I teach courses in Digital Rhetoric, Technical Communication, and Editing. I love classes that mix discussion and workshop: a place where writers can toggle freely between theoretical and practical, where they can bring texts and projects they’re working on, collaborate on them, ask questions, get feedback, and talk about how theories and practices impact their writing. 

My current scholarship is focused on perspectives on academic programs in technical communication: how do we define, enact, articulate, and assess them in ways that balance student needs with industry and field perspectives? I am also working heavily in areas of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in scholarly publishing: how can we create and sustain models for scholarship and digital publishing that provides opportunities and mentorship for authors from a variety of backgrounds? 

I would be excited to advise students on topics such as online writing instruction, technical and professional communication, digital rhetorics and web publishing, and methods of rhetorical & discourse analysis. 

In the past, I have advised students working on projects on online writing instruction and user-centered-design. 

In my free time, I spend time with my family and enjoy woodworking, camping and hiking, or hiding in a corner with a video game.

I teach courses on American literature, transnationalism, critical theory, Black feminist thought, and the field of health humanities, which uses reading and writing to improve healthcare outcomes.  

I would describe my teaching style as a mix of interactive lecture and guided discussion. At the graduate level, I encourage students to find their voice and pursue scholarly inquiries related to topics about which they are passionate.  

My current scholarship asks questions about what the annals of American literature can teach us about the relationship between how we narrate public health crises and overcoming racial inequities. Specifically, I research how Black and white authors create different representations of communicable disease in fictional and non-fictional works written before 1900. I use biopolitical and Black feminist lenses to draw out how the same figures of contagion in these works serve divergent political goals. I have also published scholarship on religion and medicine, editorship, servant leadership, and other topics. 

My future research plans include investigating how the enslaved individual and modern-day drones serve as interrelated figures of surveillance, and how bringing in perspectives from early America can help us understand challenges to privacy and autonomy in the present. I am also interested the business of books, such as how Tik Tok is influencing the publishing industry, how books become film and television, and the side hustle economies of reviewing books and producing podcasts on literary topics. Finally, I hope to continue to do more work on how we can use humanities competencies to redress healthcare inequities and create a more caring society. 

I would be excited to advise students on any number of topics, which may be related to American literature of any era or other categories of literature. Race, religion, pedagogy, technology, science, medicine, and health are my strengths, but I find I can help students on subjects ranging beyond these areas.  

In the past, I have advised students working on projects on medical memoirs, race and medicine, structural racism in American literature, and children’s literature. I have served on literary studies exit requirements as well as creative theses.  

In my free time, I enjoy gardening, biking, yoga, cooking, and playing board games with friends.

I am Dr. Robin Carstensen (she/her), and some students enjoy calling me Dr. Robin or Dr. C. I have been serving the Corpus Christi Community as a poet-scholar-editor-activist for over 26 years. I coordinate the undergraduate creative writing program and I am faculty advisor for the Windward Review: Literary Journal of the South Texas Coastal Bend. I also advise the Islander Creative Writers, an organization of undergrad, grads, and alums. Come join us! Icwriters on instagram

My interests involve creative writing, literary publishing, and queer, intersectional feminism. I am actively invested with my colleagues and students on anti-racist, decolonial pedagogy and also recently on Indigenous heritage awareness initiatives to support safe, historically-aware, creatively intellectual spaces of inquiry, connectivity, and healing. My student-community-interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning invites high impact engagement in the classroom and community: immersive dialogue, performativity, sustained writing practices, and interdisciplinary collaborations.

My Graduate Creative Writing course is a genre-bending, multi-genre course welcoming students from all disciplines to explore the theory and craft of creative writing. We apply Felicia Rose Chavez’s workshop principles from The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: Decolonizing the Creative Classroom to practice poetry, fiction, visual poetry and prose, graphic narrative and verse, mixed media, and the ever-expanding field and fusions of creative-nonfiction. I believe all writing and research is creative, imbued with our critical-imaginative thinking capacities to interpret, synthesize, illuminate, and reshape our culture and history. As scholars, we join important interdisciplinary work in our Hispanic-serving institution, to collectively intervene for our borderland experiences, immigrant rights and voices, historically erased and underserved voices, and the confluence of BIPOC, LGBTQ+ voices in our Coastal Bend regions.

