Teaching
Teaching Profile
My teaching brings together rhetoric and public communication, media and cultural analysis, literature and translation, writing studies, and Eastern European and post-Soviet studies. Across these areas, I ask students to examine how language, images, media, cultural forms, and institutions shape political identity, public memory, knowledge, and social change.
My courses combine rhetorical analysis, close reading, historical and cultural inquiry, collaborative research, public writing, and digital composition. Students work with materials ranging from literature, political speeches, monuments, documentary film, and popular music to social media, memes, maps, and public knowledge platforms. Whether analyzing nationalism and protest, studying the cultural politics of the Cold War, interpreting contested forms of public memory, or contributing to Wikipedia, students learn to connect close analysis with larger historical and political questions.
Writing remains central across my teaching. I approach it as a socially situated and 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 and institutions that determine whose knowledge becomes credible and publicly visible.
Signature Teaching Projects and Approaches
o Rhetoric, Politics, and Representation
In courses on rhetoric, media, and politics, students examine how symbolic and material forms shape 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, Eastern Europe, and the wider post-Soviet region. Assignments emphasize comparative analysis, ethical reasoning, source evaluation, and the relationship between representation and political power.
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 among language, public knowledge, institutional authority, 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.
Selected Teaching Areas
o Media, Politics, and Public Culture
Rhetoric, Power, and Representation; Political Communication; Cultural Memory and Public Space
o Eastern Europe and Cultural History
International Culture of the Cold War; Dissident Writing in Eastern Europe; Ethnicity and Transition in Eastern Europe; The Balkans: Narratives of the Powerless
o Literature, Translation, and Language
American Literature; English Literature; Local and Global Shakespeares; History and Theories of Translation
o Writing and Research
Persuasive Writing; Research Methods; Public Writing; Digital Literacy and Multimodal Composition; College Composition; Capstone Research
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 rhetoric and 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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