year students, with faculty delivering lectures and fellows leading 3-hour/week seminars.  The Stanford faculty in 2005 were Dr. Arnold Eisen, Dr. Robert Gregg, and Dr. Carl Bielefeldt.  In 2006, the faculty will be Dr. Michael Zimmerman, Dr. Charlotte Fonrobert, and Dr. Arnold Eisen.  I served as Course Coordinator in 2005, administrating and coordinating the practical aspects of the team-taught course.

Women and Religion in Antiquity

• Visit the course homepage!
• Description:  This course examines women in the Roman Empire through the lens of religion.  We will study different religious attitudes toward women and gender, women's roles in different religious traditions, the affects of religion and gender on social institutions  (such as priesthoods, marriage, and the family).  We begin with women in the "pagan" traditions and in Judaism and conclude with an extensive section on women in early Christianity.
  
• Requirements:  papers, participation and attendance, research paper
  

Early Christianity

• Visit the course homepage!
• Description:  Many of the beliefs and traditions we associate with Christianity today have their roots in the earliest centuries...or do they?  This course examines the conflicts, individuals, social movements, and theologies that shaped Christianity during its formative period, the second through sixth centures.  Issues we will study include:  the spread of Christianity throughout the Mediterranean world, martyrdoms and persecutions, Christian and Jewish relations, hierarchy and power, heresy and orthodoxy, asceticism and the body, gender and class. 
  
• Requirements:  midterm and final exams, 2 papers, participation and attendance
  

Paganism in the Roman Empire

• Visit the course homepage!
• Description:  In the ancient world, gods and goddesses were everpresent.  In temples, dreams, oracles, and literature, people interacted with their deities on a daily basis.  This course will examine the variety of religious experience in the Greco-Roman world, focussing on the so-called "pagan" traditions.  We will examine mythology and religious narrative; temple rituals and cults such as the healing cult of Asclepius, the cult of Isis which had women priestesses, and the mystery cults such as the cult of Mithras; magic, including curses and love spells; oracles and divination. 
  
• Requirements:  midterm, final, 2 papers, attendance & class participation
  
• Check out the student evaluations!
  

Marriage and Sexuality in the New Testament

• Visit the Spring 2003 course homepage or the Spring 2000 syllabus!
• Description:  The New Testament is a canonical religious text for millions of people today and has been regarded by many for centuries as prescribing normative beliefs and behaviors for Christians past and present.  The precise nature of these normative beliefs and behaviors, however, has been deeply contested.  This course examines the role of the New Testament in debates over marriage and sexuality.  The first part of the course is devoted to the New Testament texts and antiquity.  We will begin by exploring the marriage and sexuality in the Roman world in order to understand the context in which the New Testament was written and read.   We then will study early Christian attitudes toward sexuality and marriage in these texts and compare them with views held by other groups in antiquity.  How did these views deviate from or challenge ancient Jewish, Greek, and Roman views?  How did they conform?  Are these texts uniform in their positions on marriage, sex, and the family? The second part of the course addresses the ways in which later Christians read and used the New Testament in their writings about marriage and sex.  We will examine the role of the New Testament in the flourishing Christian monastic movement, in the legend and cult of Mary Magdalene in the medieval period, and the debates over marriage and celibacy during the Reformation.  Finally, we will turn to contemporary conflicts over homosexuality and AIDS in contemporary white and African-American protestant traditions, the role of wives in Christian marriages, and the required celibacy of Catholic priests. 
  
• Requirements:  attendance and participation, 2 papers, a research project completed in multiple parts (student-teacher conference, project proposal & bibliography, draft, final project).
• Check out the Spring 2003 student evaluations or the Spring 2000 student evaluations!

Egypt of the Pharaohs

• Visit the Fall 2002 course homepage!  (Includes pictures from our fieldtrip to the Met Museum!)
  