I also advise undergrads in our creative writing program and graduates working on honors projects, capstones, and theses. For MA Capstones, I have advised on “Creative Writing in the Coastal Bend: The Power of Poetry in Corpus Christi Classrooms” and “Integrating Creative Writing in First-Year Writing Curriculum Design”). For MA thesis, I have recently advised: My Name is Sara: A Biomythography Exploring the Life of Sakine Cansiz—a thesis closing the gap in narratives related to Kurdish women; also, “It cam wi’ a lass and it will gang wi’ a lass!”: Or Mary Stuart Woman of Scotland—a thesis “reclaiming the often-silenced voices that history has overlooked to create a new narrative about Mary Stuart the Woman of Scotland”; and a mystery novel, Lonesome Dreams, a fusion of genres developing a complex female protagonist experiencing grief while solving the mystery of her late partner.

My current scholarship/creative writing includes recent publications in CC Writer’s Anthology, Anacua Literary Journal, Dream of the River (Queer in the New Century) by Jacar Press; Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast; Good Cop/Bad Cop and Dreaming: A Tribute to Selena Quintanilla Perez, from FlowerSong Press; Cloud Women’s Quarterly; Eco-Theo Review, Lone Star Poetry: Championing Texas Verse, Community, and Hunger Relief, from Kallisto Gaia Press, originally published in Texas Poetry Assignments. I am also a co-founding, senior editor for Switchgrass Review: Literary Journal of Health and Transformation. My future goals include a scholarly poetic memoir that shares insight from a queer intersectional feminist perspective, exploring historical, institutional, health, and socio-political impact on and contributions from queer intersectional individuals and communities.  

I look forward to meeting and writing with you! Feel free to email me with any questions.

Sincerely, Dr. Robin Carstensen

My interests are in contemporary Latinx and US culture, and in general I am concerned with how literature, film and television represent different struggles for equality and (hopefully) point to potential paths forward. To do this, I concentrate on texts that speak around the issues associated with the Mexico-US border, specifically those that complicate how we understand movement and history and explore inequalities in communities and in the workplace. Many of the texts I read, and we read in class, touch on issues impacting South Texas and the Southwest, and usually I look for texts that engage with these issues in different ways, such as through an unexpected narrative structure or content.

Most of the classes I teach revolve around contemporary issues or questions, and we work collaboratively to explore how different texts engage with them. As many faculty do, I am interested in class in asking how literature “works.” Should we see it as making a difference in the world or should we see it as escapist, just for fun? And ultimately, we ask, is there a difference between these two?     

I teach courses within Applied Linguistics, specifically classes related to English language teaching and the ways that language varies in how it is used in different contexts.

I would describe my teaching style as a combination of short lectures and group work (making use of a variety of tasks and activities).

My current scholarship focuses on how (both English as a first and English as a second language) students use sources within their academic writing. I am also an Associate Editor for the Journal of Second Language Writing (ranked 5th out of 194 journals in the Linguistics category of the Social Sciences Citation Index).

My future research, scholarship, and/or creative activity plans include a continued focus on source-based student writing, but also perhaps other topics within second language writing and/or corpus linguistics (the use of computers to analyze large bodies of text).

In my free time, I like to play sports, spend time with my family (including baking with my daughter), watch the Golden State Warriors, and go to the beach.  

Some recent publication include:

Doolan, S. & Fitzsimmons-Doolan, S. (forthcoming). Scaffolding instruction for post-secondary L2 synthesis writing. In R. Wette (ed.), Teaching and learning source-based writing: Current perspectives and future directions. New York, NY: Routledge.

Doolan, S. (accepted). Source-Based L1 Student Writing Development: Analyzing the Relationships among Functional Dimensions of Source Use and the Quality of Source Use. Written Communication.

Doolan, S. (2021) An exploratory analysis of source integration in post-secondary L1 and L2 source-based writing. English for Specific Purposes Journal, 62, 128-141.

