Sarah Ruffing Robbins, Ph.D.
Program Affiliations
Education
Ph.D., English and English Education, American Studies focus, University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, 1993
MA, English, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1975
BA, English, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1974
University of Maryland, European extension, focus of study: Italian
Agnes Scott College, focus of study: English, French, history
Courses Recently Taught
American literature and culture
Transatlantic and Global (American) literatures
Rhetoric and literature
Authorship
19th-, 20th- and 21st-century American literatures
Citizenship Studies; Diaspora Studies
Writing Across Cultural Differences
Areas of Focus
American Studies
Pre-1900 and 20th- and 21st-century American literatures
Public Humanities
Transatlantic and Global Literatures
Gender and Sexuality Studies with an Intersectional Emphasis
Rhetoric & Composition, particularly Cultural Rhetorics
Gender and Writing
Race and Ethnicity in American Culture
Global and Diasporic Studies
Beitler, James Edward and Sarah Ruffing Robbins, eds. Sites of Writing: Essays in Honor of Anne Ruggles Gere. WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado, 2025. Online (open access) edition here; print edition, U Press of Colorado.
Hughes, Linda K., Sarah R. Robbins and Andrew Taylor; with Heidi Hakimi-Hood and Adam Nemmers, eds. Transatlantic Anglophone Literatures, 1776-1920. Edinburgh University Press, 2022. Related Website here
Robbins, Sarah Ruffing. Learning Legacies: Archive to Action through Women’s Cross-cultural Teaching. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press, 2017. [print and digital]
Hughes, Linda K. and Sarah R. Robbins, eds. Teaching Transatlanticism: Resources for Teaching Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Print Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh U Press, 2015. Related Website here
Robbins, Sarah, and Ann Ellis Pullen. Nellie Arnott’s Writings on Angola, 1905-1913: Missionary Narratives Linking Africa and America; Anderson: Parlor Press, 2011.
Robbins, Sarah. The Cambridge Introduction to Harriet Beecher Stowe. Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 2007.
Robbins, Sarah. Managing Literacy, Mothering America: Women's Narratives on Reading and Writing in the Nineteenth Century. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004; paperback, 2006.
Robbins, Sarah, George Seaman, Kathleen Blake Yancey, and Dede Yow, eds., Teachers’ Writing Groups: Inquiry, Reflection, and Communities of Practice. Kennesaw: Kennesaw State University Press, 2006. [also co-authored four essays]
Winter, Dave, and Sarah Robbins, eds. Writing our Communities: Local Learning and Public Culture. Urbana: NCTE, 2005. [also authored two essays in the collection]
Robbins, Sarah, and Mimi Dyer, eds. Writing America: Classroom Literacy and Public Engagement. New York: Teachers College Press of Columbia University, 2004. [also authored introductory essay, “Classroom Literacies and Public Life”]
Robbins, Sarah Ruffing. “Biopolitics and Youth Border-Crossing in Sui Sin Far and Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa): Children’s Bodies as Sites of Contention between White State Power and Families of Color.” In The Biopolitics of Childhood in the Long American 19th Century. Edited by Lucia Hodgson and Allison Giffen. New York: Routledge, 2025. 182-202.
Robbins, Sarah Ruffing. “Elaine Goodale Eastman’s Yellow Star as Counter-Narrative for American Indian History-Telling.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 23.1 (2024): 26-48.
Robbins, Sarah Ruffing. “Teaching Charles Alexander Eastman’s ‘The North American Indian’ in Dialogue with Elaine Goodale Eastman’s Yellow Star.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 23.1 (2024): 107-114.
Robbins, Sarah Ruffing. “Locating Phillis Wheatley through Transatlantic, Intertextual Teaching.” Symbiosis: A Journal of Transatlantic Literary & Cultural Relations 26.1 (Spring 2022): 1-24.
Robbins, Sarah Ruffing. “Pandemic Pedagogy: Lessons from Nineteenth-Century. Sentimentalism—Historicizing Empathy, Embracing Feeling, and Personalizing Disease in the Covid Era.” ESQ 67.1 (2021): 723-48.
Hoermann-Elliott, Jacqueline, Sarah Ruffing Robbins, Whitney Lew James, and Meagan Gacke. “Collaborative Tactics in a Globally Focused Cocurricular Writing Program.” Composition Forum 42 (November 2019): here
Pullen, Ann W. Ellis and Sarah Ruffing Robbins. “Managing Worship, Mothering Missions: Children’s Prayerful Performances Linking the United States and Angola in the Early Twentieth Century.” International Bulletin of Mission Research 43.3 (2019): 211-224.
Robbins, Sarah Ruffing. “Elaine Goodale Eastman, Modernist Author?: Re-visiting a Border-crossing Woman Writer’s Place in Literary History.” E-rea: Revue électronique d’études sur le monde Anglophone Special Issue: Transnationalism and Modern American Women Writers 16.2 (2019): here.
Robbins, Sarah Ruffing. “Gender and Transnational American Studies.” In The Routledge Companion to Transnational American Studies. Edited by Nina Morgan, Alfred Hornung, and Takayuki Tatsumi. New York: Routledge, 2019. 183-192.
Robbins, Sarah and Carrie Helms Tippen. “Gathering around Hull-House Dining Tables.” American Studies 57.3 (2018): 11-38.
Branson, Tyler, James C. Sanchez, Sarah R. Robbins, and Catherine Wehlburg. “Collaborative Ecologies of Emergent Assessment: Challenges and Benefits Linked to a Writing-based Institutional Partnership.” College Composition and Communication (CCC) 69.2 (December 2017): 287-316.