• Description:  America has had a fascination with all things ancient Egyptian.  From the popularity of the black and white film "The Mummy" to the traveling art exhibit of the treasures of Tutankhamen's tomb to the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, we have been obsessed with pharaonic culture.  This course will examine the history, literature, and religion of ancient Egypt from prehistoric times to Cleopatra.  This course will be interdisciplinary in nature. Students will study the fiction, religious rituals, art, architecture, and inscriptions of ancient Egypt.  We will also analyze the representations of ancient Egypt in contemporary American culture, especially film.  Specific topics to be studied include:  Egyptian royal and social history; Egyptian language and literature; mythology and cosmology; death and the afterlife; temple rituals and architecture; pyramids, tombs and other burial architecture; narratives of the Hebrew Exodus; the Rosetta Stone and the modern “discovery” of ancient Egypt; and ancient Egypt in film and popular culture.  [This course is designed for a history department and emphasizes traditional historical themes (economy, politics, social history, major figures, etc.) more than "Religion of the Pharaohs" described in similar terms below.]
• Requirements:  2 exams, 2 papers, class participation, class presentation, small research paper.

Introduction to the New Testament

• Visit the course homepage!
• Description:  This course provides an introduction to the historical development of the New Testament.  Students are required to examine the texts of the New Testament in the social and intellectual context of the Roman Empire.  Students are also asked to read critically the texts as historical documents for understanding the following issues:  the person and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth; early Jewish and Christian relations; the structure and rituals of early Christian communities; the roles of women and slaves in the earliest churches; the spread of Christianity throughout the Empire; the historical significance of the apostle Paul for the development of Christian beliefs.  We also examine the more "theological" concepts of apocalypticism, the resurrection, and the nature of God as they are configured in earliest Christian literature.  Alongside the New Testament, students read other Christian, Jewish, and "pagan" sources including but not limited to the Gospel of Thomas, Josephus, Philo, Pliny, and selections from the Septuagint. 
  
• Requirements:  midterm and final exams, 2 papers, class participation and attendance.
• Check out the student evaluations!
  

World Religions

• Visit the course homepage!
• Description:  From newspaper business pages to suburban demographics,"globalization" has emerged as a significant trend for the 21st century.  Negotiating cultural differences in our new "global village" can be tricky, and religion is often a significant cultural barrier.  This course will introduce students to the study of religion in a global context, focussing on traditions other than Judaism and Christianiy in non-Western societies.  Because religions evolve within particular geographic and social contexts, the course is organized NOT by religious tradition or faith, but by locale.  We focus on contemporary religiosity in three countries:  India, China, and Egypt.  Although we will concentrate on Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam in these respective places, we will learn about them through their evolution in their particular cultures and through their interactions with other religious communities.  Consequently, we will also touch upon Sikhism, Jainism, Taoism, Confucianism, Judaism, and Eastern Orthodox Christianity.  While we cannot thoroughly investigate any one of these religions, we will learn about the basic history, textual traditions, and rituals of the major religions studied.
• Requirements:  3 exams, final project (following a story about religion in the non-Western world in the NY Times over the course of the semester), class participation and attendance.
• Check out the student evaluations!
  

Religion of the Pharaohs

• Visit the winter 2002 course homepage or the spring 2000 syllabus!
• Description:  The twentieth century has witnessed a fascination with all things ancient Egyptian, from the earliest film version of "The Mummy" to the millennium party at the Pyramids. This course will examine the religious beliefs and practices of ancient Egyptians and the role of ancient Egypt in American culture and consciousness. Topics to be studied include: Egyptian mythology (including the myth of Isis and Osiris); death and the afterlife; temple rituals and architecture; pyramids, tombs, and other burial architecture; narratives of the Hebrew Exodus and ancient Egypt; the Rosetta Stone and the modern "discovery" of ancient Egypt; ancient Egypt in film; a basic introduction to the history of ancient Egypt. The course will integrate readings with art, archeological evidence, and multi-media.
  
• Requirements:  attendance and participation, small research project, short papers.
• Check out the spring 2000 student evaluations!

Return to top of page