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Elizabeth Kimball, Assistant Professor, Department of English and Philosophy, Drexel University

Elizabeth Kimball, PhD

Associate Professor of English
Director, University Writing Program
Department of English and Philosophy
Office: MacAlister Hall 5016; Korman 103 – Drexel Writing Center
ek674@drexel.edu

Education:

  • PhD, English (Rhetoric and Composition), Temple University, 2010
  • MA, English, Rutgers University-Camden, 2003
  • BA, Earlham College, 1996

Curriculum Vitae:

Download (PDF)

Research Interests:

  • Rhetorical theory
  • Writing studies
  • Engaged learning
  • Multilingual practice
  • Community-based learning
  • Writing program administration

Bio:

I work in community and public writing, multilingual practice, rhetorical history, and engaged teaching and inclusive pedagogies. At Drexel, I teach first-year writing, writing studies courses like Writing for Social Change, and the graduate Writing Pedagogy course of the creative writing MFA.

My book Translingual Inheritance: Language Diversity in Early National Philadelphia (Pittsburgh 2021) examines the dimensions of linguistic practice in the German, Quaker, and African American communities at the time of U.S. national formation. The book earned Honorable Mention two times, in the book award competitions of the Conference on College Composition and Communication and Rhetoric Society of America.

My current project Humanities at Work investigates how the humanities might be reimagined as an aspect of paid work, in the places where most adults spend the majority of their waking hours. The humanities have been called “the disciplines of memory and imagination” (American Academy of Arts and Sciences). Yet despite the humanistic concerns underlying trends in the contemporary workplace, such as diversity and equity, accessibility, and social entrepreneurship, the workplace affords little time and space for the faculties of memory and imagination. These faculties are activated by reading, reflecting, discussing, and writing, in time and space set aside from organizations’ continual need to improve and change. The project investigates innovative programs in a variety of workplaces. It considers how space, genre, language, and organizational structures work to prevent such activation, and how these symbolic systems might be reworked to better foster inclusive, deliberative democracy and promote community flourishing.

I also direct the University Writing Program, which encompasses the Drexel Writing Center, the Writing Intensive course initiative, faculty development in the teaching of writing, and other initiatives.

Selected Publications:

  • Translingual Inheritance: Language Diversity in Early National Philadelphia. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021. Reviewed by Jason J. Peter and Lisa R. Arnold. “Review: Translingual Histories of Rhetoric, Educational Policy, and Nation-Building." College English, vol. 84, no. 5, 2022, pp. 491-505.
  • “The Religious and Rhetorical Afterlives of John Quincy Adams.” Book chapter in New Directions in Rhetoric and Religion, edited by James Vining. Lexington Books, 2021.
  • The Potentiality of Difference: Singular Rhythms of a Translational Humanities in Community Contexts. Co-author with Elenore Long (Arizona State) and Jennifer Clifton (Arizona State). Lexington, KY. Intermezzo, 2021
  • "Cross-Language Community Engagement: Assessing the Strengths of Heritage Learners." Co-author with Elise DuBord. Invited contribution for special issue "Service Learning with Heritage Language Learners and Communities." Heritage Language Journal 13(3), December 2016.
  • “Writing the Personal in an Outcomes-Based World.” Co-author with Emily Schnee and Liesl Schwabe. Composition Studies, 43.2, Fall 2015. 113-131.
  • “Translingual Communities: Teaching and Learning Where You Don’t Know the Language.” Community Literacy Journal, 9.2, Spring 2015. 68-82.
  • "Commonplace, Quakers, and the Founding of Haverford School." Rhetoric Review, 30.4, 2011. 372-388