Dr. Rachel Azima

Assistant Professor

Science Building, S209A
Phone Number 248.204.3518
razima@ltu.edu

Biography
Education
Honors, Award, and Memberships
Publication
Scholarly Activities (includes grants, conference presentations, etc.)
Courses Taught

 

Biography

Rachel Azima earned her A.B. from Vassar College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the recipient of the Mary M. Adams Dissertator Fellowship and the Capstone Ph.D. Teaching Award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research and teaching interests include nature writing and ecocriticism, world literature, nineteenth-century American literature, and Native American literature, as well as poetry and creative nonfiction. Her essay on Jamaica Kincaid has been published in the *Journal for Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies*, and her poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared in the *Wisconsin Academy Review* and *Fresh Water: Women Writing on the Great Lakes*. She is currently revising her dissertation, "Alien Soil: Ecologies of Transplantation in Contemporary Literature," for publication.

 

Education

Ph.D., 2008, English, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Areas of concentration: American literature to 1914, nature writing and ecocriticism
Minor: Environmental Studies

M.A., 2000, English, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A.B., 1999, English and French, Vassar College.

Honors, Award, and Memberships

Member, Association for the Study of Literature and Environment and Modern Language Association

Capstone Ph.D. Teaching Award, UW-Madison, 2007.

Mary M. Adams Dissertator Fellowship, UW-Madison, 2007.

English Department Conference Travel Grant, UW-Madison, 2008, 2007, 2003.

John Lehman Poetry Award, Wisconsin Academy of Arts and Letters, 2004.

Honorable Mention, George B. Hill Memorial Poetry Awards, UW-Madison, 2002.

Technology in the Humanities Fellowship, UW-Madison, 2001.

University Fellowship, UW-Madison, 1999-2000.

Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, Mu chapter, Vassar College, 1999.

Departmental Honors in English and French and General Honors, Vassar College, 1999.

Distinction on undergraduate thesis, Vassar College, 1999.

Ford Scholar, NEH Summer Institute “The Environmental Imagination,” Vassar College, 1997.

Florence Donnell White Prize, for excellence in French, Vassar College, 1997.

Publication

“Promotion, Borrowing, and Caroline Kirkland’s Literary Labors.” Forthcoming in ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 57.4 (2011).

“‘Not-the-native’: Self-Transplantation, Ecocriticism, and Postcolonialism in Jamaica Kincaid’s My Garden (Book).” Postcolonial Studies and Ecocriticism. Spec issue of Journal of Commonwealth andPostcolonial Studies 13.2-14.1 (2006-2007): 101-119.

“Ripples of Azure and Grey, an Excerpt.” In Fresh Water: Women Writing on the Great Lakes. Ed. Alison Swan. Michigan State University Press, 2006. (Creative Nonfiction.)

“Haft-Seen” and “In Memoriam: A. R. Ammons 1926-2001.” Wisconsin Academy Review, Spring 2004. (Poetry.)

“Biography.” Asian Quilt, Vol. 4, 1999. (Poetry.)

Scholarly Activities (includes, grant, conference presentations, etc.)

“Cosmopolitanism, Biodiversity, and Weeds in Michael Pollan’s Garden Writing.” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment conference, Bloomington, Indiana. June 2011.

“Postcolonialism, Ecocriticism, and Native Studies in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Garden in the Dunes and Gerald Vizenor’s The Heirs of Columbus.” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment conference, Victoria, British Columbia. June 2009.

Session Chair, “Native Homelands: Art, Activism, and Indigeneity.” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Conference, Victoria, BC. June 2009.

Presenter, “Quick and Dirty: Practical Approaches for Teaching Writing.” Center for Teaching and Learning Workshop on Improving Student Writing. Lawrence Technological University.  May 2009.

“‘They Fight for the Soil’: Weeds, Nationalism, and Ecology in John Burroughs’s ‘A Bunch of Herbs.’”  Sharp Eyes V: John Burroughs, Nature Writing, and Nineteenth-Century Science. Poughkeepsie, New York. June 2008.

“‘Weeds are Us’: Weeds, Cosmopolitanism, and Biodiversity.” CHE Environmental History Colloquium, University of Wisconsin-Madison. January 2008.

“‘Not-the-native’: Self-Transplantation, Ecocriticism, and Postcolonialism in Jamaica Kincaid’s My Garden (Book):.” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment conference, Spartanburg, South Carolina. June 2007.

Invited co-presenter, “It’s Not All Linear Text Anymore: The Least We Should All Know to Help Writing Center Students Compose Multimodal Texts in New Media Landscapes.” Writing Center Ongoing Education session. UW-Madison. May 2007.

Invited panelist, “Tutoring Outside your Field: Earning the (Science) Writer’s Confidence.” Joint Writing Center/Writing Fellows staff meeting. UW-Madison.  March 2007.

Invited panelist, “Interdisciplinarity Today.” English Department Forum.  March 2006.

Invited respondent, “A Visit to the Annex: The Writing Center Workshop and Complexities of Form.” Writing Center Colloquium. November 2005.

Invited panelist, “What does it Mean to be an ‘Americanist’?” The Americanist Literature and Culture Research Circle. English Department, UW-Madison.  April 2005.

Invited panelist, “Science and Writing: Two Cultures?” Joint Writing Center/Writing Fellows staff meeting. February 2004.

Invited panelist, “Teaching Diverse Pedagogies: Addressing ‘Differences’ in Theory and Practice.” English Department Teaching Forum.  March 2003.

“‘The Transplanted Ones’: People, the Land, and the Marketplace in Caroline Kirkland’s A New Home, Who’ll Follow?” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment conference, Boston, Massachusetts. June 2003.

“Telling Bodies, Reading Eyes: Writing the Black Female Body in Nella Larsen’s Passing.” Midwest Conference on Literature, Language, and Media, De Kalb, Illinois. March 2003.

“V. S. Naipaul: Postcolonial Nature Writer?” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment conference, Flagstaff, Arizona. June 2001.

Toward a Rhetorical Community: Narrative. Conference organizer. Graduate Student Association Symposium, University of Wisconsin-Madison. April 2001.

Courses Taught

COM 1103: English Composition

LLT 1213: World Masterpieces I

LLT 3443: American Literature: Contact to the Civil War 

LLT 3463: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in American Literature

LLT 3623: Literature and Science (Environmental Literature)