Category Archives: Uncategorized

Our class had its last Zoom meeting this week. As most professors forced to switch to emergency teaching online, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to continue to produce meaningful connections between myself and my students, among students, and between students and the text. How will I continue to do this in Fall 2020Continue reading “The End: A Thank You Note”

I see a trend emerging in these past few blogs of mine. Apocalypse, isolation, confusion. How could I have known that I would be teaching stories of the world’s end as the pandemic was forcing us to stay home and obsessively watch the news as things seem to be collapsing around us. First it wasContinue reading “Teaching in the Apocalypse: Junot Díaz’s “Monstro””

Next week, our class will start discussing Carmen Maria Machado’s short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties. This is a book that I’m deeply invested in, not only because of its beautiful writing but because it’s one I’m incorporating into my own work. I’ve been thinking with this book for some time, but returningContinue reading “Her Body, Our Horror: Teaching Carmen Maria Machado’s _Her Body and Other Parties_”

It’s strange to be reading and teaching a book like McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Last week I wrote about the uncertainty and doubt that permeates the text, and particularly through Sheriff Bell’s discomfort at what seems to be a world quickly unraveling into chaos. Of course,Continue reading ““I surely don’t”: Where is the country for the dying?”

This week “Monsters, Hauntings, and the Nation” will begin meeting online. I have been worrying about what these meetings will look and feel like, and having to come to terms that we cannot return to the ways before the pandemic (a strange phrase to write!). This group of students has been the best I’ve hadContinue reading ““I don’t know”: Uncertainty and Violence in _No Country for Old Men_”

Last week our course transitioned from the Dominican and Dominican American spaces of Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to the U.S.-Mexico border. Our first text in this area was Robert Rodriguez’s 1996 film, From Dusk Till Dawn (after spring break we will begin our discussion of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. It makes meContinue reading “The Pleasures of “Camp”: Teaching Robert Rodriguez’s _From Dusk Till Dawn_”

It’s difficult to teach books you love. It’s difficult to teach books you have not only read multiple times but also write about and have (in my opinion) well developed, strong, and original arguments about. I have to admit that I used to love The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Was (2007). I found myselfContinue reading “Fukú Americanus, Legacies of Colonial Violence: Teaching _The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao_ in 2020”

This week, our class concluded its discussion of Justin Torres’s We the Animals. As I’ve said before, my students continually impress me with their approach to the text: they are curious and ballsy in their investigation, never shying away from difficult questions or subjects. Thursday was no different. Students were interested in talking about theContinue reading ““I say, I slur, I vow”: We the Animals II”

Tuesday, February 11, 2020 In English 3952 this week, we began our discussion of the heartbreaking and gorgeous debut novel by Justin Torres, We the Animals. To be honest, part of why I love teaching this book is how beautiful the prose is and how lovely it is to hear it read out loud––something ourContinue reading “We the Animals: The Beasts Within”

Last week, our class concluded a vibrant discussion on Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban (1992). This novel has usually been examined as a story of homecoming, reconciliation, and the possibilities within cultural hybridity. We began our discussion of the novel by laying out its major thematic concerns, such as nationhood, home, identity or lack of,Continue reading “Dreaming in Cuban: The Hauntings of Exile, The Monsters in the Family”