Dr. Catherine Waitinas

Professor

ENGLISH MAJOR ADVISOR

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Get in touch if you'd like to chat about the new Summer 2022 international program in the English Lake District and Scotland! 

Education

Ph.D. English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
M.A.  English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
B.A./M.A. (dual degree) English, St. Bonaventure University

Teaching and Research Interests

Walt Whitman 
Walt Whitman Video Series (senior projects!)
Literary Mesmerism
Early through 19th-Century U.S. Women Writers 
Curricular Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Literary DH Pedagogy
Open Educational Resources (OER) (senior projects!)

Selected Publications

“I am the teacher of athletes: Every Atom #102.” Every AtomReflections on Whitman at 200, ed. Brian Clements. North American Review 9 Sept. 2019. 

“Great Audiences ‘Absorb, Adopt it’: Walt Whitman’s ‘The Old Bowery.’” The Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 36: 2/3 (Winter/Spring 2019), 128-54.  

"Putting Students 'In Whitman's Hand.'" Teaching with Digital Humanities: Tools and Methods for Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Topics in the Digital Humanities Series. Ed. Jennifer Travis and Jessica DeSpain. University of Illinois Press, 2018. 153-66. 

 “Flipping Whitman: Students as Teachers.” With Sarah Wishnewsky. Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice 10:1 (Fall 2018), 9-22. [Also in 10:1: reprint of “‘A Noiseless Patient Spider’: Whitman, Wikis, and the Web,” TALTP 2:4]

"'Animal Magnetism': The 'Cotemporary' Roots of Whitman's 'Is Mesmerism True?'" Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 34 (2016), 55-68.

“What Does It Mean to Open Education? Perspectives on Using Open Educational Resources at a US Public University.” With L. Vanasupa, A. Wiley, L. Schlemer, D. Ospina, P. Schwartz, D. Wilhelm, and K. Hall. Open Education: International Perspectives in Higher Education, ed. Patrick Blessinger and T.J. Bliss. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2016. 199-221.

"Gay and Godly: Coming to Jesus in James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain." The James Dickey Review 29:1 (Fall/Winter 2012), 22-34. Special issue on American Masculinities.

"Tarot as 'Secret Tradition' in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land: 'These fragments I have shored against my ruins.'" Tarot in Culture, ed. Emily E. Auger. Victoria, Australia: Association for Tarot Studies, 369-409.

"'A Noiseless Patient Spider': Whitman, Wikis, and the Web." Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice 2:4 (Spring 2009): 47-74.

"The Search for Identity, 1970-Present." American Passages: A Literary Survey, ed. Laura K. Arnold et al. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. in association with Oregon Public Broadcasting and Annenberg/CPB, 2003. 758-808.

Courses Taught

511: Walt Whitman & James Baldwin
511: Early American Poetry
511: The Early American Novel
511: Early through Revolutionary American Literature
502: Contemporary Critical Theory
461: Senior Project
459: Literary Mesmerism
449: Walt Whitman & James Baldwin 
449: Walt Whitman:  Literature and the Digital Archive
449: Early American Women Writers
449: The Early American Novel
400: Literature of the Lake District (Extended Field Trip)
400: Nathaniel Hawthorne
380: Self-Reliance in American Film and Fiction
346: Ethnic American Writers
345: 20th- and 21st-Century Women Writers 
333: London in the Romantic Imagination (London Study)
331: Early Modern English Literature
303: Sequence IV: Late 18th through Mid-19th Centuries
241: American Literature: Beginnings to 1865
240: The American Tradition in Literature
204: Core II -- English and American Literature in the Age of Discovery

Awards and Honors

Douglas L. Epperson/CLA Innovation Award, 2020
Terrance Harris Excellence in Mentorship Award, 2018-19
Open Educational Resources Grant, AB798 (American literary OER), 2017-18 
CLA Circle of Giving Grant (Whitman videos), 2017-18
Learn By Doing Scholar Award (Whitman pedagogy), 2017
CLA Early Career Award for Achievement in Teaching, 2015 
CLA Circle of Giving Grant (Whitman digital pedagogy), 2014-15 
CTLT Technology & Pedagogy Grants (3), 2007-8 and 2008-9  
University of Illinois: All-Campus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching
University of Illinois College of Liberal Arts and Sciences: Humanities Teaching Excellence Award
University of Illinois English Department: Award for Outstanding Teaching

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