I study and teach in two sometimes-related fields: the history and theory of the literary and philosophical essay; and critical pedagogy, especially pedagogies of writing and rhetoric. My work on the essay examines the critical and sometimes political resistance of an aesthetic form more often characterized by its winking relationship to argument, certainty, ideological commitment. I’m also interested in the essay as a form of “unknowing,” a literary expression of the philosophical passion of wonder. I am currently working with a visual anthropologist/filmmaker on a project about the photographic essays sponsored by the U.S. Farm Security Administration in the first half of the twentieth century; our work considers the correlation between the ethnographic and political exigencies of these essays and their experimental aesthetics. I am the co-editor, with Evan Kindley, of the Cambridge Companion to the Essay (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
I come to Berkeley from Pomona College, where I served as Director of College Writing and Assistant Professor of English. At Pomona, I founded the Center for Speaking, Writing, and the Image, a cross-disciplinary center dedicated to peer mentorship and collaboration, inclusive pedagogy, language justice, and critical-rhetorical education at the intersection of written, oral, and visual communication. My work on teaching, writing, and rhetoric covers such topics as plagiarism and the fascination with originality in academic writing, the politics of clarity, and “small” forms of communication”: phatic utterances, marginal comments. I’m working on a book project that argues for reflective writing and metacognitive study as ways to examine and model a relationship between writing, thinking, and being human (versus, e.g., AI), create more inclusive classrooms, and sidestep normative and exclusionary forms of grading.
