Loyola Community Literacy Center

Co-manager (2012-2015), Lead Tutor (2011-2012), Volunteer Tutor (2010-2011)

As co-manager since 2012, I helped run a community-service oriented literacy tutoring center sponsored by the English Department at Loyola University Chicago. The center offers free literacy tutoring to adults, both native speakers of English and those learning it as a foreign language. I oversaw the center on tutoring nights, managed staff and resources, and helped build the center's capacity and profile so the center can offer quality tutoring to as many learners as possible.

As a lead tutor in 2011-2012, I assisted the co-managers of the center with administration and helped supervise the center during tutoring nights. As a volunteer tutor in 2010-2011, I tutored learners according to their literacy goals and needs.

Urban Prep Academies

English Department Chair

Sean worked at Urban Prep Academies as a English Department Chair

Urban Prep Academies

English Teacher

Sean worked at Urban Prep Academies as a English Teacher

Loyola University Chicago

Graduate Assistant

I taught literature and writing classes and assisted with faculty research while completing my Ph.D. in English (Modern Literature and Culture). My research focus was on contemporary global fiction, new media, and narrative theory.

Arrupe College of Loyola University Chicago

Clinical Assistant Professor

I teach writing and literature courses at Arrupe College, a two-year associate degree program at Loyola University Chicago. Arrupe's mission is to help make college achievable, accessible, and affordable for our students, many of whom are first-generation college students, and prepare them to move on to success at a four-year institution or meaningful employment with little to no debt.

'Both masters and victims of their times': Engaging aporetic time in Midnight's Children

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

Time in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is characterized by a cacophony of representational forms that the narrator Saleem uses with and against each other, such as cyclical time, timelessness, and revisionary linear historical time. Existing analyses of the novel’s representations of time have generally concluded that one or another of the competing temporal frameworks in the novel is primary and that Rushdie and Saleem ultimately discard or subordinate the others. On the contrary, the novel denies a single coherent temporal structure and instead focuses on productively engaging the diversity of time in keeping with Paul Ricoeur’s theory of aporetic time. Ricoeur theorizes that every framework of representing time includes aporias, blind spots it can’t satisfactorily address, and he argues that we must explore these tensions in representations of time — a task for which narrative is uniquely helpful. Investigating aporetic time in Midnight’s Children develops our understanding of Ricoeur by providing a representation of aporetic time to supplement and challenge Ricoeur’s theoretical model (and Homi K. Bhabha’s thoughts on narrating the nation). Midnight’s Children’s narratorial ambivalence and multivalence with regard to temporal frameworks is closely tied to the novel’s major thematic concerns: constructing an understanding of oneself, one’s nation, and history in the face of conflicting experiences and imperfect narratives of significant and traumatic personal and historical events. Applying Rushdie and Ricoeur to each other productively develops our understanding of how complex, contradictory narrative representations of time and of identities can provide a way forward for individuals and nations between the twin dangers of tyrannical narrative orthodoxy and impotent relativism.

'Both masters and victims of their times': Engaging aporetic time in Midnight's Children

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

Time in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is characterized by a cacophony of representational forms that the narrator Saleem uses with and against each other, such as cyclical time, timelessness, and revisionary linear historical time. Existing analyses of the novel’s representations of time have generally concluded that one or another of the competing temporal frameworks in the novel is primary and that Rushdie and Saleem ultimately discard or subordinate the others. On the contrary, the novel denies a single coherent temporal structure and instead focuses on productively engaging the diversity of time in keeping with Paul Ricoeur’s theory of aporetic time. Ricoeur theorizes that every framework of representing time includes aporias, blind spots it can’t satisfactorily address, and he argues that we must explore these tensions in representations of time — a task for which narrative is uniquely helpful. Investigating aporetic time in Midnight’s Children develops our understanding of Ricoeur by providing a representation of aporetic time to supplement and challenge Ricoeur’s theoretical model (and Homi K. Bhabha’s thoughts on narrating the nation). Midnight’s Children’s narratorial ambivalence and multivalence with regard to temporal frameworks is closely tied to the novel’s major thematic concerns: constructing an understanding of oneself, one’s nation, and history in the face of conflicting experiences and imperfect narratives of significant and traumatic personal and historical events. Applying Rushdie and Ricoeur to each other productively develops our understanding of how complex, contradictory narrative representations of time and of identities can provide a way forward for individuals and nations between the twin dangers of tyrannical narrative orthodoxy and impotent relativism.

