My teaching prioritizes training students to become discerning navigators of a media ecosystem saturated with malicious political disinformation and attention-commodifying “AI slop.” In my courses, students learn to engage critically with digital tools, build their own skills of writing and historical analysis, and evaluate changes and continuities in the production and preservation of knowledge. As a teaching fellow and digital humanities lab consultant, I’ve learned to incorporate student-led and project-based learning into my teaching style.

Courses (syllabi available upon request)

Something to Say: How to Write For Yourself in an Age of Generative AI

Information Revolutions: Parallels of a Print and Digital Age

Nuns, Beguines, and Reformers: Women & Christianity in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Renaissance, Reformation, Revolution? Introduction to Early Modern Europe

Course Highlights

In my introductory undergraduate course “Something to Say: How to Write For Yourself in an Age of Generative AI,” students compare Renaissance debates about imitating Cicero to contemporary debates about the use of Generative AI. While engaging with the intellectual history of rhetoric, students practice writing-as-thinking as they draft, revise, and give constructive peer feedback. In a world dominated by ChatGPT, this course empowers students with writing skills informed by the long history of thinking about writing, the intellectual history of rhetoric.

In my advanced seminar “Information Revolutions: Parallels of a Print and Digital Age,” students use digital humanities tools to study the information revolution of early modern Europe, comparing their own design of an online exhibit webpage with a sixteenth-century printmaker’s typesetting. Students learn early modern European book history and print culture as they compare the early modern print revolution and our current digital information revolution. This course examines how early modern society grappled with misinformation, censorship, information overload, and polemical debates sparking rebellion, state violence, and genocide. Students will learn how textual, oral, and visual media intertwine to produce a media ecosystem that drives religious and cultural change, both in the early modern period and the present.

Teaching & Digital Humanities Student Support Experience

Guest lectures

“Network Analysis: A Digital Humanities Approach to Mansfield Park and Ivanhoe” for English 3776: Jane Austen and Walter Scott History and Manners in the Romantic Novel, Yale University, New Haven, CT, April 2025

“The Medieval Mystical Tradition,” for History 280: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Yale University, New Haven, CT, October 2022

Positions

Digital Humanities Specialist Consultant, DHLab, Yale University Library, 2024—present, (Teaching Fellow-20 hour/week Equivalent, Spring 2025)

• Provide project management and technical expertise in one-on-one consultations with undergraduate and graduate students, provide workshops in Yale courses, collaborate on DH projects, train in new DH methodologies.

Teaching Fellow, History 246/Environmental Studies 189: The History of Food, History Department, Yale University, Spring 2023

• Marked student work and taught 2 mandatory weekly seminar-style discussion sections.

Teaching Fellow, History 280/Religious Studies 160: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition, History Department, Yale University, Fall 2022

• Marked student work, taught 2 mandatory weekly seminar-style discussion sections, and presented a guest lecture on medieval mysticism.

Selected Student Feedback

Serena is an absolutely amazing TF! She made coming to discussion sections so engaging and fun!

Serena was a wonderful TF! She clearly was very dedicated to her role in the course. She was prepared for all of the sections, guided the discussion with thoughtful questions, and was always willing and available to help outside of class when needed.

Serena was incredibly available to help me in and outside of section. She framed questions to truly start meaningful discussions as well.

Loved Serena as a TA! She’s super nice and helpful with giving advice and feedback. Section was really interesting and I think we had good discussions about the course material.

She was fantastic! One of the kindest and most communicative TAs I’ve had. She had great review sessions and guided really interesting discussions in section.

I loved Serena. She was kind, very prepared, knowledgable, and fun to be in section with. She’s also very approachable and chill! Her review sessions were very well structured and felt like a fantastic class themselves! She’s one of the best TAs I’ve had.