Teaching Experience:

J. Stephen Pearson

Teaching Interests: Ethnic American, Western and World Literatures; Drama; Short Stories; Comedy; Religion and Literature

Online Programs Used: WebCT, Blackboard

As Instructor of Record:

U of Tennessee, Knoxville:

American Literature 2:

Presented American literary history after the Civil War as the development of multiple, interweaving literary traditions influenced by the differing issues regarding race, class and gender as well as by the relation of aesthetic forms to the extra-literary concerns. The course proceeds chronologically, but focuses on how social position leads to conflicting views of events. Heath Anthology. (3 sections, 100 students)

Partial List of Authors: Crane, Chesnutt, Oskison, Winnemucca, Sinclair, Gilman, Woolson, Jewett, Zitkala-Ša, Sui Sin Far, Cahan, Chopin, Frost, Du Bois, Washington, Glaspell, Cather, Eliot, Williams, O’Neill, Faulkner, Hurston, Toomer, Schuyler, Hughes, Steinbeck, Mathews, Yezierska, Welty, Malamud, Ellison, Yamamoto, Okada, Kerouac, Carver, Barth, O’Brien, Hinojosa, Rivera, Momaday, Kingston, Lourde

Race and Ethnicity: (upcoming, Summer 2010)

Junior-level course that compares texts by ethnic minority authors from the U.S. to examine how they address issues of race. This course resembles the Comparative Ethnic American Literatures course I taught at U Georgia (see below), with an emphasis on short-story sequences from the past 40 years.

Anticipated Texts: Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club; Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine; Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place; Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street; Ramzi Salti, The Native Informant; Jonathan Tel, Arafat’s Elephant; with introductory critical essays

World Literature 2:

Presented the development of global literature from 1650 to the present, emphasizing themes related to issues of cultural contact and influence, including Journey Narratives, Borderlands, Contact Zones, Orientalism, Occidentalism, Nationalism, Exile, Colonialism, Postcolonialism, etc. Longman Anthology. This course differs from the version I taught at U Georgia (see below) by arranging the texts thematically rather than by nationality/period. (1 section, 24 students)

Partial List of Authors:

· Europe/Americas: Swift, Voltaire, Flaubert, Lermontov, Chekhov, Breton, Yeats, Milosz, Whitman, Vizenor, Machado de Assis, Vargas Llosa, Darío, Naipaul, Walcott

· South/East Asia: Rizal, Devi, Premchand, Rushdie, Tagore, Hu Shi, Lu Xun, Zhang Ailang, Akutagawa, Bashō, Ichiyo, Mishima, Saikaku

· Africa/Middle East: Çelebi, Mahfouz, Darwish, Faiz, Mernissi, Al-Shaykh, Hikmet, Aidoo, Gordimer, Soyinka, Achebe, Ngugi

Themes in Literature: Literary Aspects of World Religions: (upcoming, Spring 2010)

Sophomore-level writing-intensive course that compares the ways religious texts use literary techniques (narrative, sermon, parable, poetry) to instruct and transform their readers. This is a comparative course that focuses on the intersection of genre forms and religious content. (2 sections, 60 students)

Texts Include: selected Hebrew histories, prophets and psalms, selected Christian writings from Luke and Paul, complete texts of the Buddhacarita, the Vimalakirti Sutra, the Platform Sutra, the Daodejing, and the Bhagavad-Gita, plus selections from the Qur’an, the Analects, Zhuangzi, the Rg Veda, the Upanishads, the sermons of Buddha, etc.

English 102: Inquiry into Remembering the American War in Vietnam:

Introduction to University research methods and composition through projects based on learning about the War and its legacy, with an emphasis on how knowledge changes over time. (5 sections, 100 students)

Assignments Include: using academic, literary, visual and musical sources; finding sources in archives and databases; gathering information through surveys; finding open questions in the academic conversation; examining differences between disciplines; crafting proposals, pitches and annotated bibliographies; writing an argumentative research paper

English 101:

Introduction to reading and writing methods useful in academic courses. Papers include rhetorical and contextual analyses, position statements, and source-based arguments; assignments were built around classic essays on Democracy, Equality, Science and Faith. (2 sections, 33 students)

Authors Include: Crevecoeur, Tocqueville, Machiavelli, Locke, Jefferson, Boorstin, Jacobs, Du Bois, Rodriguez, Beauvoir, Bacon, Darwin, Gould, Dillard, Feynman, Turkle, Standing Bear, Silko, Tillich, James, Paine, Nietzsche, Plato, Aurelius, Cisneros, and world scriptures

U of Georgia, Athens:

Comparative Ethnic American Literatures:

Inaugurated CMLT 2500, ethnic-American literature by African-, Arab-, Asian-, Jewish-, Latina/o-, and Native-Americans. Taught using 3 formats:

