Wendy Williams
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Mail code: 2780Campus: Poly
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Dr. Wendy R. Williams is an Associate Professor of English Education whose research areas include writing instruction, visual and multimodal narrative, and food studies. She has published in leading journals and received funding from National Endowment for the Humanities, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Arizona Humanities.
Her first book, Listen to the Poet: Writing, Performance, and Community in Youth Spoken Word Poetry (2018, University of Massachusetts), employs a community-of-practice lens to investigate the practices of a youth spoken word poetry organization in the Phoenix-metropolitan area. This qualitative research, conducted during a year and a half in the field, involved interviews with youth poets and adult teaching artists, observations of workshops and slams, and collection of artifacts. This research shows the importance of literacy groups for adolescents and sheds light on ways that formal writing instruction in schools could be reimagined to be more engaging and meaningful for students.
Her second book, Mentoring Youth Writers: Six Strategies to Bring out the Author (or Graphic Novelist, Filmmaker, Songwriter…) in Every Student (forthcoming in 2025, NCTE), shares findings from a semester-long case study of mentors and adolescents in the Young Authors’ Studio program, interviews with seven master teachers around the country, and NCTE’s Position Statement on Writing Instruction in School to identify ways to support adolescent writers in secondary classrooms and community programs. Ultimately, this book advocates for a shift in education, one that involves seeing teaching and learning through a mentoring lens.
This semester, Dr. Williams is writing articles that share findings from studies she has conducted (i.e., on animation, on food writing, and on service learning). Also, she has finished collecting data for her third book—on students’ experiences with visual storytelling—and is currently engaged in data analysis, additional reading, chapter outlining, and writing. Next year, she will be the lead guest editor of a special issue of English Journal on food studies in English language arts (Nov. 2026).
Professor Williams designed her college’s undergraduate Writing Certificate, which has a visual/multimodal narrative component. Currently, she is working on proposals for two new certificates, one new BA concentration, and one new course. Professor Williams has created many new courses for ASU:
- ENG 394 Writing about Food
- ENG 446 Visual Narratives
- ENG 466 Studio Ghibli Films
- ENG 473 Critical Approaches to Children's Literature
- ENG 484 Internship: Mentoring Youth Writers
- ENG 505 Narrative Research Methods
- ENG 520 Visual Narratives
- ENG 584 Internship: Mentoring Youth Writers
In addition, she has taught the YA literature, methods of teaching writing, and methods of teaching English language courses. Prior to becoming a professor, she taught high school and middle school English for nine years.
Dr. Williams is Co-Chair of the NCTE/ELATE Commission on Arts and Literacies, a group of leading scholars and teachers in the arts, multimodality, and new literacies. She also reviews manuscripts for various journals (e.g., Research in the Teaching of English) and presses (e.g., Bloomsbury’s BFI Film Classics). She has served as a Column Editor for English Journal (“Teaching Creative Writing” column), an Editorial Review Board Member for the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, a Board Member for the Arizona English Teachers Association, and a Chair of NCTE's Achievement Awards in Writing Advisory Committee.
At ASU, Dr. Williams is serving as Interim Chair (Spring 2025) of the university’s Curriculum and Academic Programs Committee (CAPC), a member of the university’s Governance Grievance Committee, and the founding organizer of ASU’s Narrative Studies Symposium. Previously, she founded and directed ASU’s Young Authors' Studio program (2017-2023), ASU’s Sparky Slam (3 events), and IHC’s Humanities Dialogues (6 events). Many of the changes she instituted while Chair of her college’s Awards Committee are still in effect today (e.g., establishing new Project Grants, an Innovation Award, a Faculty Mentoring Award).
In addition to her work in the academy, Dr. Williams is a certified Maricopa County Master Gardener and a graduate of Scottsdale Culinary Institute’s Le Cordon Bleu program. She cooked alongside Chef Gregory Casale at Gregory’s World Bistro, wrote for Arizona Food and Lifestyles, and worked in event planning for Hilton. She has a monthly cooking column in the master gardener publication, Roots and Shoots. For fun, she studies cello and is working on Bach’s third suite. Years ago, she studied, taught, and competed in Shotokan karate and was invited to join the U.S. team (ISKF/JKA).
- Ph.D. Curriculum and Instruction: English Education. Arizona State University
- M.Ed. Secondary Education: English. Arizona State University
- B.A.E. Secondary Education: English (Summa cum laude). Arizona State University
- A.O.S. Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Arts (Honors). Scottsdale Culinary Institute