Some Assembly Required: Intertextuality, Marginalization, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association

Readers of Oscar Wao, in being forced to decide so frequently what knowledge they will marginalize through the decisions they make about researching or simplifying each intertextual reference, are encouraged to consider to what degree their choices reflect or differ from those that have led to the kinds of personal and political situations depicted in the novel.

'Both masters and victims of their times': Engaging aporetic time in Midnight's Children

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

Time in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is characterized by a cacophony of representational forms that the narrator Saleem uses with and against each other, such as cyclical time, timelessness, and revisionary linear historical time. Existing analyses of the novel’s representations of time have generally concluded that one or another of the competing temporal frameworks in the novel is primary and that Rushdie and Saleem ultimately discard or subordinate the others. On the contrary, the novel denies a single coherent temporal structure and instead focuses on productively engaging the diversity of time in keeping with Paul Ricoeur’s theory of aporetic time. Ricoeur theorizes that every framework of representing time includes aporias, blind spots it can’t satisfactorily address, and he argues that we must explore these tensions in representations of time — a task for which narrative is uniquely helpful. Investigating aporetic time in Midnight’s Children develops our understanding of Ricoeur by providing a representation of aporetic time to supplement and challenge Ricoeur’s theoretical model (and Homi K. Bhabha’s thoughts on narrating the nation). Midnight’s Children’s narratorial ambivalence and multivalence with regard to temporal frameworks is closely tied to the novel’s major thematic concerns: constructing an understanding of oneself, one’s nation, and history in the face of conflicting experiences and imperfect narratives of significant and traumatic personal and historical events. Applying Rushdie and Ricoeur to each other productively develops our understanding of how complex, contradictory narrative representations of time and of identities can provide a way forward for individuals and nations between the twin dangers of tyrannical narrative orthodoxy and impotent relativism.

Some Assembly Required: Intertextuality, Marginalization, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association

Readers of Oscar Wao, in being forced to decide so frequently what knowledge they will marginalize through the decisions they make about researching or simplifying each intertextual reference, are encouraged to consider to what degree their choices reflect or differ from those that have led to the kinds of personal and political situations depicted in the novel.

Book Review: Dance and the Nation: Performance, Ritual, and Politics in Sri Lanka (by Susan A. Reed)

New England Theatre Journal

'Both masters and victims of their times': Engaging aporetic time in Midnight's Children

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

Time in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is characterized by a cacophony of representational forms that the narrator Saleem uses with and against each other, such as cyclical time, timelessness, and revisionary linear historical time. Existing analyses of the novel’s representations of time have generally concluded that one or another of the competing temporal frameworks in the novel is primary and that Rushdie and Saleem ultimately discard or subordinate the others. On the contrary, the novel denies a single coherent temporal structure and instead focuses on productively engaging the diversity of time in keeping with Paul Ricoeur’s theory of aporetic time. Ricoeur theorizes that every framework of representing time includes aporias, blind spots it can’t satisfactorily address, and he argues that we must explore these tensions in representations of time — a task for which narrative is uniquely helpful. Investigating aporetic time in Midnight’s Children develops our understanding of Ricoeur by providing a representation of aporetic time to supplement and challenge Ricoeur’s theoretical model (and Homi K. Bhabha’s thoughts on narrating the nation). Midnight’s Children’s narratorial ambivalence and multivalence with regard to temporal frameworks is closely tied to the novel’s major thematic concerns: constructing an understanding of oneself, one’s nation, and history in the face of conflicting experiences and imperfect narratives of significant and traumatic personal and historical events. Applying Rushdie and Ricoeur to each other productively develops our understanding of how complex, contradictory narrative representations of time and of identities can provide a way forward for individuals and nations between the twin dangers of tyrannical narrative orthodoxy and impotent relativism.

Some Assembly Required: Intertextuality, Marginalization, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association

Readers of Oscar Wao, in being forced to decide so frequently what knowledge they will marginalize through the decisions they make about researching or simplifying each intertextual reference, are encouraged to consider to what degree their choices reflect or differ from those that have led to the kinds of personal and political situations depicted in the novel.

Book Review: Dance and the Nation: Performance, Ritual, and Politics in Sri Lanka (by Susan A. Reed)

New England Theatre Journal

"in company let us hope with better qualities": Invoked Readers in Vanity Fair

Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature (formerly The Victorian Newsletter)