University of Florida, Department of English, devised and taught:

Literature for the Young Child (Fall 2025)

This course explores literature for young children through the lens of bilingualism, diaspora, identity, and intergenerational relationships. Beginning with oral traditions and storytelling, we will examine picture books, storybooks, and poetry that reflect the experiences of migration and marginalization, both within America and across global contexts. Through close reading and discussion, we will analyze how these different kinds of texts navigate themes of language, cultural memory, displacement, and belonging. Texts such as The Arrival by Shaun Tan, Where’s Halmoni? by Julie Kim, Julián is a Mermaid by Jessica Love, and Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold will provide opportunities to explore how children’s literature shapes young readers’ understanding of self, home, and community.

Film Analysis (Fall 2024, Spring 2025)

ENG 2300 introduces students to the study of film analysis, history, and theory. The course familiarizes students with film’s unique visual language by examining both narrative and stylistic elements. Through close analysis of films such as Chungking Express (dir. Wong Kar Wai, 1994), Perfect Blue (dir. Satoshi Kon, 1997), Everything Everywhere All At Once(dir. Daniels, 2022), and Past Lives (dir. Celine Song, 2023), students explore how filmmakers use form, editing, sound, and mise-en-scène to communicate meaning. The course also surveys key genres and contemporary film movements, introducing various critical and theoretical frameworks. By the end of the semester, students learn to write analytically about how cinematic style and narrative structure express ideas, evoke emotion, and reflect broader cultural and historical contexts.

Introduction to Literature (Spring 2024)

This course examines the unique and changing role literature has played in individuals’ lives and in society. It is centered on three deceptively simple questions: What is literature? Why do we write literature? And why do we read literature? The course introduces students to a range of literary genres from different countries and historical periods. Texts studied have included works such as Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” and Trung Le Nguyen’s The Magic Fish, which invite discussion on language, identity, and cross-cultural storytelling.

Special Topics Course: Asian American Identities (Fall 2023)*

What does it mean to be an Asian American? Despite being painted as “enemy aliens” during World War II and “Kung-Flu” spreaders during the COVID-19 pandemic, Asian Americans are—and have always been—far more complex than such reductive portrayals. This course examines how 20th- and 21st-century Asian American writers and artists have reclaimed their narratives and challenged harmful stereotypes through picture books, novels, memoirs, comics, and film. Core texts have included They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott, and Harmony Becker (2019); The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (2003); The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui (2017); The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen (2020); American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (2008); and Yellowface by R.F. Kuang (2023).

Through close reading and critical discussion, students consider how Asian American authors (re)conceptualize belonging, citizenship, and identity. The course engages topics such as acculturation stress, intergenerational conflict, queer identity, mental health, and the Model Minority Myth, alongside theoretical essays that situate these works within their historical and cultural contexts.

*I received the department’s Graduate Student Teaching Award for outstanding instruction in this course!

Survey of American Literature: Marginalized Voices in America (Fall 2022)

While often considered to contain the most important and definitive works of U.S. literature, the American literary canon has long been dominated by white, male authors. This course reexamines that canon by centering narratives historically excluded or marginalized from it. Our survey will include works by and about Indigenous peoples, enslaved and formerly enslaved peoples, immigrants, women, queer writers, and people of color. Texts studied have included The Joy Luck Clubby Amy Tan (1989) and I Was Their American Dream by Malaka Gharib (2019), alongside works by Nicholasa Mohr, Alison Bechdel, and Gene Luen Yang, as well as traditional canonical figures such as Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville.

Students will engage with short stories, novels, poems, and comics, in conversation with theoretical essays that situate these works within broader social, historical, and cultural contexts. To guide our readings and discussions, we will consider questions such as: What does it mean to be an American? Is there such a thing as an American identity? How do artists and writers of color challenge, revise, and expand our understanding of the U.S. literary canon? By engaging these questions, the course invites students to rethink the relationship between literature, identity, and nationhood through the voices that have too often been left out of the story of America.

University of Florida, University Writing Program

Research and Writing in the Academic Disciplines, Instructor of record, (Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, 2023)

This course focuses on the essential stylistics of writing clearly and efficiently within the framework of research writing in the disciplines. Students will learn how to formulate a coherent thesis and defend it logically with evidence drawn from research in specific fields. Students will also learn how to work through the stages of planning, research, organizing, and revising their writing.

Professional Communication for Engineers (Spring 2021)

Expository and Argumentative Writing (Fall 2020)