Dagmar Van Engen

Dagmar Van Engen is an honors faculty fellow and director of the Barrett Writing Center. Their research and teaching explore gender-nonconformity in speculative fiction, multiethnic American literatures, and composition pedagogy.

Current research projects include a study of how Octavia E. Butler’s journals and commonplace books can inform contemporary writing classes by reframing writing as habit, labor, and speculation. Another current project argues that transness is central to queer and feminist science fiction history through an examination of new wave SF and Asian American fantasy fiction. Dagmar has previously published on queer ebook erotica, gender transition and animal biology in science fiction, and the labor of accessible writing pedagogy.

Dagmar teaches courses on multiethnic science fiction, consent cultures, advanced writing for honors theses, science and literature, and of course the Human Event. At the Barrett Writing Center they are focused on building programming for honors thesis writing and expanding the center’s commitment to access, inclusion, and equity.

Dagmar received their Ph.D. from USC, where they taught introductory and advanced writing classes and completed a dissertation on nonbinary genders in scientific and literary representations of invertebrate animal life.