Contemporary: Texts published since 2000: Sherman Alexie, Diana Abu-Jaber, Nilo Cruz, Chang-Rae Lee, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Philip Roth, with introductory critical literature (3 sections, 84 students)

Early 20th-Century: Short story collections and plays before 1960: Abraham Cahan, Fray Angelico Chavez, Khalil Gibran, Toshio Mori, Clifford Odets, Lynn Riggs, William Carlos Williams, Richard Wright, and Zitkala-Ša, with introductory critical literature (2 sections, 32 students)

Survey: Created an anthology of short-stories representing major authors, subdivided for coverage and concreteness (e.g. dividing Asian American into 6 groups). I abandoned this format because it was too chaotic. (1 section, 18 students)

Asian American Literature:

Focused on early and mid-20th century Chinese-, Japanese- and Filipino-American authors as a context for understanding Kingston’s contribution to the establishment of Asian American Literature as an academic field. (2 sections, 74 students)

Authors: Carlos Bulosan, Frank Chin, Louis Chu, Sui Sin Far, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toshio Mori, John Okada, Bienvenido Santos, Monica Sone, Hisaye Yamamoto.

World Literature 1:

Non-Western masterworks from Africa, China, India, Islam, Japan and Mesoamerica. Created a supplementary anthology of Wisdom Literature (see below*). Taught using 2 formats:

Long Form Narrative: Used epics and other long-form works to compare how cultures have defined and presented heroes, the role of women, the duty of kings, humanity’s relationship with the gods, etc. Texts included The Mahabharata (with The Bhagavad-Gita), Journey to the West, The Tale of Genji, The Arabian Nights, The Epic of Son-Jara, and The Popol Vuh, with related Wisdom Literature. (1 section, 35 students)

Survey: Selections from major texts from each tradition, using the Norton Anthology and Wisdom Literature. I abandoned this format because I was unsatisfied by how little the anthology presented from each work. (1 section, 39 students)

* Wisdom Literature included: Analects, Zhuangzi, Daodejing, Pillowbook, Essays in Idleness, Heart Sutra, Diamond Sutra, Rg Veda, Qur’an, and Gulistan

World Literature 2:

Course divided into two sections: The first half of the semester was devoted to Continental European masterworks from the Enlightenment to the present; the second half used this background to analyze 20th-century short fiction and poetry from African, Arab, Caribbean, East Asian, Indigenous American, Israeli and South Asian authors. Norton Anthology. (2 sections, 34 students)

Western World Literature 1:

European masterworks from Antiquity through the Renaissance. Taught both as a genre course and with a focus on humanist themes: Society, Nature, The “Other,” God, The Self, The Imagination (a breakdown of readings for each theme is here). Norton Anthology (3 sections, 118 students)

Wilkes Community College, Wilkesboro, NC:

American Literature 2: (Summer 2003) Major authors from 1865 to the present. Organized course by periods. (8 students)

Argument Based Research: (Summer 2003) Finding, analyzing, and constructing arguments for use in research-based papers: evaluations, proposals, etc. (25 students)

Expository Writing: (Summer 2003) Standard genres of the essay: definition, description, cause-and-effect, classification, etc. (25 students)

As Teaching Assistant:

East Asian Literature, U. of Georgia, Spring 2007. Writing Assistant for one section of 35 students, taught through the Writing Intensive Program. Dr. Masaki Mori, instructor.

Sophomore Music, St. John's College, 1993-1996. Assisted in-class exercises and conducted weekly breakout-sessions, teaching undergraduates essentials of music theory, analysis of Western masterworks, choral singing, and piano lessons.

Pedagogical Training:

Graduate Certificate Program in University Teaching: 9 credit hours in pedagogy, plus a teaching project and formal presentation

EADU 8050: Multicultural Issues in Higher Education

WIPP 7001: Pedagogy class for Teaching Assistants in the Writing Intensive Program (WIP), U. of Georgia. Used both Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing in the Disciplines approaches to improve undergraduate writing in preparation for senior-level courses and graduate work http://www.wip.uga.edu

GRSC 7770: Pedagogy class for Graduate Assistants, U. of Georgia. Topics included scheduling, testing, classroom management, WebCT, Webpage design

Invited Lectures and Presentations:

Multiculturalism and World Literature, TA Roundtable on World Literature, U. of Georgia, Fall 2006: presentation to the department regarding the role of multicultural U.S. literature courses in a Comparative/World Literature department.

Temporary Instructor, Honors Asian American Literature, U. of Georgia, Spring 2004: filled on for professor on sick leave

Guest Lecturer: “The Apology of Socrates,” Western Literature 1, U. of Georgia, Spring 2001: guided students through the subversive aspects of Socrates’ actions

Verse Technique and Staging Practices in Shakespeare’s Plays, English Composition 1, U. of Georgia, Spring 1998: short presentation regarding new theories about how Shakespeare’s actors used the script to uncover staging