Nancy Welch

Professor Emeritus

Alma mater(s)
  • Ph.D. University of Nebraska, 1995

BIO

Nancy Welch is a Professor of English at UVM. Her areas of expertise are composition and rhetoric (including the rhetoric of social movements, US working-class rhetorical history, and women and rhetoric), fiction and nonfiction writing, and literacy studies. Her work has been featured in  College English, Pedagogy, Ploughshares, and the Community Literacy Journal. Her essay "We're Here and We're Not Going Anywhere': Why Working-Class Rhetorical Action Still Matters" was awarded College English's Richard Ohmann Award for Outstanding Article. She currently coordinates the UVM Graduate Writing Center.

Courses

  • Topics in Composition and Rhetoric: U.S. Literacy Politics and Rhetoric and (the Rollback of) Women's Rights 
  • Three Women Rhetors
  • Writing as Re-vision
  • Advanced Nonfiction Writing Workshop: Autobiography and/as Argument
  • Aphrodite's Daughters: Contemporary Women's Rhetorical Practices
  • "Only Connect": Creative Writing and Critical Inquiry
  • Competing Theories of Composing
  • Dream-Work and Discipline: Freud, Bakhtin, and the Teaching of Writing
  • Teaching Writing and Rhetoric

Publications

Nancy Welch Publications (DOCX)

Awards and Achievements

National and Regional

  • Citations in Best American Short Stories 2014 and Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014 for “Pretty.”
  • Richard Ohmann Award for Outstanding Article in College English 2010-2011, for “‘We’re Here and We’re Not Going Anywhere’: Why Working Class Rhetorical Traditions Still Matter.”
  • Five-Week Residency in Fiction Writing. Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT, July 2010.
  • Honorable Mention, Civic Scholarship Outstanding Book Award, for Living Room: Teaching Public Writing in a Privatized World, awarded by Reflections: Writing, Service-Learning, and Community Literacy, 2009.
  • New Student Orientation/First-Year Seminar Featured Book, Castleton State University, 2007, for The Road from Prosperity, selected as the common reading for all first-year seminars.
  • Short List, Mary McCarthy Award for Fiction, 2002, for The Cheating Kind (top 12 out of 500 manuscripts considered).
  • Citation in The O. Henry Awards Prize Stories 2000 for “Mental.”
  • Prairie Schooner Reader’s Choice Award, 1999, for the short story “Mental.”
  • Special Mention in The Pushcart Prize 1999: Best of the Small Presses for “Running to Ethiopia.”
  • Honorable Mention, James L. Kinneavy Award for Most Outstanding Article in JAC for “Worlds in the Making: The Literacy Project as Potential Space,” 1996.

University of Vermont

  • Instructional Incentive Grant, with the Composition Committee, for “Working with English Language Learners in Introductory Writing and Literature Classrooms,” Summer 2010.
  • Problem-Based Learning Community Award, with Julie Roberts, Communication Sciences, and Emily Manetta, Anthropology, for “Communicative Competence in a Multi-literate World,” Spring 2008.
  • English Graduate Student Association Faculty Appreciation Award, Spring 2005.
  • University Service Learning Fellowship, Spring 2001.
  • University Committee for Research and Scholarship Award, Summer 1997.

Area(s) of expertise

Composition and rhetoric including rhetoric of social movements, U.S. working-class rhetorical history, and women and rhetoric; fiction and nonfiction writing; and literacy studies

Bio

Nancy Welch is a Professor of English at UVM. Her areas of expertise are composition and rhetoric (including the rhetoric of social movements, US working-class rhetorical history, and women and rhetoric), fiction and nonfiction writing, and literacy studies. Her work has been featured in  College English, Pedagogy, Ploughshares, and the Community Literacy Journal. Her essay "We're Here and We're Not Going Anywhere': Why Working-Class Rhetorical Action Still Matters" was awarded College English's Richard Ohmann Award for Outstanding Article. She currently coordinates the UVM Graduate Writing Center.

Courses

  • Topics in Composition and Rhetoric: U.S. Literacy Politics and Rhetoric and (the Rollback of) Women's Rights 
  • Three Women Rhetors
  • Writing as Re-vision
  • Advanced Nonfiction Writing Workshop: Autobiography and/as Argument
  • Aphrodite's Daughters: Contemporary Women's Rhetorical Practices
  • "Only Connect": Creative Writing and Critical Inquiry
  • Competing Theories of Composing
  • Dream-Work and Discipline: Freud, Bakhtin, and the Teaching of Writing
  • Teaching Writing and Rhetoric

Awards and Achievements

National and Regional

  • Citations in Best American Short Stories 2014 and Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014 for “Pretty.”
  • Richard Ohmann Award for Outstanding Article in College English 2010-2011, for “‘We’re Here and We’re Not Going Anywhere’: Why Working Class Rhetorical Traditions Still Matter.”
  • Five-Week Residency in Fiction Writing. Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT, July 2010.
  • Honorable Mention, Civic Scholarship Outstanding Book Award, for Living Room: Teaching Public Writing in a Privatized World, awarded by Reflections: Writing, Service-Learning, and Community Literacy, 2009.
  • New Student Orientation/First-Year Seminar Featured Book, Castleton State University, 2007, for The Road from Prosperity, selected as the common reading for all first-year seminars.
  • Short List, Mary McCarthy Award for Fiction, 2002, for The Cheating Kind (top 12 out of 500 manuscripts considered).
  • Citation in The O. Henry Awards Prize Stories 2000 for “Mental.”
  • Prairie Schooner Reader’s Choice Award, 1999, for the short story “Mental.”
  • Special Mention in The Pushcart Prize 1999: Best of the Small Presses for “Running to Ethiopia.”
  • Honorable Mention, James L. Kinneavy Award for Most Outstanding Article in JAC for “Worlds in the Making: The Literacy Project as Potential Space,” 1996.

University of Vermont

  • Instructional Incentive Grant, with the Composition Committee, for “Working with English Language Learners in Introductory Writing and Literature Classrooms,” Summer 2010.
  • Problem-Based Learning Community Award, with Julie Roberts, Communication Sciences, and Emily Manetta, Anthropology, for “Communicative Competence in a Multi-literate World,” Spring 2008.
  • English Graduate Student Association Faculty Appreciation Award, Spring 2005.
  • University Service Learning Fellowship, Spring 2001.
  • University Committee for Research and Scholarship Award, Summer 1997.

Areas of Expertise

Composition and rhetoric including rhetoric of social movements, U.S. working-class rhetorical history, and women and rhetoric; fiction and nonfiction writing; and literacy studies