I am an instructor in the Department of African and African American Studies at the University of Kansas and a faculty advisor in the University of Kansas Freshman-Sophomore Advising Center. I have a B.A. in American Studies, East Asian Studies, and English; and an M.A. and M.Phil. in American Studies. I am completing a Ph.D. in American Studies. Currently, my in-residence courses include two surveys of African American history and culture as well as a number of upper-level specialized courses (including a study of African American comedy and humor, an examination of African American history through film, and an exploration of the intersection of race and sex in U.S. history). In addition to the course in which you are currently enrolled, I teach "The Black Experience in the Americas" through Independent Study.
Beyond African American history and culture, my major research interests are American popular culture, Asian-American history and culture, and what might be termed "contesting the binary": an exploration of multicultural America that attempts to eschew scholars' historical fixation on binary analyses of U.S. society, and instead acknowledges the highly permeable boundaries that exist, not only between black and white, but masculine/feminine, straight/queer, abled/disabled, center/margin, self/other, colonizer/colonized, citizen/alien, normal/pathological, and human/machine.
My non-academic interests include poetry (reading, listening, and writing), jazz (listening and playing), the Asian martial arts, watching the Oakland Raiders (I think we are all entitled to a less-than-civilized activity or two), and trying to help raise a daughter born on April Fool's Day and a son on Halloween.
MUSC 298 Introduction to Jazz