Jennifer Geraci is reading a book and smiling.

I like to teach texts that embolden students to use what they know in their writing. WR 40 is the class I teach most often, and it is based on the imitation model, so our class readings tend to focus on authors who push the boundaries of certain genres by writing about their lives in various ways, such as through descriptions of home spaces, references to other female writers who inspire them, by drawing on occluded histories of women, and by crafting stories that showcase the small, everyday events that challenge and shape them. I received my PhD in English from UCI in 2020 and have been a Lecturer ever since. =)

Courses Typically Taught:

  • Writing 40
  • Writing 50
  • Writing 60
  • Writing 139W

Themes Typically Taught:

  • Writing 40: Autobiographical writing, Latina and queer memoir 
  • Writing 50: Afrofuturism 
  • Writing 60: Gender and Fashion

Course Descriptions:

  • WR 40: "What are the texts of our insurgency?" and "How do writers influence readers?" 
  • WR 50: "Afrofuturism and Science Fiction" and "Counternarratives" 
  • WR 60: "Gender and Fashion"

Textbooks Needed:

  • WR 40: autobiographical writing by Alice Walker, Saidiya Hartman, Myriam Gurba, Sandra Cisneros, Gloria Anzaldúa, Toni Morrison 
  • WR 50: Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler; Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli; How the García Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez 
  • WR 60: Selections from Crossing Gender Boundaries: Fashion to Create, Disrupt, and Transcend by Andrew Reilly and Ben Barry; Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco by Clare Sears; podcast and writings by Alok Vaid-Menon

Email: jgeraci@uci.edu