Isabelle Petersen

Isabelle Rucks Petersen joined the Faculty of Leadership and Integrative Studies in 2018 after teaching three years in Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication at ASU. A passionate advocate for interdisciplinary humanities education, she has taught a wide variety of courses over three decades, spanning a multitude of humanities and social science disciplines in both traditional classrooms and online. Her research and teaching interests have been as diverse as Native American literature, medieval love poetry, comparative religion, cultural history, media studies, and creativity studies.

In a previous position, she co-developed a university-wide, cross-curricular critical thinking program. Three of her recently developed courses for ASU’s Liberal Studies program include an exploration of social activism through the arts, an interdisciplinary survey of happiness studies, and an introduction to the history of ideas. She is the recipient of multiple teaching awards from various institutions and strongly believes in the intellectually, socially, and personally transformative power of interdisciplinary education.

Aside from teaching, Petersen is active in community activism. As the Director of Conservation at a local nonprofit, she advocates ecological preservation and the protection of the night sky.