Doolan, S. (2020). The Influence of Sources on First-Year Composition L1 Student Writing: A Multidimensional Analysis. In U. Romer, V. Cortez, & E. Friginal (Eds.), Advances in corpus-based research on academic writing: Effects of discipline, register, and writer expertise. (pp. 90-104). Philadelphia, PA: Benjamins.

Doolan, S. (2019). Writing challenges for postsecondary students with low levels of first language literacy. In Perin, D. The Wiley Handbook of Adult Literacy (pp. 107-129). New York, NY: Wiley. 

I teach courses in technical and professional writing, grant writing, writing for nonprofit agencies, digital writing, and creative writing. 

I would describe my teaching style as student centered, interactive, and project-driven. 

My current research is on grant writing, writing in the sciences, poetry, and fantasy writing. My future plans include more manuscripts on grant writing, writing more grant applications on behalf of area nonprofits, and completing a fantasy writing series. 

I would be excited to advise students on topics such as publishing, publishing in the digital world, getting jobs as technical writers and as content creators, and other career opportunities. 

In the past, I have advised students working on projects on grad school choices, career opportunities, and internships.  I have also served on dissertation committees in education and in marine sciences, and I have directed theses in literary studies, writing studies, and creative writing. 

In my free time, do woodworking, cook, sing, and listen to music.

At the graduate level, I teach courses in the field of Applied Linguistics (the discipline of real-world problem solving using linguistic knowledge). My past courses have focused on World Englishes, Linguistic Diversity in the United States, Language Ideologies, and Language Policy. Other courses I plan to teach include Discourse Analysis, Corpus Linguistics, Online Language, and Content-Based Instruction.  

I would describe my teaching style as task-based, organized, and exploratory. Many of our graduate students don’t have a background in Applied Linguistics. So, we start with the material from where you are and explore. We often engage in tasks in class and projects for assessments.  

My current research is on using software, quantitative analysis, and qualitative analysis to identify patterns in large bodies of naturally occurring language that inform social concerns. This is the field of Applied Corpus Linguistics or Corpus Assisted Discourse Analysis. For example, I have studied the messages that are conveyed covertly in language about immigrant education. I have also worked with a marine biologist (Dr. Beseres Pollack) to understand how an environmental disaster changes how oysters are represented in language and what that might mean for conservation work.  

I am working on a book with a colleague, Dr. Berber Sardinha, to share a method we developed to identify discourses and ideologies in large data sets of language using statistical and qualitative analysis.   

I would be excited to advise students on projects using corpus linguistics or on topics such as World Englishes or educational language policy.  

In my free time, I like to travel; read; play games; hike; swim; go to the beach; and, above all, spend time with my family.

I teach courses on visual rhetoric, memory studies, writing pedagogy, and digital writing.

I would describe my teaching style as… I do a lot of writing workshops in my classes and have students work on projects.

My current research, scholarship, and/or creative activity is on the visualization of victimization in memorial spaces, specifically southern US plantations, the US/Mexico border space, and concentration and extermination camps.

I would be excited to advise students on topics such as visual/digital rhetoric, writing studies, and memory studies.

In the past, I have advised students working on projects on visual rhetoric, writing pedagogy, and linguistics.

In my free time, I like to dance and travel.

I teach courses on Latinx/Chicanx Rhetoric, Borderlands Rhetorics, Rhetoric and Composition, Writing Studies, Pedagogy, Assessment, and Technical and Professional Writing. 

I would describe my teaching style as student-led engagement, cooperative, and task-based workload that scaffolds into larger project-based assignments. 

My current research is community-engaged scholarship on activism, bordered writers, and Latinx rhetorics. My future plans include documentary filmmaking, oral history, and local rhetorical history. 

I would be excited to advise students on topics such as teaching writing-especially at Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Borderlands rhetorics, Latinx/Chicanx rhetorics, or Writing Studies. In the past, I have advised students working on projects on modes of consciousness, Gloria Anzaldúa, hybridity, rhetoric and composition, and pedagogy.

In my free time, I like to walk my dogs, listen to various genres of music, watch foreign-language TV shows, and sample new food.

I teach courses on language and linguistics. I would describe my teaching style as student-centered. 

