It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted, so here’s an update on the last few years, the main highlights since my last post!
In January of 2023, Rachel Warner and I led a successful and productive panel at the MLA annual convention in San Francisco, CA, inspired by our work as Co-Directors for the Literature, Medicine, and Culture Colloquium (LMCC) at UNC. In fact, our first LMCC meeting of the next semester was a debrief from the MLA panel experience, during which we discussed the work of our panelists, one of whom was able to join us remotely via Zoom.
That spring, I served as a TA for CMPL 143: History of Global Cinema at UNC-Chapel Hill, taught by Prof. Martin Johnson. As a TA, I taught two recitation discussion sections for the semester and, in April, delivered a guest lecture to the entire class, “Health Humanities and Documentary Filmmaking.”
That summer, I resumed my employment with the Institute of Reading Development (IRD), teaching summer reading classes online via Zoom for students of all ages. The classes ranged from pre-K (four-year-olds) to adult, college-aged students. That summer, I taught 12-14 class sessions per week, averaging twenty-three hours of in-class teaching per week.
That previous spring, I was also elected to serve during the 2023-2024 academic year as a member of the Peer Mentoring Committee (PMC) from UNC-Chapel Hill’s English Department Writing Program, observing, evaluating, and providing feedback to fellow graduate student instructors throughout the following academic year. Throughout the fall of 2023 and the spring of 2024, I visited various classes to observe my fellow graduate student instructors and provided them with useful feedback on their pedagogical goals and methods.
In the fall of 2023, I also taught another two sections of ENGL 105i: Writing in Health and Medicine, during which the students composed original popular health video essays, delivered academic conference presentations on health justice, and researched and composed illness narratives that balanced careful and respectful interviews with critical research and insight.
That fall, I also earned the ENGL 105 Programmatic Assessment Professional Development Award from the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of English and Comparative Literature Writing Program to support my assessment of and sharing of completed student work projects from my class that semester.
In the spring of 2024, I taught another section of ENGL 105: Writing at the Research University, during which students composed their own popular health articles, conducted primary ethnographic field research on a UNC organization or subculture of their choice and presented their findings, and crafted their own literary analysis video essays. That same spring, I also served as a TA/grader for an interdisciplinary (“triple-I”) course, IDST 121: Performing and Imagining the American South, taught by Dr. Florence Dore from the Department of English, Dr. David Garcia from the Department of Music, and Dr. W. Fitzhugh Brundage from the Department of History.
During that same semester, I was also lucky enough to be interviewed for and included in “Health humanities laboratory looks to bridge medical, social sciences,” published in The Daily Tar Heel, vol. 132, no. 3, “A Statewide Issue,” p. 15 for my work with UNC’s HHIVE Lab (Health Humanities, an Interdisciplinary Venue for Exploration).
At the end of the spring 2024 semester, I was awarded a Dissertation Progress Fellowship from UNC-Chapel Hill’s Department of English and Comparative Literature to help support my completion of my doctoral dissertation.
At the same time, however, my undergraduate alma mater, Birmingham-Southern College, closed down in May 2024 due to ongoing financial issues. I attended the closing ceremonies for the college in a painful but meaningful ceremony.
That summer (2024), I once again joined Dr. Jonathan Smith to co-teach AFST S350/FILM S340/HLTH S350: Visual Approaches to Global Health, a Yale University summer session study-abroad course. In the course, we take Yale undergrads to South Africa to teach them epidemiology, global health, and visual storytelling in order to address health issues relevant to the region. In 2024, we once again held the course in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the students composed valuable and productive video projects for their local partner organizations such as their short advocacy film for Food and Trees for Africa (FTA). This was my fifth time teaching the course with Dr. Smith. Since 2015, I have co-taught the course with Dr. Jonathan Smith for every possible year, with the exception of years during which we chose not to offer the course (course offered summers 2015, 2016, 2019, 2022, 2024, and 2026, so far).
In the fall of 2024, I taught two more sections of ENGL 105: Writing at the Research University, and in the spring of 2025, I taught ENGL 148: Intro to Horror, which was a uniquely fun and rewarding experience. We discussed literary texts from the late eighteenth century to texts from just a few years ago as well as the rhetoric of fear, the role and appeal of horror in society, and cultural definitions of “the monster” and “the Other.”
In the fall of 2025, I taught two more sections of ENGL 105: Writing at the Research University, and in the spring of 2026, I taught two sections of ENGL 105i: Business Writing and Rhetoric. Although I’ve often integrated business writing into my other classes as small units or extra credit opportunities, this was my first time teaching a full course dedicated to writing in business, and the students created some truly impressive projects.
This past summer (2026), I once again co-taught AFST S350/FILM S340/HLTH S350: Visual Approaches to Global Health with Dr. Jonathan Smith, but this time, we held the course in Cape Town, South Africa. This was our first time holding the course in this location and my first time visiting Cape Town and the surrounding area. Jonathan, the students, and I had a remarkable time, and the students partnered with the Human Rights Media Centre and with the Desmond Tutu Tuberculosis Centre to create inspiring and informative video projects. Once those projects are available, I’ll post them to my website under my filmography.
Due to a a variety of personal reasons related to my father’s unexpected passing in September of 2025, a shrinking job pool for tenure-track professors, and my overall passion for teaching and collaboration more than research, I made a difficult decision in this past spring of 2025 to end my doctoral studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. Instead, I chose to adjust my work at UNC thus far into an MA degree in English and Comparative Literature, with a Graduate Certificate in Literature, Medicine, and Culture.
My MA thesis upon my degree completion was under the direction of Prof. Jane Thrailkill and was titled: “‘Countdown to zero’: Systemic Racial Oppression and Black Social Death in Wideman’s ‘Newborn Thrown in Trash and Dies’”
As I end my time at UNC-Chapel Hill, I want to express my gratitude to my former doctoral committee members, especially my advisor Dr. Jane Thrailkill, as well as Dr. Eliza Richards who was serving as the Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC-Chapel Hill at the time.
I also want to express my gratitude to a number of other professors and colleagues. See my References here.
Featured image for this post: Paul Blom at Hermanus, South Africa (photo by Jonathan Smith)
