Rebecca A. Brown

Personal Statement

Get to Know Me

Hello! I'm Rebecca Brown, an instructional designer at North Seattle College; I use she/her pronouns. I taught composition and literature courses at universities and colleges in Washington, Texas, and Florida for 18 years, including North Seattle College. My love of teaching research writing led me to enroll in library school. The University of Washington's MLIS program ignited my passion for accessibility, campus outreach, critical and anti-racist pedagogies, exhibition design, and open educational resources. After completing this degree, I worked as an instructional designer at City University of Seattle. I'm ecstatic to return to North Seattle College, and I look forward to collaborating with you! 

Teaching, Consultation, & Workshop Practices

In the classroom, I aim to create student-centered, inclusive spaces where collaboration, open inquiry, and creativity can flourish. I'm a strong advocate of Universal Design for Learning, so I try to design classes where students can engage, represent, and express their ideas in a multitude of ways. Drawing on critical and anti-racist pedagogies, I hope to help students think through whose voices are absent and present, how knowledges are created and codified, and whose knowledges are discovered, accessed, and made visible/invisible within a variety of contexts.  

These practices inform my approaches to consultations and workshops. In one-on-one and small group consultations, I strive to openly and actively listen, to create an inclusive work space, and to offer support in meaningful ways. In workshops, I seek to provide accessible foundations and context for the work we're about to undertake and then offer a range of ways to begin that work. In both consultations and workshops, I welcome discussions, pedagogies, and practices that challenge and transform inequitable social systems and structures.

Digital Scholarship

Mountain Dream Tarot: Where Cartomancy Meets Photography: A multiple pathway digital essay on Scalar. Winter 2020-present. 

Academic Libraries, Higher Education in Prison, and System-Impacted Students: Designing for Activism: A capstone project on Manifold, which posited starting points for the UW Libraries to consider co-creating instruction, programming, and resources with faculty and other stakeholders to support incarcerated and system-impacted students. Winter-Spring 2020.             

Academic Library Instruction: A seven-chapter digital book on Pressbooks. Fall 2019.

Other Selected Publications

"Exploring Information Privilege." Co-written with Elizabeth St. Clair. City University of Seattle Social Justice Coalition Newsletter 1.11 (2021): 2-4.

“Engendering Friendship: Re-imagining Jewish and Vampiric Boyhood in Joann Sfar’s Little Vampire.” Graphic Novels for Children and Young Adults: A Collection of Critical Essays. Eds. Michelle Ann Abate and Gwen Tarbox. University of Mississippi Press, 2017, 233-246.

“‘Please Don’t Eat Those Sweet Potatoes’: Race, Labor, Food, and Subterfuge in Mercer Mayer’s Liza Lou and the Yeller Belly Swamp.” Children's Literature Association Quarterly 41.4 (2016): 420-442.

Monsters and Monstrosity from the Fin de Siècle to the Millennium: New Essays. Co-edited with Sharla Hutchison. McFarland Press, 2015. 

"Promoting Cooperation and Respect: 'Bad' Poetry Slam in the Nontraditional Classroom." Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 11.3 (2011): 571-577.

Degrees and Certificates

• Creative Commons for Educators Certificate (2023)
• Master's in Library and Information Science from the University of Washington (2020)
• Doctorate in English literature from the University of Florida (2007)
• Master's in English literature from Western Washington University (2002)
• Bachelor's in Comparative Literature/Cinema Studies from the University of Washington (1999)