Teaching
Teaching Profile
My teaching brings together writing studies, rhetoric, public communication, literature, media studies, translation, and post-Soviet regional studies. Across these fields, I design courses that ask students to investigate consequential public questions, work critically with evidence, and communicate their ideas to audiences within and beyond the university.
I teach writing as a socially situated, iterative practice shaped by genre, audience, language, medium, and institutional context. Students move through research, drafting, peer response, revision, and reflection while learning to make deliberate rhetorical choices. In multilingual and English-medium classrooms, I encourage students to draw on their linguistic and cultural knowledge while also examining the conventions that determine whose knowledge becomes credible and publicly visible.
My courses combine rhetorical analysis, close reading, collaborative inquiry, public writing, and digital composition. Whether students are contributing to Wikipedia, analyzing political media, studying cultural memory, or completing capstone research, they learn to connect academic methods with civic and professional communication.
Signature Teaching Projects
o Public Writing through Wikipedia
In my writing courses at the American University of Armenia, students research locally significant topics and contribute their findings to Wikipedia. The project asks them to negotiate the platform’s requirements for neutrality, verifiability, sourcing, and public accessibility while considering how Armenian knowledge is represented within predominantly Anglophone information systems.
Students evaluate existing articles, map evidence, assess sources, draft and revise entries, respond to editor feedback, and reflect on the relationship between public knowledge and rhetorical responsibility.
o Climate Rhetoric and Environmental Justice
In Writing for the Public: Climate Change Rhetoric through Wikipedia, students investigate environmental issues affecting Armenia and translate local research for wider audiences. Topics have included air pollution, waste management, environmental volunteering, sustainable art, and unequal access to sustainable consumption.
The course moves from evidence-based public writing to argumentative analysis, helping students distinguish among neutrality, advocacy, and situated critique while connecting local environmental knowledge to global climate conversations.
o Rhetoric, Politics, and Representation
In courses on media and politics, students examine how rhetoric shapes political identity, nationalism, protest, war, memory, and representation. Course materials include political advertising, monuments, documentary film, popular music, social media, memes, and Wikipedia.
Students use rhetorical theory to analyze both global cases and political communication in Armenia and the wider region. Assignments emphasize comparative analysis, ethical reasoning, source evaluation, and writing for public audiences.
Selected Teaching Areas
o Writing and Rhetoric
Persuasive Writing; Research Methods; Digital Literacy and Multimodal Composition; College Composition; Public Writing; Capstone Research
o Media, Politics, and Public Culture
Rhetoric, Power, and Representation; Media and Politics; Political Communication; Cultural Memory and Public Space
o Literature, Translation, and Regional Studies
American Literature; English Literature; Local and Global Shakespeares; History and Theories of Translation; International Culture of the Cold War; Dissident Writing in Eastern Europe; Ethnicity and Transition in Eastern Europe; The Balkans: Narratives of the Powerless
Research and Capstone Mentoring
I regularly guide undergraduate students from an initial research interest through the development of a focused question, literature review, methodology, and sustained capstone project. My mentoring emphasizes manageable scope, ethical research design, credible source use, synthesis, regular revision, and clear communication of findings.
I have supervised projects in writing studies, literature, translation, media, politics, public culture, and regional studies. I also work with students developing public-facing, digital, and multimodal projects alongside conventional academic research.
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