“Teaching a Course on Citizenship—as Enacted from the Margins—in a Traumatic Election Year.” American Literature Association Conference, Boston, May 2025.
“Teaching Graphic Narratives.” Lecture for Humanities-Texas-sponsored daylong workshop for secondary teachers, Dallas, TX, April 24, 2025.
“Historically Speaking: ‘The Feast of Genius and the Play of Art’: The Legacies and Communities of Phillis Wheatley Peters at the National Museum of African American History and Culture” (NMAAHC). Invited lecture co-presented with Barbara McCaskill and Mona Narain. April 8, 2025. Available online here. [Scroll down for video.]
“Contextualizing Interventions: Looking Towards the Future of the Field.” Children’s Literature Association National Conference, Madison, WI, May/June 2024.
“Re-reading Hobomok in 2024: Shifting Our Focus to the Novel’s Mixed-Race Youth.” American Literature Association International Conference, Chicago, IL, May 2024.
“Undergraduates Recovering and Publishing 19th-Century Transatlantic Texts for a Digital Collection,” American Literature Association International Conference, Chicago, IL, May 2024.
“Phillis Wheatley Peters in Material Memory.” Presentation sponsored by the American Antiquarian Society. Brief lecture as part of a cluster with Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Barbara McCaskill, Nan Wolverton (AAS) and additional AAS staff. March 22, 2023. Virtual. Video of online Zoom presentation available here.
“Biopolitics and Youth Border-Crossing in Sui Sin Far (Edith Maud Eaton) and Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa).” MELUS Conference, Dallas, TX, April 2024.
“Making “Making ‘Interventions’ in Editorial Praxis.” British Association for American Studies (BAAS) Virtual International Conference, April 2024.
“Building Connections between Our Scholarship and Our Teaching.” For a Roundtable on “Challenges Associated with Teaching American Literature Today.” American Literature Association, Boston, May 2023.
“Phillis Wheatley’s Literacy Records as Resources for Creative Writers Today." Modern Language Association Conference, San Francisco, January 2023.
“Lydia Maria Child’s Editing as Role Model for Pedagogical Interventions.” American Literature Association Conference, Chicago, May 2022.
“Aaron Posner’s JQA as Layered History: Promoting Socio-Political Agency in a North Texas Theatre’s Production.” American Literature Association Conference, Chicago, May 2022.
“Anthology-Making as Multi-faceted Reconstruction: Reflecting on Learning from Co-editing Transatlantic Anglophone Literatures, 1776-1920.” C19 American Literature Conference, Coral Gables, April 2022.
- Graduate Faculty Member of the Year (2024-25; student-selected)
- AddRan College of Liberal Arts, TCU, Award for Distinguished Achievement as a Teacher and Scholar, Humanities Winner (2020)
- Award from TCU Student Affairs for Leadership of GlobalEx Co-curricular Program, “Inspiring students, empowering future leaders, promoting intercultural learning” (2019)
- English Department Graduate Faculty Member of the Year (2018)
- Michael R. Ferrari Award for Distinguished University Service and Leadership at TCU (2015)
- Best edition award, honorable mention, Society for the Study of American Women Writers Triennial Awards Program, for Nellie Arnott’s Writings on Angola, 1905-1913 (2012)
- English Department Graduate Faculty Member of the Year (student-selected—2012)
- Outstanding Individual Scholarship Award, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Kennesaw State for The Cambridge Introduction to Harriet Beecher Stowe (1 of 3; 2008)
- Governor’s Award for Leadership in the Humanities, Georgia Humanities Council and State of Georgia Governor’s Office (2006)
- CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title award, for Managing Literacy, Mothering America (2006)
- Kennesaw State University Foundation Distinguished Professor (one university-wide award-winner per year; inaugural winner—2004-05)
- Distinguished Scholarship Award for Kennesaw State University (one award-winner per year) for career-to-date work in research/creative activity (2004)
- Regents of the University of Georgia Research in Education Award (UGA system-wide award for research in the “scholarship of teaching” [SOTL] tradition–2002)
- Constance Rourke Prize (awarded by the American Studies Association for the best article in American Quarterly in a given year—1998)
- Conference Directing Work and Applied Research Collaborations: Society for the Study of American Women Writers Triennial Conference, Denver, October 2012; co-directed with Maria Sanchez
- Passages in American Literature, co-consultant with Lucy Maddox of Georgetown University for film series proposal, IS Film Productions, Washington, D.C. Community Research and Creative Learning conference, June 2002
- Bridges Community Performances project conference, June 2001
- “Who’s Speaking, Who’s Listening?” June 2000 conference, KSU
- Faculty Investigator, ASA Crossroads Research Project, 1997-99
- Project Outreach Retreats and Conferences; 1996, 1997, 1998–KSU
- Literature, Culture and the American Experience–conference, October 1998
- National Writing Project, commissioned study of teacher leadership paradigms at various NWP sites, with associated development of training curricula for NWP
- Co-editor: "Interventions": a book series on 19th-century American literatures published by Edinburgh University Press (current)
- Editorial Board: The Bedford Anthology of American Literature (current)
- Editorial Board for Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers (2007-09)
- Editorial Board, The National Writing Project, NWP@Work Publications (2006-2013)
- Vice President, Society for the Study of American Women Writers, 2010-2012
- Chair, American Literature Section of Modern Language Association (MLA), 2009
- Member, Women’s Committee, American Studies Association, 2007-2010
- Member, Program Committee, Modern Language Association, MLA, 2008-2010
- Member, Advisory Board, Society for the Study of American Women Writers, 2006-08
- Consulting Scholar, Imagining America Task Force on Tenure and Public Work, 2005-08
- MLA Division on Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century American Literature, 2000-2004
Last Updated: May 29, 2025