Sarah Robbins
Lorraine Sherley Professor of Literature
s.robbins@tcu.edu
(817) 257-5146
Office: Library B16a (map)
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Much of my work examines American literature as a culture-shaping force—both within and beyond classrooms. I study and teach about such productive links between reading and writing as
- authorship,
- publishing practices and their influences,
- reading groups and other social reading experiences, and
- curriculum change over time.
I envision “American” literature as including multiple regions outside the U.S. as well as exchanges between the U.S. and other cultures. I hold a similarly broad view of “literature” as including many forms of writing, circulating in a range of social contexts. Therefore, I am as interested in tracking examples of popular culture like the graphic novels of today and nineteenth-century stage shows as I am in interpreting major literary figures. Through grant-funded curriculum projects, I have collaborated with schoolteachers and students to study neglected authors, uncover new texts (especially by women, multi-ethnic, and transnational writers), and revisit traditional authors in new ways.
I see reading and writing as closely integrated. I encourage students to draw on interactive composing strategies, such as blending print and image. My own vision of literacy embraces both oral and written texts, including diverse new media and materials, and situates literacy practices in an activist social context.
My in-progress book projects are addressing these topics:
- narratives by women teaching in cross-cultural situations;
- celebrity culture’s influence on authorial identities from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s to Oprah Winfrey’s;
- international women faculty’s transformations of U.S. universities; and
- ways that American literature shapes our personal, national, and transnational identities.
I grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, but lived for several years in Italy, before teaching in K-12 schools in Georgia and Michigan. My undergraduate and M.A. degrees are from UNC-Chapel Hill. I earned my Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Before coming to TCU, I taught at Kennesaw State University near Atlanta, where I was the founding director of a National Writing Project site and the co-director of several NEH-funded projects focused on American literature and community studies. I also coordinated the university’s academic programs in Gender and Women’s Studies and American Studies.
Full Curriculum Vitae
Books
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Teachers’ Writing Groups: Collaborative Inquiry and Reflection for Professional Growth (co-editor with Kathleen Blake Yancey, Dede Yow, and George Seaman)
Nellie Arnott’s Writing on Angola, 1905-1913: Missionary Narratives Linking Africa and America (co-author and co-editor with Ann Pullen; forthcoming in 2009) |
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Expertise and interest areas
Nineteenth-century American literature, multi-cultural American literatures, women’s writing, popular culture forms of the literary, literacy practices (especially social reading and collaborative writing), twentieth-century and current American literature, teaching practices associated with American literature, writing in varying historical and cultural contexts, approaches for teaching and evaluating writing
Courses taught and teaching interests
American Identities; Bestsellers in American Culture; Nineteenth-Century American Literature; Multi-cultural American Literature; Multi-ethnic American Literature; The Changing Canon of American Literature; Gender in American Literature and Culture; American Women Writers; Researching Literacy Practices; Evaluating Writing; Teaching American Literature; Books for and about Girls; Black Masculinity; American Identities; How Race, Class and Gender Shape American Literature; Literature at the Turn into the Twentieth Century; Harriet Beecher Stowe and Her Times; Mark Twain in Historical Context; Asian American Literature; Native American Literature; Caribbean Literature
Links
Keeping and Creating American Communities (a multi-year NEH Project)
Women’s Work Website
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