Selections of My Writing

Columbus Headnote
Heath Anthology of American Literature, 4th Edition

This introduction to the Heath's selections from the journals of Columbus' voyages presents historical and cultural contexts and reviews some of the interpretive questions the journals pose for readers.

Heath Anthology of American Literature: Columbus Headnote (2002)

Instructor's Guide to Accompany Columbus Headnote

Opting for shorter supplemental materials composed by a , the editors of the Heath did not select this teacher's guide designed for my Columbus headnote. I include it here because I have kept it current (with updated web links and bibliography), used it for my own American literature teaching, and shared it with colleagues.

Instructor's Guide: Columbus (2002)

From Reading to Mastery:
Preparing for Academic Excellence in College

Before my last summer as director of the Harvey Mudd College Upward Bound Program, I wrote this study guide for Upward Bound students from high schools in El Monte, La Puente, and Pomona, California. Although I wrote the text, the ideas reflected the combined experience and perspective of an extraordinary collection of Upward Bound staff members, teachers, alumni, and students. Donald Quintana, an Upward Bound alumnus from Gary High School in Pomona illustrated the study guide with drawings that reflect that wit and energy he brought to all of his work with Upward Bound.

From Reading to Mastery (2002)

Upward Bound Grant Applications

A federally funded program, Upward Bound serves low-income, potential first-generation college bound students. During my fourteen years at Upward Bound, I authored or co-authored six proposals. All were funded.

The first proposal excerpted here was ranked among the top 10% of proposals nationally and won an extra year of funding. I have included the abstract, a section of the proposal explaining the need for Upward Bound program services in the target community, and the program objectives. The complete proposal with various appendices was almost two hundred pages long (new proposal writers should note that new Department of Education guidelines strictly limit proposals to 100 pages).

1998 Funding Proposal

A few months after I had left Upward Bound to come teach at UCR, I volunteered my services as a grant writer and editor to the Upward Bound staff running the grant. The resulting proposal was one of the most interesting collaborative projects of my career. Working as part of a four member team, I wrote about half the proposal and edited most of the other half of it. Aside from updating the grant and meeting new federal mandates, our writing team had to cram what had typically taken up two hundred pages into one hundred. The relentless paring down and revising drove home for me the importance of concision, active voice, and the other skills we discuss each day in my composition and literature classes.

2002 Funding Proposal: Part One / Part Two / Part Three

Diversity at Harvey Mudd College:
"Separatism," "Assimilation," and Academic Culture

I composed this open letter to the Harvey Mudd College community (faculty, students, and staff) as part of my work for the college's Diversity Task Force. In this letter, I attempt to rebut arguments against improving diversity in student admissions that were circulating at that time among faculty and students.

Diversity at Harvey Mudd (Spring 2001)

"Business as Usual"

In this opinion piece that ended up being published by several local newspapers (the Daily Bulletin, The Inland Valley Los Angeles Times, and the San Gabriel Tribune), Pomona College politics professor and political theory muckie muck John Seery and I critique the Claremont College's response to student protestors.

"Business as Usual" (April 2001)

One Part Cannot Save the Whole

In the fall of 2000, the members of Harvey Mudd Colleges Diversity Task Force were struggling to craft an action plan to enhance diversity at the college. We had crafted a Blueprint for Diversity (after more than a year of tough negotiating) but moving from a broad mandate to a specific action plan created new challenges for us. In this letter to my colleagues on the Task Force, I argue that we should respond to this issue at every level of college life.

One Part Cannot Save the Whole (Fall 2000)

"Goshoots" and the B&W Railroad in Mark Twain's Roughing It

Annual Conference of the American Literature Assosciation (2000)

In this presentation (which combined a paper that I read and a powerpoint presentation with related images), I argue that Roughing It's interplay between colonial rhetoric and ironic social criticism exposes the tensions inherent in Twain's representations of American Indians and the expansionist ideology of the emigrants to the West.

"Goshoots" and the B&W May 2000

"'Figuring Reduction:' Purging Disease and
'Turning the Soil' in Spenser's Ireland."

Twelfth Graduate Irish Studies Conference (2000)

I presented this paper Spenser's use of the language of agriculture and medicine to rationalize colonialism in his Present View of Ireland. Spenser's View also figures prominently in the work I am doing for my dissertaion on representations of crime in early American contact literature.

"Figuring Reduction"

Respondent: Presidential Inaugural Keynote Address.
Claremont Graduate University, March 1999.

Speaking as a respondent to a keynote address by Dr. Jules Lapidus, I make my case for a more participatory and community centered Claremont Graduate University.

Respondent

Page last updated: 13 March, 2004