Alan-Michael (AM) Weatherford
Instructor at University Beyond Bars
Ph.C., Doctoral Candidate
My name is Alan-Michael Weatherford (preferably AM), and I am an interdisciplinary researcher, critical pedagogue, and doctoral candidate at the University of Washington—Seattle. 

While my home department was Comparative Literature, Cinema and Media (CLCM), I frequently teach in other departments, such as the French and Italian as well as Spanish and Portuguese. In the past few years, I have taught in and cross-listed my courses with the Comparative History of Ideas Department (CHID). I also work closely with the 501 c(3) non-profit organization, University Beyond Bars (UBB), providing educational opportunities at the Monroe Correctional Complex in classroom, workshop, and cultural lectures and series formats. 

I'm currently in the final stages of writing my dissertation and completing my PhD program. My project, (Neo)Liberal Logics of Caribbean Sex Tourism, is an interdisciplinary and multilingual study of various representations of sex workers in Caribbean cultural production. By focusing on the ways that sex workers are rendered in literary and filmic media, I illuminate a variety of epistemic practices, characterized as sometimes violent and at other times asserting autonomy that subtend racial capitalism. Divided into two major parts, the first section investigates the modes of violence as well as resistance under liberal formations in Jamaica and Haiti. The latter analyzes those modes under neoliberal formations in the Dominican Republic and Cuba. Altogether, I provide a genealogical account from 1970 into the early 2000s of U.S. imperial or transnational capitalist expansion into the Caribbean under the guise of development and economic restructuring for democratic ends.

In the 2018-2019 school yeah, I taught with the Comparative History of Ideas Department (CHID) through their Collaborative Learning and Interdisciplinary Pedagogy Fellowship (CLIP). Together with a colleague in English, Caleb Knapp, we designed and taught a 5-course series related to the theme of Critical Justice Studies. I also teach and volunteer in the Monroe Correctional Facility with the amazing non-profit organization, University Beyond Bars.
University Beyond Bars
https://www.linkedin.com/company/university-beyond-bars
Courses Co-designed and Taught: 

Certificate Course - Contemporary Latin America and Caribbean Politics (Summer 2019)**
SPAN XXX - Heritage Learners Teaching Methods (Winter 2019)*/**
SPAN 250 - Latin American Colonial Literature (Fall 2018)*
SPAN 122 - Introduction (Winter 2018)*
SPAN 103 - Introduction (Spring 2017)**
Certificate Course - Gender Studies (Fall 2017)

*with Ángela Durán-Real 
**with Sebastián López-Vergara
Monroe Correctional Complex
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Instructor
University of Washington
https://www.linkedin.com/company/university-of-washington
The courses listed below are not with a professor. I am the sole instructor responsible for lesson plans, activities, grading and mentoring:

CHID 250 - Prison Abolition in the Pacific Northwest (Spring 2019)*
CHID 270 - Representations of Incarceration in Film (Fall 2018)
CHID 485 - Colonial Carceral Logics in the Americas (Winter 2019)
C LIT 200 - Introduction to Literature: The Rise of Literature and the Maintenance of 
		Oppression (Summer 2016)
C LIT 240 - Writing in Comparative Literature: Queerin’ the Americas 
	(Fall & Spring 2016, Winter 2017)
C LIT 396 - Special Topics: This Revolution Wasn’t Meant For Us (Spring 2017)
FREN 103 - Introduction (Spring 2013 & 2018)
FREN 102 - Introduction (Winter 2014 & 2018)
FREN 101 - Introduction (Fall 2013 & 2017)
FREN 134 - Intensive (Summer 2014 & 2015)
FREN 201 - Intermediate (Spring 2014)
FREN 227 - Intermediate Conversation, Paris Study Abroad (Fall 2015)
FREN 327 - Advanced Conversation, Paris Study Abroad (Fall 2015)
SPAN 103 - Introduction (Fall 2014, Spring 2015 & Winter 2016)
SPAN 102 - Introduction (Summer 2015)

*Co-designed and taught with Caleb Knapp

I worked as a TA with a professor for the following course: 

French 250/CHID 270: The History of French Film (Winter 2016)
Greater Seattle Area
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Pre-doctoral Instructor
South Seattle Community College
https://www.linkedin.com/company/south-seattle-college
I taught in the Continuing Education Department the following courses:

French for Fun and Travel
French 1
6000 16th Ave SW, Seattle, WA 98106
https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C560BAQHmSh7UULdOpw/company-logo_100_100/0/1566318264484?e=1655942400&v=beta&t=LRLmqlsUJUibTOXoTy1_emgqmYLt_Kh5N1993eMJEZA
Part-time Instructor
EF Education First
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ef-education-first
I was an ESL teacher for Education First's Homestays Program here in Seattle. I worked with Chinese students in a classroom setting, teaching multiple 40-minute lessons using a task-based methodology with a communicative approach.
Greater Seattle Area
https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C510BAQGrCP6CXBbjAA/company-logo_100_100/0/1571879615985?e=1655942400&v=beta&t=Hw1ldd-cidRDWjVdpoB1FZGucV3f2prSJVG02ZRVW0w
Part-time ESL (English as a Second Language) Teacher
Grads Guiding Grads (G3)
G3 is a peer mentoring program for graduate students, in partnership with the Graduate School and the Counseling Center.

