Sara Schwebel
Assistant Professor
Office: 220 Humanities Office Building
(803) 777-2092
Schwebel@mailbox.sc.edu
Current CV
Education
Ph.D., Harvard University, 2006 (History of American Civilization)
Specialization Areas
- Adolescent and Children’s Literature
- American Literature and Culture
- American History/American Literature as school curriculum
Recent Courses
See Course Descriptions for detailed information.
- ENGL 432 Adolescent Literature
- ENGL 282 Fiction
Current Research Project(s)
I am completing a book that examines representations of race, indigeneity, and “Americanness” in the most widely-taught historical novels in U.S. elementary and secondary schools. Using close readings of literary texts, critical reviews, and teacher lesson plans, I explore both the ever-evolving popular conceptions of United States history and the ongoing, didactic use of literature in the American classroom. I am particularly interested in the way historical novels have participated in heated, partisan debates about the “accuracy” of history instruction offered in American grade schools. While many historical novels have been introduced in recent years to meet schools’ multicultural aims, the underlying messages of the most widely-read novels, ironically, mirror those of the history textbooks that they supplement and/or replace. My research offers fresh insight into the “reading wars” and “history wars,” illustrating the way federal policy on poverty, marketing trends in publishing, educational research on reading, and grass-roots civil rights activism coalesced to encourage the formation of a children’s canon.
Publications
“Historical Fiction and the Classroom: History and Myth in Elizabeth George Speare’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond.” Children’s Literature in Education: An International Quarterly 34 (2003): 195-218.
The Student Teacher Handbook, 4th Edition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002. (with David C. Schwebel, Bernice L. Schwebel, and Carol R. Schwebel)
Yale Daily News Guide to Summer Programs. New York: Kaplan Educational Services/Simon & Schuster, 1999, 2000, 2001.