My current research, scholarship, and/or creative activity is on: 

• Phonetic variation among native speakers of English in South Texas 

• Learning of Korean vowels among L1 English speakers (with Dr. Bokyung Mun) 

• Diachronic change in the use of hedges and boosters in writing and in speech 

My future research, scholarship, and/or creative activity plans include: 

• Low back vowel shift in South Texas 

• Interaction of ethnicity and regionality: Lack of prenasal TRAP-raising as a feature of Mexican American English 

• Apparent time study of hedges in conversational speech 

I would be excited to advise students on topics such as language variation and change.

Thus far I have taught courses on literature and writing. I teach many creative writing workshop and survey courses such as ENGL 3361 and ENGL 3362. I also teach a course that combines writing fiction and the study of literary and cultural theory (ENGL 3325), a literature and culture course (ENGL 2316), and first-year writing (ENGL 1301).  

I would describe my teaching style as student-centered and hands-on. It’s very important to me that students feel seen, understood, and able to succeed. I make sure that the way I structure and deliver my courses contributes to this goal. For example, I try to personalize assignments as much as possible to give students an opportunity to relate their interests to the course content. This validates their interests and gives them ownership over the assignment.   

My current research is focused on decolonial themes and practices; my most recently accepted abstract is for an article that discusses representations of white passing in popular culture. My current creative endeavors include my book Loverbar, a collection of short fictional stories book will to be published by Flashpoint Publications in June 2023.   

My future creative activity plans include a collection of short stories that explores the Latinx experience in Texas.   

I would be excited to advise students on topics such as how to get published and how to make deadlines.   

In my free time, I like to exercise, watch my favorite series, garden, and listen to live music.   

My research sits at the intersection of neoliberalism, environmental criticism, and urban studies in 20th-century and contemporary film and literature. At the moment, I’m specifically interested in how environmental discourses have shaped the notion of “the self” in the era of neoliberalism. Framed as a question: how do the stories we tell about environmental degradation, resilience, and climate change shape human subjectivity under the conditions of neoliberal capitalism? If any of this sounds interesting to you, then please get in touch!  

What excites me most about teaching in our graduate program is the opportunity to mentor students—from those in my introductory Theory and Practice course to students working toward their exit requirements—and provide guidance on navigating both graduate school and the literary studies profession.  

My classes are discussion-oriented, and I place responsibility on my students to create meaningful experiences through their contributions. I strive to create learning spaces that foster every student’s growth and development, and I set a high bar in terms of expectations for scholarly production.  

In my life beyond the university, I enjoy playing tennis and basketball, and my favorite outside activity is birdwatching. Does anything rival the excitement of an unexpected encounter with a rare bird species?  

I teach courses that relate to rhetoric and technical writing, such as Technical and Professional Writing, Writing for the Web, Document Design, and First-Year Writing.  

My teaching style is predicated on active student engagement; my goal is to create intellectual spaces for students to walk into and explore.  

My current research focuses on digital learning environments and the impact they have on minority student populations.  

My future research includes plans to examine the problems and potentials of asynchronous models of teaching and learning.  

I would be excited to advise students on topics related to digital rhetorics, material rhetorics, and writing studies.  

In the past, I have advised students working on projects related to material rhetorics and writing center studies.  

In my free time, I like to play piano and take long walks on the beach.  

Sample syllabi and publications are available on my website: www.mannypina.com  

I teach courses on grant writing, document design, teaching writing K-12, and young adult literature. I currently serve as the Chair of the Department of English.

I would describe my teaching style as focused on experimentation and play—what can we learn from taking risks, and trying new things in writing? I facilitate students’ pursuit of their interests and ideas to from research and writing to the production of products that address real-world concerns, meet students’ goals, and express their individuality.

 My current research, scholarship, and/or creative activity is on grant writing pedagogy in the technical and professional writing context.

I would be excited to advise students on topics such as grant writing, writing pedagogy, and young adult literature.

 In the past, I have advised students working on projects on teaching writing K-12 and young adult literature.

 In my free time, I enjoy traveling the world with my spouse. I am also a bead artist, creating jewelry, sculpture, and other items out of teeny tiny beads.