G3 aims fulfill the need for non-crisis, non-academic mentoring in the graduate and professional student community. Through one-on-one sessions, mentors volunteer their time to provide an empathetic ear to fellow graduate and professional students on topics that affect us all. While mentors indicate interest in providing perspective and feedback around particular issues, the program is meant to pair students across disciplines and communities, and provide the opportunity to get advice from a fresh perspective..
University of Washington - Seattle
Peer Graduate Student Mentor
Panera Bread
https://www.linkedin.com/company/panera-bread
I worked as a Shift Manager for about 4 years at numerous cafés in both Virginia and in the greater Seattle Area, after I was an Associate Trainer for about a year. Typical tasks as a Shift Manager included managing shifts throughout the day, maintaining company standards through paperwork and checking and maintaing labor. During times when no Assistant Managers were available, I would order product, track bakery goods and even work on the employee weekly schedule. Apart from Shift Managerial duties, I frequently served as a day-baker and environmental captain, pushing green initiatives and practices within our bakery-cafés. I also taught the Planet Bread Orientation, which served to introduce new-hires to the history, culture and daily jobs provided at Panera Bread. I frequently met with employees thereafter to address their performances and room for growth.
Newport News, Virginia
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Shift Supervisor
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Dissertation: “Neo/liberal Logics of Caribbean Sex Tourism” 

Committee: Co-Chairs: Drs. Chandan Reddy & Richard Watts; Dr. Ileana Rodríguez-Silva; Dr. Gillian Harkins

PhD Examination Areas:

Theoretical | Queer of Color Critique and Postcolonial Studies: Critical and Interdisciplinary Decolonizing Methods
Period | Post-WWII Queer Francophone Cultural Production of the Americas
Comparative | Queering the Americas: French, English and Spanish Cultural Production Post-World War II
Comparative Literature, Cinema and Media
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University of Washington
https://www.linkedin.com/school/university-of-washington/
Master's Degree
Thesis: “Queering the Psyche: Reflecting on Michel Tremblay’s Idea and Lucía Puenzo’s Desire” 

Advisors: Drs. Cynthia Steele & Denyse Delcourt
Comparative Literature
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University of Washington
https://www.linkedin.com/school/university-of-washington/
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)
Thesis: “Zafarse del fukú: Critiquing the Effects of Dominican Diaspora on the Gendered and Sexualized Identities in The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” 

Advisor: Dr. Jessica Lynam
French & Spanish Languages and Literatures
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Christopher Newport University
https://www.linkedin.com/school/christopher-newport-university/
Academic Workers for a Democratic Union/University
Member
American Comparative Literature Association
-
Doctoral Committee
Honors on Doctoral Qualifying Exams
The first annual award recognizes the commitment to and involvement with the Diversity Committee, which promotes the inclusion and involvement of all graduate and professional students at UW-Seattle, and awareness and understanding of the diversity of students in graduate higher education.  As a member of the committee, Alan-Michael spearheaded several new events to talk about Diversity issues on campus  He hosted events such as educational talks, open to everyone, to discuss what Diversity was, how to go about dealing with the many problems that arise under Diversity as well as using some theoretical work to raise consciousness about systems of power.
Graduate and Professional Student Senate
Diversity Award
(Enlightenment) Texts in Context
MLAN 310
Classical Rhetoric
COMM 249
Cross Cultural Awareness
MLAN 308
Cultural Studies, An Introduction: Bodies
COMM 455
Dramatic Impulse- Modern
THEA 210
Francophone Literature and Culture
FREN 353
French Grammar and Composition
FREN 301
French Women Writers
FREN 354
Gender Communication
COMM 330
Hispanic Visual Culture and the Arts
SPAN 361
Hybridity, Transnationalism and (Im)migration
MLAN 490
Intro to Latin American Literature
SPAN 351
Introduction to Latin American Literature
SPAN 352
Introduction to Spanish Literature
SPAN 354
Organizational Communication
COMM 345
Persuasion
COMM 325
Phonetics
FREN 310
Sexuality, Sex and Gender
COMM 430
Spanish Civilization and Culture
SPAN 311
Spanish Grammar and Composition
SPAN 301
Spanish-American Civilization
SPAN 312
The Early Modern Era
FREN 351
The Modern Era
FREN 352
The Structure of English
ENGL 430
Comparative Colonialisms
HSTCMP 530
Feminist Genealogies
GWSS 590
French Animal Studies
FREN 576
French Teaching Methods
FREN 510 A
Hispanic Women Writers
CLIT 596
Literary Criticism and Theory
C LIT 400
Literary Problems - 18th Century
FREN 594
Literary Problems - 20th Century
SPAN 596
Master's Essay
CLIT 590
Method, Imagination and Inquiry
CLIT 599
Methods and Issues in Media Studies
CLIT 520
Queer Desires
GWSS 464
Queer Geographies
GEO 572
Queer Narrative and Cinema in Latin America
CLIT 599
Québécois Literature
FREN 590
Spanish-American Colonialism
SPAN 597
The Culture of the Sciences
ENGLISH 599
The French Atlantic
FREN 599
Theater as Pedagogy
GRDSCHL 525
Writing for Publication
CLIT 599
Universidad de Belgrano, Buenos Aires, Argentina
-
Université Laval, La Ville de Québec, Canada
-
When one hears the word “queer,” the most commonly understood meaning involves something negative, a pejorative deviation from the normal. It is also typically used as slang for a white homosexual male. But this class will explore “queer” in its various meanings as a valuable means of questioning what is normal itself.  In addition, it will ask not only how queer looks and expresses itself in relation to race, gender, sex and sexuality, but also how it manifests across the many cultures of the Americas.

