As a Teaching Fellow in the English department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I teach courses in rhetoric & composition, literature, film, and the medical humanities. I am committed to a rigorous, inclusive, and anti-racist pedagogy–an approach to studying literature and history that grapples with complex texts by drawing on the insights of a diverse and vibrant community. With the help of exceptional students and supportive peers and mentors, I’ve been fortunate to be recognized with three teaching awards, including the most prestigious honor available to graduate students, the Tanner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2018)
ENGL 144: Popular Genres
My ENGL 144: Popular Genres class follows four genres (horror, fantasy, detective fiction, and science fiction) from the nineteenth century to now. The course covers short stories, poetry, novels, films, and comics as students examine (and enjoy!) popular genres. We consider aesthetic form, historical context, philosophical conundrums, and socio-political issues of class, gender, race, and ideology. Most broadly, students use this class to scrutinize the putative distinctions that are said to separate popular and genre fiction from literary fiction.
ENGL 128: Major American Authors
My ENGL 128: Major American Authors class focuses on major American authors of the 19th century, spanning approximately 1830 to 1905. By reading poetry, essays, short stories, memoirs, and novels, students engage with over a dozen prominent voices from a range of moments, genres, and perspectives. By the end of this course, students gain a nuanced understanding of common styles, themes, anxieties, and affiliations that characterize the work of important American writers leading up to the twentieth century. Students will also draw on this knowledge to craft complex and original arguments based on the primary material and relevant scholarship.
While analyzing the issues raised by the texts themselves, this class also critically examines what it means to be “major” in the first place, and also what it means to be “American.” What is the history that has produced this particular canon of writers? Is a text’s value derived from being timely or from being timeless? Is it more important to capture a given cultural zeitgeist or to challenge the prevailing cultural norms? Is aesthetic refinement or entertainment value a better indicator of whether a text endures in cultural memory? These and other questions emerge as the class grapples with issues of selection, inclusion, legacy, and identity.
ENGL 268: Literature, Medicine, & Culture
Additionally, I served as a Teaching Assistant for ENGL 268: Literature, Medicine, and Culture. This interdisciplinary medical humanities course focuses on a conceptual chiasmus: the medicalization of culture and the acculturation of medicine. Students work across a range of texts to consider the history of medicine, medical ethics, narrative medicine, and medical anthropology.
ENGL 105: Writing Across the Disciplines
Most frequently, I teach the university’s introductory course in composition & rhetoric, ENGL 105: Writing Across the Disciplines. This workshop class teaches students to research, write, persuade, and analyze–in short, to argue. Through a series of projects spanning written, oral, and digital communication, the class hones understanding and command of three disciplinary fields: the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities.
Graduate Research Consultant
Apart from my classroom teaching, I have served as a Graduate Research Assistant for several courses: CMPL 142: Visual Culture, ENGL 344: Literature of the American West, and ENGL 261: Intro to Literary Criticism. As a GRC, I work with students one-on-one to develop and refine research projects.
Benjamin J. Murphy 