Department of English

Carolyn Smith was the Department’s Director of Writing Programs from 1987 to 1998 and a member of the faculty until her retirement in 2001. She taught courses in American literature, American women writers, and argumentative and academic writing. She received her MA and PhD from Duke University, and held a Fulbright Fellowship at the University of London. She received an NEH Summer Seminar fellowship in 1985, and an UF Outstanding Service Award in 1989.

Her publications in the field of argumentative and academic writing include The New Teacher in Context: Scenarios For Beginning Teachers of College Courses (NCTE, 1993), co-authored with three other directors of writing programs, and “American Women in Rhetoric and Composition, 1700–1970,” in the Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing in the United States, eds. Davidson and Wagner-Martin (1995).

She has presented papers at meetings of the Conference on College Composition and Communication and the Florida College English Association, on American literature and disability and aging studies. Her publications in these fields include “Images of Aging in American Poetry, 1925–1985,” in Handbook of the Humanities and Aging, ed. Cole, Van Tassel, and Kastenbaum (1992), and “Old Age Freedom in the Late Poetry of Josephine Miles, l975–l985,” in Gender and Aging, eds. Rossen and Wyatt-Brown ( l993). She is currently completing a larger study of the poetry of Josephine Miles.