Wendy Williams
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Mail code: 2780Campus: Poly
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Dr. Wendy R. Williams is an Associate Professor of English 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 monograph, Listen to the Poet: Writing, Performance, and Community in Youth Spoken Word Poetry (2018, University of Massachusetts), uses a community-of-practice lens to investigate the out-of-school literacy practices of a culturally diverse youth poetry organization in the Phoenix-metropolitan area. Listen to the Poet ultimately considers how writing instruction in schools could be designed to be more engaging and meaningful for adolescents.
Her second book, Mentoring Youth Writers (in press, NCTE), draws upon findings from ASU’s Young Authors’ Studio program and interviews with master teachers around the country to identify six strategies that teachers can use to inspire creativity and honor writing identity in secondary classrooms and community programs.
Currently, Dr. Williams is at work on her third monograph, Visual Storytellers (data collected), and her first edited volume, A Collection of Small Bites: Strategies for Integrating Food Studies into Secondary English (proposal under review).
Professor Williams teaches in CISA’s MA Narrative Studies, BA English, and BA Interdisciplinary Studies programs. She has created many new courses and special topics (i.e., Studio Ghibli Films, Visual Narratives, Narrative Research Methods, Mentoring Youth Writers, Critical Approaches to Children's Literature, Writing about Food) and taught ASU’s YA literature, writing teaching methods, and English language teaching methods courses. Professor Williams designed CISA’s Writing Certificate, which has a visual/multimodal narrative component. Currently, she is working on proposals for two new certificates and one BA concentration while also developing new courses such as IDS 294 The Chef’s Garden (launching in Fall 2025). Prior to becoming a professor, she taught high school and middle school English for nine years.
She 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. Dr. Williams also reviews manuscripts for journals including Research in the Teaching of English and book proposals for various presses and series including Bloomsbury’s BFI Film Classics. She has served as the Teaching Creative Writing Column Editor for English Journal, Chair of NCTE's Achievement Awards in Writing Advisory Committee, Editorial Review Board Member for the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, and Board Member for the Arizona English Teachers Association.
Dr. Williams is currently the Interim Chair (Spring 2025) of ASU’s Curriculum and Academic Programs Committee (CAPC), a member of ASU’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 (2 series). Many of the changes she instituted while Chair of her college’s Awards Committee (e.g., establishing new Project Grants, an Equity and Inclusion Award, an Innovation Award, a Faculty Mentoring Award) are still in effect today.
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
