Ryan Cordell
Assistant Professor of English // Director of Writing-Across-the-Curriculum
St. Norbert College // Mulva Library 302 // De Pere, WI 54115 // 920.278.7227
ryan.cordell@snc.edu // rccordell@gmail.com
Education
- Ph.D., English Language and Literature, University of Virginia, August 2010
Dissertation: “Apocalypticism in Antebellum Literature and Culture” Committee: Stephen Railton (director), Jerome McGann, and Victoria Olwell - B.A., English Language and Literature, magna cum laude, The George Washington University, 2004
Fields of Study
- Nineteenth-century American Literature
- American Fiction
- Religion and Literature
- Digital Humanities
- Periodical Studies
Awards and Grants
- DHSI Tuition Scholarship for the “Geographic Information Systems in the Digital Humanities” course at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, University of Victoria, Canada, June 2011
- Faculty Development Summer Grant, Office of Faculty Development, St. Norbert College, to support development of a new digital humanities course, Summer 2011
- Academic Service-Learning Course Development Grant, Center for Community Service and Learning, St. Norbert College, to support development of a new service-learning college writing course, Summer 2011
- NEH Institute Participant, Institute for Enabling Geospatial Scholarship, University of Virginia Scholars’ Lab, May 2010
- Thomas J. Griffis Prize for the Best Essay by a Student Beyond the First Year of Graduate Work in English, for “‘Taken Possession of’: Hawthorne’s ‘Celestial Railroad’ in the Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Canon,” University of Virginia English Department, 2010.
- SHANTI Exploratory Cohort Fellowship, for technical training, initial design, and help implementing a digital edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Celestial Railroad” (forthcoming at celestialrailroad.org), University of Virginia, 2009-10.
- Buckner W. Clay Endowment for the Humanities Summer Research Grant, for startup research work for celestialrailroad.org, University of Virginia, Summer 2009
- Tane Travel Scholarship, for travel to present at the Bicentennial Poe Conference, Edgar Allan Poe Society, Philadelphia, October 2009
Publications
- “‘Enslaving You, Body and Soul’: The Uses of Temperance in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and ‘Anti-Tom’ Fiction,” Studies in American Fiction (Spring 2008)
- “Alcohol and Temperance” and “Harriet Beecher Stowe,” Encyclopedia of the Early Republic and Antebellum America, M. E. Sharpe (August 2010)
Forthcoming/In Progress
- “‘Taken Possession of’: Hawthorne’s ‘Celestial Railroad’ in the Nineteenth Century Evangelical Canon,” forthcoming in a special issue on “The Literary,” Digital Humanities Quarterly (DHQ)
- “‘This Flattering Millennium Theory’: Denominationalism Against Millennialism in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Crater,” contributed to a post-conference anthology, Apocalypse and the Millennium: Providential Religion in the Era of the American Civil War, volume under review
- “Special Collections for All: How Digital Archives Can Transform Small-College Literature Classrooms,” in progress for the edited collection Digital Technology and the Literature Classroom, proposal under review at Bedford/St. Martin’s
- Writing About Literature through Critical Theory textbook, with John Pennington, Flat World Knowledge, Fall 2012
Public Writing
- Core contributor to ProfHacker at the Chronicle of Higher Education.
- “New Technologies to Get Your Students Engaged” and “Resources for Teaching with Technology,” Chronicle of Higher Education, Special Issue on “The Digital Campus,” May 13, 2011
- “THATCamp Liberal Arts Colleges 2011,” Techne Blog, National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education, February 21, 2011
- “Scrivener 2.0 Released for Mac and (gasp) Windows,” Chronicle of Higher Education, November 5, 2010
- “Back Up Your Essential Files Using Dropbox,” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 2, 2010
Digital Projects
Primary Investigator
- Researcher, designer, and curator of Hawthorne’s Celestial Railroad: a Publication History, 2008-present
- Steering Committee, DHCommons Initiative, with Rebecca Frost Davis (NITLE), Christopher Dickman (St. Louis University), Quinn Dombrowski (University of Chicago), Neil Fraistat (University of Maryland), Laura Mandell (Texas A&M University), and Katherine Rowe (Bryn Mawr College), 2011-present
Research Assistant
- Project Manager, University of Virginia Writing Program website development team (redschoolhouse.org), 2009-2010
- Research Assistant and Electronic Text Creator for Professor Stephen Railton, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture,” 2005-2006
Conferences and Workshops
- Chair, Digital Americanists’ “Digits, Data, and Dilemmas: Digitization and Knowledge Production in Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies” roundtable, C19 Americanists Conference, April 2012 (upcoming), Berkeley, California
