Wendy Williams
-
Mail code: 2780Campus: Poly
-
Dr. Wendy R. Williams is an Associate Professor of English. Her primary research areas are visual/multimodal narrative and writing instruction. She also works in food studies. Dr. Williams has published in leading journals, and her work has been supported with funding from National Endowment for the Humanities, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Arizona Humanities.
She is the author of Listen to the Poet: Writing, Performance, and Community in Youth Spoken Word Poetry (2018, University of Massachusetts). This research uses a community-of-practice lens to explore and honor the literacy practices of culturally and linguistically diverse adolescent poets and teaching artists in the Phoenix-metropolitan area. Her second book, Mentoring Youth Writers: How to Help Students Thrive in the Writing Classroom and Beyond (under review and under contract with NCTE), shares findings from a program in which university students served as writing mentors to youth in the community. The book demonstrates how mentoring practices could be used in schools to similarly inspire and empower secondary students. Currently, she is at work on a monograph on visual storytelling (data collected). She also has plans to edit volumes on visual/multimodal composition and on approaches to food studies.
Professor Williams designed CISA’s Writing Certificate, which has a visual/multimodal narrative component. Currently, she is developing the new course, IDS 394 The Chef’s Garden (launching Fall 2025 at ASU’s Polytechnic campus), which will use virtual reality to challenge students to think about food studies in new ways. She teaches in CISA’s MA Narrative Studies, BA English, and BA Interdisciplinary Studies programs and has created new courses on Studio Ghibli animation, visual narratives, narrative and arts-based research methods, mentoring youth writers, children's literature, and writing about food. She has taught courses on YA literature and methods of teaching English composition and language as well. 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 (2024-2026), a national organization made up of leading scholars and teachers in the arts, multimodality, and new literacies. Previously, she served as the “Teaching Creative Writing” Column Editor for English Journal, Editorial Review Board Member for the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Chair of NCTE's Achievement Awards in Writing Advisory Committee, and Board Member for the Arizona English Teachers Association. She has reviewed manuscripts for journals including Research in the Teaching of English.
At ASU, Dr. Williams is Co-Chair of CAPC, the university's Curriculum and Academic Programs Committee (2024-2026); she will serve as Chair during the Spring 2025 semester. She created ASU’s Narrative Studies Symposium (an event that brings together faculty and student presenters) and the Humanities Dialogues at Poly series (which showcased the scholarly and creative contributions of professors in her department). Professor Williams is also the founding director of ASU’s Young Authors' Studio program (2017-2023), a free writing program for adolescents that was led by university student mentors. In addition, she organized ASU’s Sparky Slam (spoken word poetry) events for youth. Many of the contributions she made while Chair of CISA’s Awards Committee (e.g., establishing new project grants, an equity and inclusion award, an innovation award) are still in effect today.
Dr. Williams is also 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 under the direction of Dr. Xue Chen and is currently working on Haydn’s Concerto in C Major. 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. MLFTC. Arizona State University. 2015.
- M.Ed. Secondary Education: English. MLFTC. Arizona State University. 2008.
- B.A.E. Secondary Education: English. COE. Arizona State University West. 1998. Summa cum laude.
- A.O.S. Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Arts. Scottsdale Culinary Institute. 2001. Honors.
