Teaching

At GWU, I have designed and taught two courses as Solo Instructor: “Introduction to British Literature II: Rebellious Femininity and Writing Resistance” and “Gender and Sexuality in Bollywood Cinema.”

I received the Philip J. Amsterdam Graduate Teaching Award in 2021.

“Introduction to British Literature II: Rebellious Femininity and Writing Resistance” (Spring 2020)

This is a survey course that provides an introduction to the Romantic and Victorian Periods of British Literature. In this course, we will read essays, novels, and poetry which were written by and/or talk about rebellious women. How does literature propagate rules as well as subvert them? What does the literature of these time periods tell us about the fast-changing ideas about ideal British femininity, and how were these ideals challenged? The course covers a broad range of texts, both canonical and non-canonical, which deal with issues of gender, class, race, and nationality. We will pay special attention to the ways in which these texts engage with rebellious femininity. This is a writing intensive course that will satisfy the WID (Writing in the Disciplines) requirement.

“Gender and Sexuality in Bollywood Cinema” (Spring 2021)

This course will examine the contemporary representation of gender, sexuality, and politics in Bollywood cinema. We will historically investigate the various challenges that the Indian postcolonial feminist movement has had to face through the lens of Bollywood cinema.

The course will examine how Bollywood cinema has, in the last two decades, addressed or neglected key issues of gender-based violence, LGBTQIA+ rights, and patriarchal nationalism. What solutions have they offered, and what alternatives have they imagined? These films will be read as texts that are attempting to take on and grapple with these issues with varying degrees of success. We will take an intersectional approach that takes into account other modes of difference such as caste, class, and religion. Topics we will explore include: modern Indian masculinity, gender equality, sexual agency, and patriotic nationalism.

We will also engage these film representations with the works of postcolonial feminist thinkers such as Ania Loomba, Nivedita Menon, Ruth Vanita, Ulka Anjaria, and Gayatri Gopinath, among others.

Courses for which I worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant

The Literature of Hawaii. Dr. David Mitchell. Fall 2021.

Travel and Cross-Cultural Encounters in Global Literature and Cinema. Dr. Kavita Daiya. Summer 2021.

Myths of Britain. Dr. Daniel DeWispelare. Fall 2020.

Travel and Cross-Cultural Encounters in Global Literature and Cinema. Dr. Kavita Daiya. Summer 2020.

Women and Media: Gender, Race, and Migration across Media. Dr. Kavita Daiya. Fall 2019.

Essential Shakespeare on Film. Dr. Alexa Alice Joubin. Spring 2019.               

The Nineteenth Century Novel. Dr. Jennifer Green-Lewis. Fall 2018.

Post – Civil Rights Literature and Culture. Dr. Gayle Wald. Spring 2018.

Global Postcolonial Literature and Film. Dr. Kavita Daiya. Fall 2017.