What’s going on

In Progress

I am working on a book called Things Beyond Your Ken. It is part memoir, part cultural history, encompasses my experiences as a 16 year-old American exchange student in 1984 rural Austria and my nearly 40 year relationship with the country. My naive coming of age story, heavily influenced by The Sound of Music, is refracted through cultural and political realities that I only learned about much later, including postwar American colonialism in Austria, de-Nazification and its failures, and the Cold War. I also reflect on memory culture and what it means to “work off” the past while excavating my relationship with my host family, including a trip for a wedding (while keeping my own queer identity – nay – gay wedding –  under wraps), a 2019 visit to my host mother on the eve of her death from lung cancer, and a 2023 trip that included visiting her grave and interviewing acquaintances from her village.

Reading

Teaching

2023-24

Freshman Inquiry — Portland

Oregon Inquiry at Helensview School — Power and Imagination

Career readiness curricular work

Inquiry for Justice Summer Program