TAC Member: Kelly Neil

I’m excited to continue my work as a TA Consultant this year and look forward to meeting more TAs from across campus! I am a PhD candidate in the English Department working on a dissertation that focuses on suicide, politics, and gender in sixteenth and seventeenth century drama. I have taught various composition courses for the University Writing Program, as well as introduction to literature courses and a survey course of Medieval and Early Modern literature for the English department. I have TA’d for courses such as Chaucer: Minor Poems, Shakespeare: The Early Plays, Renaissance Prose, and, for the Religious Studies department, Non-Western Religions. Before coming to UCD, I taught composition at a community college in North Carolina.

One of my goals as a TA Consultant is to help instructors provoke their students to engage more deeply in the course material. This includes getting students to speak more often, do more things in the classroom, and to demonstrate real interest in the course material. In fact, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term “student” comes from the Latin studium, meaning zeal or affection. Thus, the very concept of being a student is premised on passionate states of being – to be a student is, according to the word’s etymology, to be in a state of excitement about a topic of study. When instructors strive to create exciting classrooms, students learn more effectively, a connection that seems to have emerged in ancient Roman “classes” just as it emerges today.

When I'm not reading early modern plays or teaching, I'm usually spending time with my dog, Lucy, who is a Huskie/Greyhound/Border Collie mix, cooking, attempting to grow flowers in my yard, and tasting new wines.