Although I teach ancient Christianity, most of my students, undergraduate and graduate, are engaged in other fields of study. Because of this, my primary goal as a teacher is to give my students skills they can transfer to other disciples, especially critical reasoning skills. In an age of fake news, deepfakes, and social media bubbles, I want my students to become self-aware consumers of knowledge, conscious of their own assumptions and biases and ready to interrogate every claim they encounter.

One signature feature of my courses are daily quick-writes meant to facilitate active learning and help me be a more responsive instructor. For example, in all my classes, I require students to provide 6-8 sentences of feedback to every class session. This feedback helps me identify gaps in student knowledge, which I can address in future lectures, Q&A sessions, and exam study guides. My smaller classes also incorporate guided questions that help students to respond to their readings, synthesizing the knowledge they have gained.

RELI 607

The Gospel of John and its Earliest Readers

Advanced Undergraduate/Graduate

This course traces the evolution of John—both as a written text and as an object of interpretation—to illuminate the shifting interests and anxieties of Christians living in the 1st–3rd centuries CE.

RELI 207

Jesus in the Early Christian Gospels

Lower-level undergraduate (Renamed since taught)

This course explores the variety of traditions used in the first two centuries to portray Jesus, focusing on the reasons for this variety and the historical and literary problems it presents.