I’m based in Baltimore, though I also consider Brooklyn my intellectual home. At any given time, I am either petting a cat, looking at a cat, or giving a cat their treats, but in those rare moments when I am free I am usually reading or developing teaching materials. Thinking about ways to make my classes future-focused is so important to me because I remember being deeply disappointed when, as a first-generation college student, I had a professor who either lacked passion or who was a bit “behind the times.” Although it took me a while to get around to it, I have embraced the fact that I am a teacher and researcher down to my core. I am here to merely sing the song of the intrepid intellectual discoverer, a professor and lecturer who is deeply excited to talk about and engage with new ideas and to show how the humanities can be part of that conversation. A few of my teaching interests (since the rest of the site is mostly devoted to research) include: 1) Hating on STEM. Our society has become so obsessed with STEM in general and distant reading, more abstractly, that even many humanities instructors have fallen under this spell. Unfortunately, for many of them what they’ve embraced is an obsession with a very old idea: correctness and precision rather than progress and discovery. Unfortunately, economists and chemists make shit writing instructors. Why this matters has to do solely with training: I would never EVER presume to understand how monetary policy works or how chemicals are bonded. Why on earth do they think they have the training to teach writing? While we’re moving in a direction where more science and technical writing instructors are gaining traction across universities, there’s a pervasive problem of know-it-allism in the sciences that is a direct reaction to old, out-dated ways of teaching composition. I think talking about this openly and honestly is an exciting way to involve students in a complex network of social and cultural signs.