Kelly Wissman

Kelly Wissman received her Ph.D. in Reading/Writing/Literacy from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005. Prior to completing her doctorate, she held various and often overlapping roles as an educator, qualitative researcher, and after school program facilitator.

Dr. Wissman’s research interests include literature for children and young adults; adolescent literacies; gender and education; photography and literacy; and out-of-school literacies. Across her scholarship, she considers how literature, literacies, and the arts can facilitate the creation of more socially just and more humanizing educational spaces, especially for students who are often maligned or misunderstood in broader educational and public discourses.  Dr. Wissman’s research has been supported by the National Council of Teachers of English Research Foundation and two grants from the Faculty Research Awards Program at the University at Albany.  She serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy and is a trained Safe Space Ally at the University at Albany.

In 2006, she was awarded the Selma Greenberg Dissertation Award from the Research on Women and Education Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. She is also the recipient of the 2010 Virginia Hamilton Essay Award Honor Certificate, presented by the Virginia Hamilton Conference Advisory Board at Kent State University.

Teaching:

Dr. Wissman teaches Literature for Reading Programs (ERDG 504), Practicum in Literacy Teaching and Learning, 5-12 (ERDG 605), Literacy in Society (ERDG 610) and Theory and Research in Teaching Literature (ERDG 732).

Selected Publications:

Wissman, K. & Vasudevan, L. (2012). Re-writing the stock stories of urban adolescents: Autobiography as a social and performative practice at the intersections of  identities.  In D. Alvermann & K. Hinchman (Eds.) Reconceptualizing the literacies in adolescents' lives: Bridging the everyday/academic divide (3rd ed.) (pp. 160-180). New York:  Routledge.

Wissman, K. (2011). “Rise up!”:  Literacies, lived experiences, and social identities in an in-school “Other space.” Research in the Teaching of English, 45 (4), 405-438.

Wissman, K. & Wiseman, A. (2011). “That’s my worst nightmare”:  Poetry and trauma in the middle school classroom. Pedagogies:  An International Journal, 6 (3), 234-249.

Vasudevan, L. & Wissman, K. (2011). Out-of-school literacy contexts. In D. Lapp & D.   Fisher (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching the English Language Arts (3rd ed.) (pp. 97-103). New York: Routledge.

Wissman, K. (2009). “Spinning themselves into poetry”:  Images of urban adolescent writers in two novels for young adults.  Children’s Literature in Education, 40 (2), 149-167. (Recipient of 2010 Virginia Hamilton Essay Honor Certificate)

Wissman, K. (2009). Reading and becoming living authors:  Urban girls pursuing a poetry of self-definition.  English Journal, 98 (3), 39-45.

Wissman, K. (2008). “This is what I see”: (Re) envisioning photography as a social practice. In M. Hill & L.Vasudevan (Eds.), Media, learning, and sites of possibility (pp. 13-45).  New York:  Peter Lang.

Wissman, K. (2007).  “Making a way”: Young women using literacy and language to resist the politics of silencing.  Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 51 (4), 340-349.

Wissman, K. (2007).  “Writing will keep you free”:  Allusions to and recreations of the fairy tale heroine in The House on Mango Street. Children’s Literature in Education, 38 (1), 17-34.