Roberta Wolfson

About

Roberta Wolfson is a Lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric, where she teaches courses on the role of language and narrative in movements for racial and social justice. Her research focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first century multiethnic U.S. literatures, risk and security studies, comparative ethnic studies, and critical mixed race studies.

She grew up in San Jose, California and earned her B.A in English with a Chinese minor from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she served as a peer tutor and tutor supervisor in the Undergraduate Writing Center (formerly the Covel Tutorials Composition/ESL Lab). She then headed back up the California coast to earn her M.A. and Ph.D. in English along with a Ph.D. Certificate in College and University Teaching from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she taught in both the Department of English and the Writing Program.

Prior to coming to Stanford, she held an appointment as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where she taught courses on Asian American, African American, Muslim American, and mixed race U.S. literatures. She is currently working on a book project that considers how writers of color use antiracist narrative to challenge the violence of the contemporary U.S. security state.

Area of specialization: literature, ethnic studies, critical mixed race studies, cultural studies

Genre expertise: close reading, literary analysis, research papers, argumentative essays, resumes, personal statements, dissertations, scholarly articles

Enjoys brainstorming, outlining, thesis creation, argument development, revision