19th Century

Composition, Linguistics

Literature of Diversity

Research Interests

• African American Literature
• Critical Pedagogy/Culturally Inclusive Teaching 
• Rhetoric/Composition

Shelli Fowler’s research and teaching areas focus on African American literature, critical pedagogy/inclusive teaching, and active learning. She analyzes the connections between cultural identity and (mis)readings, and explores resistance and agency in texts by black women writers, especially in 19th-c. narratives. She also focuses on how reinventing and reshaping a Freirean pedagogical praxis can help us better address teaching and learning in our contemporary cultural contexts. Her teaching is centered around interactive, inclusive, discussion-based engagement. She teaches a range of courses, including English 215, and cross-listed courses on African American authors and topics. Professor Fowler earned her PhD at The University of Texas at Austin.

Select Publications

• “Close Encounters that Foster Change: What Alice Sheldon and PPE 2020 Can Tell Us About Educational Futures,” Policy Futures in Education, 2021.
• “‘Pink Time’: Evidence of Self-regulated Learning and Academic Motivation among Undergraduate Students,” with T.D. Baird, D. Kniola, & A. Lewis. Journal of Geography, 114:4, 2015.
• “Breakthrough Models Academy: Focusing on Innovation that Transforms Higher Education,” Next Generation Learning Challenges, 2013.
• “Multimodal Literacy and Cultural Identities: 21st-century Technologies and Issues of ‘Self-Authorship’ and ‘Voice’ in U.S. Institutions of Higher Education,” with Sheila Carter-Tod in the International Journal of the Humanities, Vol., 3, 2006.
• “Negotiating Textual Terrain: A Conversation on Critical and Pedagogical Interventions in the Teaching of Ethnic Autobiography,” with T.A. Lopez, K. Shanley, C.C. Simpson & T. Yamamoto, in Asian American Women: Frontiers Reader, M. Sciachitano & L. Vo, eds., University of Nebraska Press, 2004.

Book

• Included in English Studies: Learning Climates That Cultivate Racial and Ethnic Diversity, co-edited with Victor Villanueva. Washington, DC: NCTE / AAHE Press, 2002.

Select Presentations

• “Disrupting the Default Mode of Passive Knowledge Consumer: Fostering Critically Engaged, Self-reflexive Learners via Interdisciplinary Curriculum and an Inclusive Pedagogical Praxis,” Association for Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS), Detroit, October 2018.
• “Creating Spaces for a Liberatory Praxis in General Education Curriculum,” Freire@50 Pedagogy Conference, University of South Carolina, October 2018.

Invited

• “Innovative Pedagogies: cActive Co-Learning’ to Create Agentes de Cambio,” USFQ, ESPOL, UACh Latin American Faculty Institute, Blacksburg, June 2022.
• “Faculty and Student Roles in Increasing Student Engagement” IDEA Institute (Instituto de Enseñanza y Aprendizaje), Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), Quito, Ecuador, November 2019.
• “Redesigning Our Pedagogical Praxis for Inclusive Excellence in STEM-H,” Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Summer Institute, Blacksburg, June 2019.
• “A Freirean Praxis for All Disciplines: From the Humanities to the Social Sciences to STEM,” GRAD 5114, Contemporary Pedagogy, Virginia Tech, October 2019.
• “Innovation and Learning,” Montgomery College Teaching Forum, Rockville, MD, Feb., 2015.

Featured

• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Interview on LGBTQIA Inclusion, EDUCAUSE DEI Initiative, February 2017