- “Reading C19 Print Culture Spatially,” C19 Americanists Conference, “Media Evolution and Language Technologies” panel, April 2012 (upcoming), Berkeley, California
- Organizer and presider, with Rebecca Frost-Davis, “Getting Started in the Digital Humanities with Help from DHCommons” preconvention workshop, Modern Language Association Convention, co-sponsored by the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE) and the Texas A&M Institute for Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture, January 2012, Seattle, Washington
- “Mapping the Antebellum Culture of Reprinting,” Modern Language Association Convention, “Text:Image” panel sponsored by the Society for Textual Scholarship, January 2012, Seattle, Washington
- Participant, “Geographic Information Systems in the Digital Humanities” workshop, Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI), University of Victoria, Canada, June 2011
- Chief Organizer, THATCamp LAC (The Humanities And Technology Camp for Liberal Arts Colleges), June 2011, St. Norbert College, De Pere, Wisconsin
- “‘Taken Possession of’: What Digital Archives Can Teach Us about Nathaniel Hawthorne, Religious Readers, and Antebellum Reprinting Culture,” Modern Language Association Convention, “Analog and Digital: Texts, Contexts, and Networks” panel, January 2011, Los Angeles, California
- Invited Participant, Media Training Workshop, Modern Language Association Convention, January 2011, Los Angeles, California
- Invited Speaker and Participant, Grant Planning Meeting, National Collaboration for Digital Humanities in the Liberal Arts, hosted by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE), and the University of Southern California’s Center for Transformative Scholarship, January 2011, USC, Los Angeles, California
- “Digital Humanities and the Small Liberal Arts College,” THATCamp Chicago, November 2010, Evanston, Illinois
- “‘This Flattering Millennium Theory’: Denominationalism Against Millennialism in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Crater,” Millennialism and Providentialism in the Era of the American Civil War Conference, October 2010, Rice University, Houston, Texas
- “Theorizing an Online, Interactive Red Schoolhouse (and Pouring Its Foundations),” Council of Writing Program Administrators Conference, July 2010, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- “‘Taken Possession of’: Hawthorne’s ‘Celestial Railroad’ in the Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Canon,” C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists Inaugural Conference, “Nineteenth-Century American Literature and New Media” panel, May 2010, State College, Pennsylvania
- “Digital Archives and Future Bibliographies,” University of Virginia Bibliographic Society Annual Meeting, Pre-Doctoral Scholars’ Forum, May 2010, Charlottesville, VA
- “‘Coming to an End for Certain’: Apocalyptic Skepticism in Poe and Lippard,” Poe Studies Association’s Third International Edgar Allan Poe Conference (The Bicentennial), “Poe, Lippard, and Place” panel, October 2009, Philadelphia
- “Thoreau’s Walden and Freshman Comp,” American Literature Association (ALA), “Teaching Thoreau in the Twenty-First Century” roundtable sponsored by the Thoreau Society May 2008, San Francisco
- Moderator and respondent for the “Harriet Beecher Stowe and Nineteenth-Century Religious Communities” panel, sponsored by the Harriet Beecher Stowe Society, ALA, May 2008, San Francisco
- “‘The Light Which Puts Out Our Eyes’: The Spring Apocalypse in Thoreau’s Walden,” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA), “Promethean Visions and Communities of Belief in Nineteenth-Century American Literature” panel, November 2007, Bellingham, WA
- “‘Dim and Wondrous Imagery’: Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the End of Time,” Popular and American Culture Associations of the South (PCAS/ACAS), “Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Antebellum Culture” panel, September 2007, Jacksonville, FL
- “‘Mas’r isn’t good to himself’: Temperance Rhetoric in Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” ALA, “Future Directions in Stowe Scholarship” panel, sponsored by the Stowe Society, May 2006, San Francisco
Invited Talks
- Invited speaker, “Teaching DH 101: Introduction to Digital Humanities,” NITLE Digital Scholarship Seminar, online, December 2011
- Guest lecturer, “Apocalypse in Antebellum America,” Prof. Robert Kramer’s “End of the World” course, St. Norbert College, April 2011.
- “Mining for Hawthorne,” Scholars’ Lab Digital Therapy Luncheon, February 2010.
- Panelist, Professionalization Workshop on Academic Publication, University of Virginia Slavic Department, December 2009.
- Panelist, “Geospatial Data and Tools in Humanities Research” session, NEH and UVA Scholars’ Lab’s “Institute for Enabling Geospatial Scholarship,” University of Virginia, November 2009.
- Guest lecturer, “Apocalypse in Antebellum America,” Prof. Judith Kovacs’ “Revelation to John” course, Religious Studies Department, University of Virginia, January 2008, November 2008, and April 2010.