I teach courses on British, American, and Irish modernisms, print culture and book history, intersections of gender and racialization, and Feminist theory. My classes often focus on building the skills of close reading analysis, learning to analyze the material forms and print contexts of works of literature, working to effectively use literary theory and criticism, and engaging with archival materials (both physical and digital).

My current research and book-project-in-progress,Printing Women: Materializing Gender, Race, and Embodiment in the Modernist Marketplace, analyzes the intersections of gender, racialization, and print culture in the publication histories of Gwendolyn Brooks, Una Marson, Zora Neale Hurston, Elizabeth Bowen, Willa Cather, and others.

In my free time, I like to cook, bake, and consume delicious foods and I enjoy a range of creative activities like print-making, drawing, photography, knitting, and cross-stitching.

I teach courses on Restoration and eighteenth-century literatures, theatre and performance, text and image, queer theory, feminist theories, disability studies, and affect and feelings. I am currently finishing my first book, Performed/Deformed: Sexualities and Disabilities in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatrical Culture, which thinks about the erotic stage life of disability in the era. Other work on queerness, disabilities, and pleasures can be found in Digital Defoe, Restoration, Eighteenth-Century: Theory and Interpretation, Shakespeare Bulletin, and Humanities. I also theorize transhistorical encounters with sexualities, disabilities, and embodiment across media, such as in film (Scotland, PA), television (American Horror Story), graphic narrative (The Walking Dead), and video games (Death Stranding). My future research includes a critically crip history of children’s theatre, coercive medical/sexual/colonial rhetorics of “foresight” in the eighteenth-century, and haptic encounters with disability in video games.  

I advise students on performance and theatre, queer theory, LGBTQIA lit, disability studies, fat studies, history of the body, women writers, and feminist aesthetics. If you want to theorize embodiments and pleasures across bodyminds and media, come hang out with me.  

I teach courses on writing. Usually first-year composition, but also rhetoric, advanced composition, and the capstone at the undergraduate level. At the graduate level, I’ve taught the practicum and Coastal Bend Writing Project’s Summer Institute for teaching writing at all levels. I’ve also taught graduate courses on assessment and the capstone. 

I would describe my teaching style as student-centered, project-based, and collaborative. Generally, especially in graduate classes, I attempt to make every course adaptable to each student’s situation, interests, and career goals. I also attempt to use the strategies supported by decades of research on teaching writing, so students both learn about and experience those strategies. 

My current research is focused on how first-year students encounter the threshold concepts of writing studies in ENGL 1301 and ENGL 1302 and the broader question of how students transfer learning about writing. I also have acquired grants for the Coastal Bend Writing Project and do bibliographic work with an organization called CompPile, a database of scholarship in writing studies.   

My future research, scholarship, and/or creative activity plans include…. I plan to continue the same work.  

I would be excited to advise students on topics such as teaching writing, workplace writing, and writing centers.  

In the past, I have advised students working on projects on teaching writing, writing centers, and transfer.  

In my free time, I like to bake bread and travel.

In 2019, published Bordered Writers: Latinx Identities and Literacy Practices at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (edited w/Yndalecio Isaac Hinojosa and Isabel Baca, published 2019. In spring 2021, received the Advancement of Knowledge Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication.

Link: https://sunypress.edu/Books/B/Bordered-Writers2

I teach discussion-oriented courses on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature, theater, and performance, as well as courses which broadly explore racialization, feminism, adaptation, translation theory, and transcultural mobilities. In my classes, we think critically about canon formation and the impossibility of disentangling texts from their social and political contexts.  

My current research draws together the fields of premodern critical race studies, affect theory, and performance criticism so as to track the history of racial impersonation in early modern comic dramas. I theorize laughter as a tool of racial hierarchization, and consider how humor and stock characterization have long turned Black and Brown bodies into the objects of intense surveillance and ridicule. I am additionally interested in the movements of cultural materials across linguistic and national borders, and have published on the traffic between English and Arabic literatures.  

I am especially interested in advising students on theater and performance, literatures of the African diaspora and Global South, decolonial and abolitionist theories, and the intertwined histories of race and religion.