Alison Kathryn Staudinger, Ph.D.
Alison Kathryn Staudinger, Ph.D. (she/her)
Associate Dean
Arts and Sciences
Education
M.A Government & Politics, University of Maryland-College Park (2010)
M.A. Professional Creative Writing, University of Denver-University College (2023)
Ph.D. Government & Politics, University of Maryland-College Park (2013)
Research Interests
Democratic Theories & Practices, Social Change & Activism; Gender and the Law; Teaching & Learning; Environmental Theory; Feminist Political Thought; Literature & Politics; the Apocalypse.
Biography
At these institutions, she taught a wide range of political science courses across all major subfields, including political theory, U.S. Government, and Global Citizenship, as well as capstone courses co-designed with students. She also taught Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies courses like Queer Theory & Politics, Gender & the Law, and Feminist Theory, and introductions to this field. In Democracy and Justice Studies, she taught courses on the history and practice of social change, and facilitated the reimagining of the curriculum to center “high impact practices” like undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative activity. She also was the founding co-director of UWGB's Center for Civic Engagement.
Her dissertation and graduate work focused on the relationship between work, labor, and civic membership in the writings of Hannah Arendt, but also as experienced in political movements including the U.S. anti-temperance movement and campaigns for Wages for Housework in the 1970s feminist marxist context. This interest in integrating theory and practice and looking at the agency of individuals led her to the emerging Civic Studies sub-discipline, about which she has published and contributed to as a lecturer at Tufts University in their College of Civic Life.
Her current book project draws on experiences in the 2015 NEH seminar on “Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor,” where she pursued how the short story author engaged Hannah Arendt’s work, as well as the relationship between literature and political thought and culture, as well as a year-long fellowship at the Center for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on the topic of “the end.” The book argues that cold-war understandings of the apocalyptic, epitomized by O’Connor and Arendt, still shape our metaphoric political vocabulary and, especially in their approach to race and racialization, limit our ability to understand challenges like the climate disaster.
Working at a teaching oriented institution, she also began studying student learning as part of the Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars program, a year-long, statewide experience in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning supported by the UW-system, and which she later co-directed and still contributes to as an outside speaker. In SoTL, her research interests include student reading practices, identity, metaphors, and high impact practices.
As a faculty developer at DU, she studied the experiences of faculty in long-term positions that are non-tenure track to better understand their career trajectories and need for support. In this role she also helped lead efforts to increase faculty workload equity through department-based action teams, to re-imagine how teaching is evaluated, to support faculty in mid-career and beyond, as well as coordinating first-year faculty orientation and support.
Outside of the university, Alison likes hiking, backpacking, running, and generally being outdoors. She is looking forward to learning about Southeast gardening and foraging—and cooking! After moving to Wisconsin, she switched from downhill snow sports to cross-country skiing. Upon moving west to Colorado, she took up splitboarding and hopes to visit the backcountry around Juneau as well.
Alison Kathryn Staudinger, Ph.D.
Associate Dean
Arts and Sciences
- Email address: akstaudinger@alaska.edu
- Phone number: 9077966485
- Building location: Soboleff Bldg 225, Juneau Campus
- Pdf file CV