Currently I am Humanities Master of Arts Candidate at California State University, Dominguez Hills, degree expected December 2008. I passed my advancement to candidacy exams in December 2007 and now have 24 graduate units complete, GPA 3.94. My emphasis within this renowned graduate program is nineteenth century American literature, my thesis, Class Dichotomy : The Aristocrat and the Pauper: the Mirror of Duality in Edgar Allen Poe's "William Wilson" is in progress. Complemented by strong undergraduate course work in English and world literature, among the English masters, I have read extensively in the works of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and numerous other Romantic and Victorian writers and poets. I take interest and pleasure in the rhetorical felicity that connects the continents, especially the stylistic similarities between certain Elizabethan writers and the American Puritans. To complement these studies, I have focused on in depth literary analyses in an interdisciplinary context. For example, I have completed graduate courses in theology, philosophy, and art history, juxtaposing and analyzing great writers and critics against and within cultural and philosophical movements in history. Combined with a distinguished expertise in one’s disciplinary emphasis, this multidimensional approach to learning qualifies HUX graduates to teach nearly all humanities courses.
I took my BA degree in English from The University of California, Davis. As mentioned, my interests concern both English and American literature with an emphasis in composition. Please note that I never “tested-out” of any composition requirement, taking the entire series of courses to include Advanced Composition at Davis. I earned an “A” in each course. In addition, I hold a minor in ancient and Intellectual European history. These studies continue to work in unison, qualifying this teacher in both disciplines. Philosophers studied in both upper-division and graduate courses include Rousseau, Dostoevsky, Camus and Sartre. Finally I was fortunate to win a Regents Scholarship, the most prestigious undergraduate award in the University of California system. Prior to this I graduated with honors from Napa Valley College