This course will engage with various forms of queer cultural production (plays, novels, children’s literature, films and slam poetry) from the 20th and 21st centuries across French, English and Spanish linguistic and cultural lines. It will also entertain various feminist, anti-colonial and queer of color theoretical concepts. Students will then develop their analytic skills through writing in various forms (personal journaling, response papers, proposals, short literary analysis and comparative papers).

We will think about, explore not only our own (queer) positions in time and culture, but also of those in the works we read and view. Classes will be a mixture of small-group and class discussions, peer-review workshops and activities from Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed.
Queerin' the Americas
http://prezi.com/qqwnlj-amqcm/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share
Typically, an English conversation about literature involves the canon of “great works” starting with Beowulf, moving through Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Keats, Joyce and Eliot etc. Because of feminism, women are frequently woven throughout the list as well: Austen, Shelley, Brontë, and Wolfe etc. While their writing is, no doubt, brilliant, this course will explore more the politics behind writing itself. It will trace the rise of the concept of literature through its development with the Western Academy/University. It will then seek to answer and address how literature has been couched as superior to oral traditions; how literacy was used to legitimize colonization; how it created an elite class who, then, barred others from it; how women have fought for the right to write; and how people of color and queer communities have employed the spoken word as a means of resistance.

This course will engage with various forms of literature ([slam] poetry, prose [novels, novellas, essays, short stories] and drama [theater]) from some of the first written texts up to the 21st century. It will also entertain various feminist, anti-colonial and queer of color theoretical concepts. Students will
then develop their own creative and analytical skills by writing in various forms. Classes will be a mixture of small-group and large class discussions.
The Rise of Literature and the Maintenance of Oppression
http://prezi.com/omh-ar3iuhxm/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share
This essay compares two public scenes of torture: the first in Michel Foucault's Surveiller et Punir [Discipline and Punish] and the second in Alejo Carpentier's novel El Reino de Este Mundo [The Kingdom of this World].  While the first occurs in France, the latter takes place in the French colony of Haiti where African slaves a pitted against ruthless French colonials. Yet despite Carpentier's fictional account of a scene of torture that turns into a reversed massacre, it is based on actual historical events. The colonials, as exemplified by this text, employed a model of power that was success only in France. Thus, this essay explores the role of Foucauldian trajectories of power to contexts foreign to those analyzed and produced in France.
Massacring the Colonials à la Foucault
http://prezi.com/rmxh_sehhqly/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share
Education
University of Washington Graduate and Professional Student Senate
I served as a representative for the senate body, attending bi-weekly meetings. We set the senate agenda, discussed various aspects of the senate, as in its mission, structure, future and specific tasks it would like to tackle.
Executive Senator
Education
GPSS and Comparative Literature Department Diversity Committees
GPSS Diversity Committee: In addition to weekly meetings where discussions of diversity take place, I help grant funding to various organizations, plan and even host various forums, and have taken on small projects: the establishment of a Men's Sexual Health Clinic on campus and the establishment of a nondiscriminatory performance evaluation for hourly GPSS employees.  

