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Sandra Dahlberg

Sandra L. Dahlberg

Professor of English

Office: S1028
713-221-8949
dahlbergs@uhd.edu

Scholarships

Dr. Dahlberg is professor of English at UHD. She joined the UHD faculty in 1997 after completing a Ph.D. at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is a former chair of the English department and is now the UHD Faculty Ombuds. She is a past president of the Modern Language Association’s discussion group on the Literatures of the United States in Languages other than English (2011-2012), and an elected board member to that group form 2007-2012. She is a former fellow of Harvard University’s Longfellow Institute, and a charter member of the Working-Class Studies Association.


​Ph.D., University of Washington, Seattle, 1997
M.A., University of Washington, Seattle, 1993
B.A., University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA, 1991



  • ENG 1301 Composition I
  • ENG 1302 Composition II
  • ENG 2311 Survey of American Literature: Beginnings to 1865
  • ENG 3313 Studies in Dramatic Literature
  • ENG 3322 Mexican American Literature
  • ENG 3340 Cultural Criticism
  • ENG 3352 Studies in World Mythology and Folklore
  • ENG 3353 Social Class and Literature
  • ENG 3362 Studies in the Literature and Culture of the Americas before 1800
  • ENG 4098 English Portfolio
  • ENG 4312 Literature of the South and Southwest
  • ENG 4314 Major Authors—Rudolfo Anaya
  • ENG 6314 American Literature Seminar

 

Dr. Dahlberg has a Ph.D. in English and specializes in transatlantic examinations of early American literature including the Spanish Southwest, and the literary representation of poverty. Much of her research examines the cultural impact of the (often adversarial) portrayals of American Indians in colonial texts such as Los moros y cristianos, Los comanches, Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá's epic poem The History of New Mexico, and the narrative of Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca. She is an active scholar whose publications include articles on the letters of Richard Frethorne, an indentured servant in early Jamestown, Virginia; the depiction of poverty in Robert Armin's play, The Two Maids of More-Clacke; and the conquest drama Los comanches. Her co-edited collection, Reclaiming Class: Women, Poverty, and the Promise of Higher Education in America examines the role poverty-class culture plays in the pursuit of higher education, and the systemic barriers poor women face in their efforts to obtain college degrees. She has been teaching American literature and dramatic literature since 1993, and at UHD since 1997. She has presented conference papers at the Modern Language Association, the American Studies Association, the Shakespeare Association of America, the Western American Literature conference, the International Congress on Medieval Studies (Michigan), and the International Medieval Congress (UK). Dahlberg was elected to the executive board of the Modern Language Association's discussion group for the Literatures of the United States in Languages other than English (2007-2012). She received the UHD Scholarly Achievement Award in 2004, and was awarded a Longfellow Institute Fellowship at Harvard University for her work on Los comanches.

Dr. Dahlberg current research examines an unpublished travel narrative, “The Travels of Richard Traunter” (1700), that provides insights into relations between the Native peoples of the Virginia-Carolina piedmont and colonial traders, and Traunter’s involvement in the English Board of Trade’s Carolina silver project.


PUBLICATIONS

Book

Reclaiming Class: Women, Poverty, and the Promise of Education in America, edited with Vivyan Adair,  Temple University Press, 2003.   

Journal Articles (peer-reviewed)

"'To stirre vp liuing mens minds to the like good': Robert Armin, John in the Hospital, and the

Representation of Poverty," with Peter Greenfield, forthcoming in Medieval and Renaissance  Drama in England (2015).

"'Doe Not Forget Me': Richard Frethorne, Indentured Servitude, and the English Poor Law of 1601,"  Early American Literature 47.1 (2012): 1-31.

"Comparative American Borderlands: The New Face of Western American Literatures, Western  American Literature 43.3 (2008): 307-313.

"'All Hat and No Cattle': Separate and Unequal Funding for Higher Education in Texas," Radical Teacher  73 (2005): 21-25.

"Class, Pedagogy and Praxis," with Vivyan Adair, Radical Teacher 68 (2004): 18-22.

"Welfare Class Identities and the Rhetoric of Erasure in Academia," with Vivyan Adair, Public Voices: A  Journal of Public Policy 5.3 (2002): 75-83.

"Cutting Class in the Multi-Cultural Literature Classroom," with Vivyan Adair, Pedagogy 1.1 (2000): 173-175. (Duke University Press). 

Book Chapters (peer reviewed)

"Survival in a Not So Brave New World," in Reclaiming Class: Women, Poverty, and the Promise of  Higher Education in America, Temple University Press, 2003. 67-84.

"Families First—But Not in Higher Education: Poor, Independent Students and the Impact of Financial Aid," in Reclaiming Class: Women, Poverty, and the Promise of Higher Education in America, Temple University Press, 2003. 169-195.

"Introduction: Reclaiming Our Class," with Vivyan Adair.  In Reclaiming Class: Women, Poverty, and the Promise of Higher Education in America, Temple University Press, 2003. 1-20.

"'Los Comanches' at Alcalde: Two Centuries of Tradition," Multilingual America: Transnationality, Ethnicity, and the Languages of American Literature, editor Werner Sollors, New York University Press, 1998.  81-90.

"Having the Last Word: Recording the Cost of Conquest in 'Los Comanches,'" Recovering the U.S.

Hispanic Literary Heritage, Volume II, edited by Erlinda Gonzales-Berry and Charles Tatum, Arte Publico, 1996.  133-147.


Grants

University of Houston-Downtown, Organized Research Grant, 2014.

University of Houston-Downtown, Organized Research Grant, 2010.

University of Houston-Downtown, Faculty Funded Leave Grant, 2009.

University of Houston-Downtown, Faculty Development Grant, 2008.

Cullen Center, University of Houston-Downtown, First Generation/First Year College Student Faculty Facilitator, 2005-2006.

University of Houston-Downtown, Faculty Development Grant, 2006. 

University of Houston-Downtown, Faculty Development Grant, 2005.

University of Houston-Downtown, Scholarship/Creativity Achievement Award, 2004.

University of Houston-Downtown, Organized Research Grant, 2004.

University of Houston-Downtown, Organized Research Grant, 2000.

University of Houston-Downtown, Faculty Development Grant, 1999.

Harvard University, John D. Sawyer Fellowship, the Longfellow Institute, 1996-1997.

University of Washington, W. W. Stout Fellowship, 1996-1997.

Paragon Award (for Outstanding Faculty Advisor), Greater Northwest Region of Phi Theta Kappa  International Honor Society, 1997.

University of Washington, Graduate School Dissertation Fellowship, 1996.

Phi Kappa Phi Herlinger Graduate Fellowship, 1991.

Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society, 1990.

     

 
 
 


     

  

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