Meet the Professors: Fall 2023
Four professors recently joined our department: Rebecca Foote, David Russell, Cass Turner, and Xuan Juliana Wang. We caught up with each to find out more about them. Read on below!
Rebecca Foote
What do you love about teaching?
One of my favorite things about teaching literature is the opportunity to introduce texts that I’ve read and loved for a long time to a new group of students who will, hopefully, also love those texts. It’s always really exciting to me to see the “aha!” moment when students suddenly understand something complicated or when they start to really see what a text is doing.
Do you have a favorite novel, poem, short story, etc. that you love to teach, or one you are looking forward to teach this year?
I’m really excited to teach some new poetry collections, many of which were published in the last year. I’m especially looking forward to reading City without Altar (2022) by Jasminne Méndez. Méndez is a great poet, and I’ll get to read this newest collection for the first time along with the students, which is always a fun experience.
Are you new to LA? If so, what LA destination do you look forward to visiting? If not, what’s on your list for places to see or places to eat?
Yes, I haven’t spent much time in LA before moving here. I’m most excited to go to the museums in and around LA—the Getty, the Broad, and the Cheech Marin Center are high on the list. I’m also really happy to be in a place with a thriving poetry community and with great places to see slam poetry. As for places to eat…basically everywhere! Please send some recommendations my way—it’s been fun finding places with great food in a new city.
Favorite place to read:
I’ve always been a big coffee shop reader, especially if it’s a cozy spot with great seating.
One fun fact about yourself:
I’m in a years-long project to bake my way through an entire baking cookbook. Next up: pistachio pinwheel cookies.
David Russell
What’s your favorite part about teaching?
My favourite part of teaching is enjoying the way a class can collectively free-associate together, with the thought of one student following the next to build to often surprising insights into literature and culture. It takes good listening and trust from all, but it almost always happens; and it’s a particular delight when it happens with works of literature or films that I know, or think I know, very well already.
What have you enjoyed so far at UCLA?
The students are wonderful – thoughtful, committed, and creative – I find their diverse range of enthusiasms and interests compelling. I admire the UCLA campus. And I’m English, so any place with near-continuous sunshine feels like a dream world to me.
Do you have a favorite novel, poem, short story, etc. that you love to teach, or one you are looking forward to teaching this year?
This quarter I am teaching a graduate course on Freud, whom I find endlessly fascinating. I think we still often underplay how much the “irrational” fantasy lives of individuals and cultures shape the world we live in. But Freud knew. I am also teaching an undergraduate course on the essay in the nineteenth century. This period was a high-point for essay writing as a form, and I’m really looking forward to exploring with the class the way this genre seriously and playfully engages with art, politics, culture and social change.
If you weren’t a professor, what’s another job you’d love to do?
I almost trained as a psychoanalyst; but now I just read a lot about psychoanalysis.
One fun fact about yourself:
I have an identical twin.
Cass Turner
What’s your favorite part about teaching?
I love to connect with and get to know students! The very best feeling is getting to see students take ownership of their learning – then I know what we’re doing in class is something that sticks with them or shapes their creative / intellectual trajectory, even just a little bit.
Are you new to LA? If so, what LA destination do you look forward to visiting? If not, what’s on your list for places to see or places to eat?
I’m recent to LA! I’ve spent a good bit of time here over the past few years, but before that I was mostly in the Midwest and on the East Coast. The ice cream scene in LA is excellent. I especially adore SomiSomi, where you can get the most wonderful softserve in a fish-shaped waffle-type cone called a Taiyaki. No actual fish is involved.
Do you have a favorite novel, poem, short story, etc. that you love to teach, or one you are looking forward to teaching this year?
I’m teaching a new course this semester that’s called “Crime, Culture, and In/Justice,” and I’m going to be teaching some television for the first time. I’m especially excited about a show I watched over the summer called Deadloch, which brilliantly engages with the tropes and politics of police procedurals like Law and Order. I think it’s such a smart show, and I’m excited to hear if my students like it too.
How do you organize your books?
I’ve tried a few different options, but most recently, when I set up my books in my UCLA office, I went with alphabetical, no categories. I can get really bogged down with categories – especially because criticism and non-criticism bleed into each other, as do the past and present! Classification is hard.
One fun fact about yourself:
I love tattoos! I didn’t get my first tattoo until a few years ago, and then I got a lot all at once. I’ve loved how tattooing allows you to lean into the imperfection and vulnerability of our bodies, while also making the body into a canvas for exploring all of the things that interest me at a given moment in time.
Xuan Juliana Wang
What’s your favorite part about teaching?
Introducing students to new voices, forms, and possibilities.
What advice do you give students about writing?
Find your favorite part of the story you’re writing and begin there. Challenge yourself to make the rest of it rise to that level.
Do you have a favorite novel, poem, short story, etc. that you love to teach, or one you are looking forward to teaching this year?
I love teaching Charles Yu’s short story “Fable” to get the conversation started in workshops and seminars. It never fails to stir up a whole spectrum of emotional responses.
Favorite spot to grab a bite to eat in LA?
I recently discovered a bbq restaurant in a strip mall called Joshua Camping Restaurant. You eat skewers in tents, off of inactive stoves, surrounded by fake rocks and joshua trees. We all have to eat anyway, why not eat in this weird, fun way?