Research

“The Hidden Curriculum in Community Colleges”

Teach Together Minnesota Conference, Online—May 2021
Anoka Ramsey Community College OSCARS, Online—April 2021
Midwest Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference, Online—April 2021
Minnesota Writing and English Conference, Online—March 2021

First generation students from low-income backgrounds have difficulty navigating the hidden social and economic curriculums of higher education. Community Colleges often struggle to retain and matriculate these students despite that being a major goal. This study explores how uncommunicated skills for navigating a Community College's hidden curriculum affected the experience of 3 first generation writing composition students who come from backgrounds of poverty. Students were asked about successful social skills inside and outside of higher education. Themes that emerged include: individual motivation and organization for collegiate success, asking questions and knowing people, and the importance of supportive figures. 

​

 

“The Hidden Curriculum in Community Colleges”

Research project investigating how first generation, under-supported students experience the social environment of community college. Interviewing students to gain perspective about their experience. IRB approved study over—Fall 2020.

 

“In Character, Maybe: ‘Theatre? Death? or was it just this guy Sean fucking around?”

Mid-America Theatre Conference: Character, Chicago, IL—March 2020

In the current political climate, theatre's ability to foster empathy is important, but it is worth asking what about theatre fosters that empathy and what is the performer's or the character's relationship to empathy? In August 2017, Theatre. Death. Sean. produced Sean Neely, a one-man production in which Artistic Director and Writer Sean Neely confesses to being a pedophile and discusses mental health, theatre, and sacrifice. Neely has produced 8 shows and over the years his brand has been consistent: He is making "a "real" theatre . . . to move the art form away from characters, acting, plot and into a form of belief." to "bring some awareness or change in the actual local community where you are performing it." In order to do this, Neely blurs the line between character and self by assuming the beliefs and stories of otherwise reprehensible actions and people, including rapists, abusers, racists, and pedophiles. His shows are controversial. They bear consideration as we attempt to understand how and why theatre creates empathy and the relationship between character, performer, and audience that allows empathy to develop and questions to be explored.  

​

Creative Writing Faculty Readings

Read a selection of my poems as part of a faculty reading for students, staff and the public. 

​

“Oohrah! Exploring Reintegration Through Theatrical Production”

Responsibility, Morality, and the Costs of War: PTSD, Moral Injury and Beyond 

Ohio State University, Columbus, OH—November 2015

As Anne Bogart writes in And Then You Act, “Theater is the only art who’s subject matter, the content, is society itself” (107). Bekah Brunstetter’s Oohrah! is a play that explores the return of army veteran Ron through the eyes of his wife, sister-in-law, and pre-teen daughter. The piece creates comedic tension between the masculine image of the soldier protector and the helpless economic situation of veterans out of work, all through the eyes of their women. Sara remarks to Ron during their first night back together “Jeanie’s husband come back and gave her herpes from an Arab prostitute, she thinks” (23), while Abby laments “I want a soldier. I want one too, yeah” (15). It is a dark comedy with an unsatisfying ending that navigates both the flattering and unflattering expectations of Ron’s civilian family. In analyzing the societal subject matter of this piece, I sought to engage the knowledge created through the repetition of rehearsal and performance. Accepting Jeanne Coleman’s assertion that "theatrical intervention offers an alternative framework for evaluating the war, and how it can, in some measure, enable political and ethical assessment” (615). This paper describes, from a director’s point of view, the staging and production of Oohrah! as a theatrical alternative to understanding narratives of reintegration in traditional analysis. Rather than a literary exploration, I examine the actions and exercises performed by the actors in addition to the mobile design choices of this student production in order to understand how producing this story shaped and changed my understanding of civilian’s expectations of and relationships to returning veterans.

​

“A Troubled Society: Citizenship and Reintegration in Matt Morillo’s American Soldiers”

Place, (Dis)Place and Citizenship Conference

Wayne State University, Detroit, MI—March 2014

Matt Morillo's 2010 play, American Soldiers, explores the return of veteran Angela Colletti after being discharged from service in the Iraq War.  Like many contemporary reintegration stories, the plot's major conflict revolves around whether or not Angela will successfully rejoin her family and society.   She is belligerent, psychologically wounded, and decisively angry at hyper-patriots.  The other characters in the play respond by treating Angela as a troubled veteran, consistently referring to her as “crazy” or “in need of help.”  In her article “Together We Stand, Divided We Fall,” Lisa Silvestri Carlton notes that a defining characteristic of the troubled veteran archetype is a power differential: the veteran is in need of society's help to fix themselves (296).  She argues that there is a better form of citizenship to be practiced toward veterans.  Along these lines, American Soldiers suggests that reintegration requires as much if not more change from society than it does from the veterans.  While several characters in the play try to prove to Angela that they can help her fix herself by reintegrating, the structure of the play subverts the archetype by exposing the traditions which make society culpable in a continued cycle of war.   Using Carlton's exploration of veterans and society, I explicate the avenues of citizenship opened up by Morillo's text.

​

“Out of Focus: The Construction of Home in Post-Combat Reintegration”

International Theatre Conference,

Thessaloniki, Greece—April 2013

Recently many significant American productions focus on the post-combatant’s journey to reintegrate into their homes.  As Nancy Sherman observes, their return brings the reality of war into our relatively safe country.  Using theory from Pierre Nora, Roland Barthes, and Diana Taylor, as well as scholars of war Karl Marlantes, Chris Hedges, and Nancy Sherman, I examine the text and performance of Donald Margulies’ Time Stands Still, the centerpiece of Steppenwolf’s 2011-2012 season: Dispatches from the Front.  In the paper, I examine the explorations of post-combat reintegration through the play’s conflicts between the reality of home and the constructs of Home.  In many American war stories and plays, photographs play a central role in tethering a combatant to Home while they are far away from it—physically, spiritually, and mentally. In his treatise on the photograph, Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes writes that photographs turn their subjects into objects (13).  Taking a photograph of loved ones and places transforms home into an object that can be carried into the combat zone, and from that visceral object the combatant creates a script of Home.  The same is true for a family seeing pictures of a combat zone: Over There becomes a construct. The purpose and life of photographs as what Pierre Nora calls sites of memory is important in the action and the philosophy of Time Stands Still.  The task that spans the play’s action is a dual-memoir of photographs and text compiled by Sara and Jamie.  It should help them create actual home, but instead the constructs of Home conflict, effectively halting reintegration.  As more American soldiers and post-combatants return, more plays are being written and produced on the subject, making understanding the reintegration narratives vital.  This examination is part of a larger project examining significant post-combat reintegration plays in America.

 

“Doubles and Nature: The Healer in Robin Mckinley’s Deerskin”

Natures Conference, La Sierra University--January 2011

​

“Survivor and Heroine: Rape Narrative in Robin Mckinley’s Deerskin”

Sirens Women’s Fantasy Conference, Colorado--October 2010

​

“Christianity on the Stage: C.S. Lewis and the Art of Christian Theatre”

La Sierra University--June 2009