University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Graduate Student, English

LAS

Thesis Title: A Novel Way to Learn: Higher Education in African American Fiction from Reconstruction to the Harlem Renaissance

About

Karoliina Engstrom received her B.A. and M.A. in English Philology from the University of Helsinki, minoring in North American Studies and Comparative Literature. She received her M.A. in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she is currently completing her Ph.D. in American Literature. Her dissertation is titled "A Novel Way to Learn: Higher Education in African American Fiction from Reconstruction to the Harlem Renaissance." Her interests include American novels, African American literature, women's writing, black educators, immigrant literature, writing centers, peer mentoring, and first-year experience courses. At the University of Illinois, she has taught classes on Rhetoric, American Literature, the American Novel, and Introduction to Fiction. She has assisted professors in courses on Introduction to Fiction, Introduction to African American Literature, and Literatures of Global Culture. She has worked in the UIUC Writers Workshop since 2005, and has organized events for the National Day on Writing and the African American Read-In. Since 2010, she has worked with the LAS 101: Freshman Seminar, where she supervises and teaches a group of undergraduate interns to serve as instructors and peer mentors to incoming Freshmen.

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