Comparative Literature Diversity Committee: Apart from typical meetings which occur bi-weekly, we are tackling how to make the department more diverse in regards to graduate student and faculty recruitment and retainment, undergraduate coursework, curricula for both undergraduate and graduate and utilizing resources to provide support for diverse peoples throughout their time at the UW.
Committee Member
Education
University of Washington Graduate and Professional Student Senate
I serve as a representative liaison for graduate students in the Comparative Literature Department. I
attend bi-weekly senate meetings where various topics are discussed, voted on and even where resolutions are passed that affect the University of Washington as a whole. I take constituent concerns to the senate and bring information from the senate back to constituents.
Senator
Education
TA/RA Conference hosted by the Center for Teaching and Learning
I taught three workshops at the university-wide conference for new and current Teaching/Research Assistants at the University of Washington. In addition to attending planning sessions in which we discussed, organized and planned our workshops, I received training for how to lead a workshop and provide resources to students. I have frequently attended other workshops offered by the Center for Teaching and Learning in the past. The three workshops I led were: 

Teaching Modern Languages: First Day and Beyond
How Student's Learn: Applying the Principles of Learning to Teaching (twice)
Workshop Leader
Education
Rainbow Grads
Executive Board Member
Comparative Literature, Cinema and Media Department
Cinema and Media Studies (In progress)
Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies Department
gwss.washington.edu
Sexuality and Queer Studies (In progress)
https://gwss.washington.edu/graduate-certificate-sexuality-queer-studies
https://au.linkedin.com/in/htet-htet-hlaing-teddie
Australia
Htet Htet H.
System Analyst
https://www.linkedin.com/in/althea-lazzaro-2761532b
Seattle, WA
Althea Lazzaro
Reference & Instruction Librarian at Seattle Central College
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/bradleykhan
London Area, United Kingdom
Bradley Khan
Frontend Engineer at Gymshark
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-chesya-burke-3264b732
Gainesville, FL
Dr. Chesya Burke
Assistant Professor of English and U.S. Literatures
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/callum-wright-230a4574
United Kingdom
Callum Wright
UI/UX Designer & Co-Founder at DAYMADE
https://www.linkedin.com/in/zxliu
Seattle, WA
Zhixin (Shane) Liu
MS in Business Analytics | Investment Associate at Onelin Capital
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tabithaespina
Pullman, WA
Tabitha Espina, PhD
Postdoctoral Associate at Northeastern University
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/jack-whiting-420b1162
United Kingdom
Jack Whiting
CEO & Founder at Imagination Growth Marketing
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethsterling
Chelmsford, MA
Elizabeth Sterling
Voice Specialist at Yamaha Corporation of America
https://www.linkedin.com/in/evan-bruno-31461b4b
Chicago, IL
Evan Bruno
Faculty Director and Conductor at Chicago Children's Choir
https://de.linkedin.com/in/amy-rachel-harris
Berlin
Amy Harris
Opera Singer | Writer | Editor | Proofreading | Resumes/CVs
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jarrod-simmons-1814ba77
Newton Highlands, MA
Jarrod Simmons
--
https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolinemspaeth
Greater Boston
Caroline M. Spaeth
Soprano, Voice Teacher, Administrator
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-turner-821a9859
Haverhill, MA
Ryan Turner
Artistic Director, Emmanuel Music; 

Voice and Early Music Faculty, Longy School of Music of Bard College
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-kisiday-17b75358
Herndon, VA
Joseph Kisiday
Music Instructor at Bach to Rock Herndon
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-schlaf-a152b255
Washington DC-Baltimore Area
Andrew Schlaf
Learning Specialist - Cross Categorical Special Education Teacher
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jttasucu
Somerville, MA
Jessica Trainor Tasucu
Performer; Voice Instructor at Instrumental Music School of Concord Carlisle
https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-c-green-50411b102
Greater Boston
David C. Green
Organist/Director of Music at First Baptist Church of Boston
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-michael-washington-89304125
Sacramento, CA
Dr. Michael Washington
Instructor - College of Continuing Education at California State University-Sacramento, and Adjunct Professor -Ethnic Studies at Sacramento City College
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eturnbull
Birmingham, AL
Elizabeth Turnbull Cooper
Business Instructor at University of Alabama at Birmingham
Misha Tikhonov
      
          



            
              
        
              
  

    
        Alan-Michel is, by far, bar none, one of the best educators out there, who puts in his time into hard work, passionate preparation and presentation, provided to make sure that one gets the most out of the classroom activity and inspires you to learn more, expand your horizons and get involved into the fluid process of learning and language acquisition. I would have no hesitation whatsoever recommending him as a Top Rate, Top Class instructor, researcher, communicator and presenter for any organization or institution in the World at Large!