PhD Student in Literature, Theory, and Culture at Purdue University
“This course examined how otherworlds in science fiction and fantasy resemble our multifaced realities in terms of social, cultural, and political aspects. In particular, I focused on analyzing how social and historical occurrences, such as colonialism, slavery, racism, anti-Semitism, among others, are represented and re-signified in the worldbuilding of science fiction and fantasy texts to denounce and criticize prevailing contemporary injustices. Combining different genres, such as films, short stories, and novels dating from the 1960s until the Marvel Era with Black Panther, students had the opportunity to discuss various topics, such as war, colonialism and post-colonialism, afro-futurism, gender, and race.”
“This course went through the history, aesthetics, and basic concepts of movies through a feminist perspective. Students got acquainted with the major concepts, genres, techniques, and cultural aspects of movies, exploring how women have been portrayed in movies, and also their impact on movie production and direction. Students also learned the basics of film analysis, employing concepts in film production, narrative elements and structure, which helped them to develop skills in analysis, description, and evaluation. The major objective of this course was to help students perceive cinema not only as an entertainment art of a significant economic value, but also as a means of cultural expression, and analyze its impact on the perception of women in our society.”
In these five years at Purdue, I have taught a variety of versions of First-year Composition, including several sections of mainstream English Composition, a data science Learning Community with first-year engineers, Summer online courses, and the accelerated Composition course English 108 (which was taught remote during the pandemic). At Purdue, the courses English 106 and 108 are focused on developing students’ awareness of rhetorical situations, while providing opportunities for composing a variety of texts to diverse audiences. Some of these texts include Rhetorical Analyses of scientific articles, Research-based essays, Reports, Reviews, and Posters.
“I feel as though my writing skills in the future will be better based on this class, because of all of the things I learned about that can help pull the writing together. Learning about citations, ways to do research, how to include things, making a plan of study are all things that I learned about and practiced over the course of this semester. The things I learned in this class transferee perfectly to my other classes in which I had to write papers for.”
“Both source collection and rhetoric usage have been extremely important skills that I have had the opportunity to learn and begin to master throughout my time in this class. Between these two skills, and a number of others, this course has vastly improved my ability to write.”
“This course helped begin thinking of writing as a whole process and not just putting words on paper. In addition to my usual focus on grammar and sentence structure, I now focus on rhetoric, audience, design, accessibility, and much more. Keeping all those things in mind when planning and writing a paper really helped me begin to see the whole picture behind writing, which I think is a great step forward in improving my own writing.”
“ENG10600Y exposed me to writing, research, and design for the first time. Composing on a digital environment has been very convenient as information can be stored and accessed easily. In addition to learning about rhetorical strategies and writing in general, I learned how to develop arguments, conduct researches, work collaboratively with a peer, and take constructive criticism. I even explored new aspects of Microsoft Word which will all be useful to me in future classes as well as in a workplace environment. I am now a better writer and student, which is more than I signed up for.”