Courses Taught
Portfolio available on request
St. Norbert College
- Technologies of Text: Spring 2012
- Literary Theory and Writing: Spring 2011, Spring 2012
- The American Short Story: January 2011
- U.S. Literature to 1865: Fall 2010
- Introduction to Literature: Fall 2010, Fall 2011
- College Writing: Fall 2010
UVA (instructor of record)
- Pavilion Writers (advanced first-year composition): Spring 2009
- Religion and American Fiction (introductory seminar in literature): Fall 2008
- Science Fictions (themed first-year composition): Fall 2007
- Thoreau, Walden, and American Culture (themed first-year composition): Fall 2006 and Spring 2007
UVA (discussion leader)
- History of English Literature III (twentieth-century literature in English): for Professors Stephen Cushman and Michael Levenson, Fall 2007
- Academic and Professional Writing (advanced composition): Spring 2006
- History of English Literature I (medieval and renaissance literature): for Professor Elizabeth Fowler, Fall 2005
Academic Administration
- Director, Writing-Across-the-Curriculum, St. Norbert College, 2010-present
- Director, St. Norbert College Writing Center, 2010-present
- Director, University of Virginia Writing Center, 2009-2010
- Assistant Director, University of Virginia Writing Center, 2008-2009
Professional Service
- centerNet Executive Council, 2011-present
- Digital Humanities Council, NITLE (National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education), 2011-present
- Secretary/Treasurer, Digital Americanists Society, 2011-2013
- Editorial Board, The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, 2011-present
- Grant Reviewer, Office of Digital Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities, Spring 2011
- Mentor, HASTAC Scholars Program, 2010-present
- Newsletter and Website Editor, Harriet Beecher Stowe Society, news.stowesociety.org, 2006-2011
Academic Service
- Dean’s Appointee, Digital Learning Task Force, St. Norbert College, Spring 2011-present
- General Education Committee, St. Norbert College, Fall 2010-present
- Chair, Writing-Across-the-Curriculum Advisory Council, St. Norbert College, Fall 2010-present
- Graduate School Advisor, St. Norbert College English Discipline, Fall 2010-present
- Chief Writing Consultant to the College of Arts and Sciences, McIntire School of Commerce, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies Program; Assessment of Student Writing; University of Virginia’s Office of Institutional Assessment and Studies; 2008-2009
- University of Virginia Teaching Resource Center workshop leader, “Leading an Effective Discussion Section” workshops at the College of Arts and Sciences August Teaching Workshop 2009, August Teaching Workshop 2008, and January Teaching Workshop 2008
- University of Virginia Teaching Resource Center workshop leader, “Grading Student Writing” workshops for the Spanish and Italian Department (September 2009), Architecture Department (September 2008), and Religious Studies Department (August 2007).
- Copy Editor, New Literary History (NLH), 2007-2008
- Tutor, University of Virginia Writing Center, 2004-2007
- Research and Copyediting Assistant for Professor Mark Edmundson, 2007
- Assistant to Professor Stephen Railton and the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the Web of Culture: A Multi-Disciplinary Conference,” 2007
- Treasurer, Graduate English Student Association, University of Virginia, 2006-2007
Writing Workshops
St. Norbert College
- “How to Write and Effective Thesis” for students, Mulva Library skills workshops, March 29 and 31, 2011
- Thesis writing workshop for students in Prof. Brad Ellis’ Spanish Capstone course, March 30, 2011
- “Preventing Plagiarism” faculty workshop, sponsored by the Associate Academic Dean’s Office, March 24, 2011
- “WAC Talks Back” faculty workshop, sponsored by the Associate Academic Dean’s Office, February 25, 2011
- “Do More; Work Less” faculty workshop, sponsored by the Associate Academic Dean’s Office, November 16, 2010
- S.W.A.T. (Student Writing Assistance Team) workshop, Prof. Jim Neilson’s History of Modern Art class, November 12, 2010
- S.W.A.T. (Student Writing Assistance Team) workshop, Prof. Jim Neilson’s History of Painting class, November 10, 2010
- Thesis writing workshop for students from the Master of Theological Studies and Master of Liberal Studies programs, October 23, 2010
- Research and academic argument workshop for students in Prof. Tom Conner’s French 305 class, October 15, 2010
- Research and academic argument workshops for students in Prof. Erin Pryor’s Social Inequality and Introduction to Sociology classes, September 16, 2010
Memberships
- Modern Language Association
- C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists
- Association for Computers and Humanities
- Digital Americanists Society
- Harriet Beecher Stowe Society
- Edgar Allan Poe Society
- Council of Writing Program Administrators
- Small Liberal Arts Colleges Writing Program Administrators [SLAC-WPA]
Languages
German, scholarly reading proficiency; oral and written competency
Technical Proficiencies
- HTML
- XML/TEI
- CSS
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Omeka
- ArcGIS
References
- Stephen Railton, Professor, University of Virginia // 434.924.6612 // sfr@virginia.edu
- Jerome McGann, John Stewart Bryan Professor, University of Virginia // 434.924.6669 // jjm2f@virginia.edu
- Katherine Rowe, Chair and Professor of English, Bryn Mawr College // 610.526.5306 // krowe@brynmawr.edu
- Laura Mandell, Professor of English and Director of the Initiative in Digital Humanities // 979.845.8345 // mandell@tamu.edu
- Rebecca Davis, Program Officer for the Humanities, National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education // 512.863.1734 // rdavis@nitle.org
- Victoria Olwell, Assistant Professor, University of Virginia / 434.924.6803 // vjo2f@virginia.edu