Sandra D. Shattuck received her Ph.D.
in Comparative Literature from the University of Texas at Austin in 1988.
Some of the professors under whom she studied were Bärbel
Becker-Cantarino, Wilson Harris, Jane Marcus, Ramón Saldívar,
and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Equally influential were co-students: Kofi
Anyidoho, Marlies Gättens, John Mtembezi Inniss, Micheline
Rice-Maximin, Ana Sisnett, Jacqueline Vansant, and Gay Wilentz.
Shattuck's areas of expertise include feminist literary theory and
criticism, postcolonial literary theory and literatures from Africa and
the Caribbean, U.S. multicultural literature with particular emphasis in
African American literature. As an assistant professor in the English
Department at the University of Southern Mississippi, Shattuck helped to
more formally institutionalize African American literature. She taught and
developed a variety of courses including contemporary world literature
with a focus on postcolonial texts, graduate seminars in the African
American novel and multicultural literary criticism, African American
women novelists, and multicultural literature by women of color in the
U.S. She also taught contemporary Jamaican literature in Kingston and Ocho
Rios, Jamaica, through the University of Southern Mississippi's study
abroad program.
Beyond her work at USM, Dr. Shattuck has taught
in a variety of capacities: as adjunct faculty in Women's Studies,
Humanities, and English at the University of Arizona; as adjunct faculty
in developmental writing at Pima Community College, Tucson AZ; and as
affiliate faculty in Women's Studies at the University of Maryland
Baltimore County, where she is currently a part-time instructor in
Education and English. Earlier teaching incarnations include instructor of
ESL in San Francisco, teaching assistant in high school German classes in
Yucaipa and Redlands CA, and substitute teacher (for English, French,
Spanish, German, and social studies classes) at the junior and senior high
schools in Wilton CT. Dr. Shattuck does not like to admit that as a young
substitute teacher, she almost cried in front of a more than usually
obstreperous junior high school English class.
Administrative
academic positions include work with the Southwest Institute for Research
on Women (SIROW) at the University of Arizona, where Shattuck was
associate project director for a Ford Foundation initiative to encourage
the incorporation of gender issues in international and area studies and
the inclusion of international and area studies concerns in women's
studies. The resulting website, Global Processes, Local Lives: Approaches in Women's and Area
Studies, offers an excellent annotated bibliography. Further
administrative work as Associate Director of the Center for
Women and Information Technology (CWIT) at UMBC allowed Shattuck the
opportunity to continue her exploration into the ways in which technology
can transform the learning/teaching experience.
Still a
grateful single parent of 9-almost-10-year-old Josh, Shattuck favors the
Zelda games on Nintendo 64, wishes that Purple Moon's Secret Paths to Your Dreams had
existed when she was eight years old, and thinks every girl should play
The
Adventures of Josie True. Dr. Shattuck is still pretty unskilled
at the Pokemon card game. That's not likely to change any time soon.
above quilt image is Keep Off the Grass by Marjorie
Hoeltzel
first published: 18 january 2002
last revised: 18 january 2002
webspinner: s.d.shattuck
