Faculty

Karla Armbruster

Karla Armbruster teaches courses in literature and professional writing and directs the professional writing minor and certificate programs. She also chairs the Environmental Studies Committee.  

Karla’s background includes a Ph.D. in English from the Ohio State University; graduate study in scientific and technical writing at Miami University in Ohio; and work as a writer and editor for an environmental science textbook.  Karla's primary research interests are ecocriticism and American environmental literature, which she pursues through publications (most recently, she is the co-editor of The Bioregional Imagination: Literature, Ecology, and Place and is involvedin the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment.)

Most recently, she has become very interested in animal studies and is working on a book on literary and popular representations of dogs. This project combines personal narrative, literary and cultural analysis, and scientific information on canine behavior and genetics in order to examine the ways we position dogs on the border between culture and nature. In the process, it explores how our representations of dogs inform not only our relationships with real dogs but also our engagement with the wildness of the natural world. For a taste of this project, read a talk Karla gave on “Dogs, Dirt, and Public Space” at a gathering sponsored by the Animals and Society Institute at Duke University in 2009.

Karla’s interests are also reflected in her courses; for example, her Perspectives course on Werewolves, Seal Wives, Grizzly Men and Other Metamorphoses recently won the 2011 Distinguished New Course Award from the Humane Society of the United States and the Animals and Society Institute. View the Global Thinking story.