Interview With English Professor Rachel Feder

Could you briefly describe your current teaching, research, and service commitments, and how they shape your work as a scholar? 

Right now, I’m gearing up to teach a new course offering in Spring 2026: "ENGL 2709-2: Literary Careers and Communities." This will be a 4D Friday offering and will give undergraduate students in our department a chance to connect with writers, editors, agents, and literary arts organizations - including several local institutions and University of Denver alums. I’m excited to teach this course in part because literary community is a huge value of mine, one that informs how I think about not only teaching and service, but also writing and scholarship. 

How do you see the relationship between your teaching, research, and service work? Do they inform or reinforce one another in your academic practice? 

My experiments in teaching, writing, and research are indelibly linked. Some of my writing projects grow out of my teaching, and I often design courses around open questions that I’m pursuing in my own work. I quote and cite students in my scholarly work frequently, and have even collaborated with students and former students on publications. Some service work, like curricular design, is quite connected to my pedagogy. I feel really lucky to to grow as a writer, thinker, and scholar in our amazing community. 

What courses are you currently teaching, and what are the key themes or learning goals you emphasize in these classes?

Right now, I’m teaching "Bibliography and Research Methods" for the first time in a decade. I completely reimagined the class for our current moment of ubiquitous AI and epistemicide, and I’m so grateful for the discussions we’ve had about what it means to research, write, and consume and share information at this cultural inflection point. It has also been exciting to watch everyone’s individual research projects come together.  

Are there particular pedagogical strategies or assignments that you find especially effective or meaningful in your teaching? 

Any time I can design part of the course in collaboration with course participants, or pivot to follow student interests and passions, I’m happy. A fun example: a couple of years ago, in "Nineteenth-Century British Poetry," students asked if we could take a class session to think about the writings of Burke, Kant, and Spinoza in relation to the Barbie movie. This turned out to be a fantastic provocation for thinking about the connections between aesthetics and ethics, and about how these connections come to bear on questions of gender, art, and identity. 

What projects are you currently working on? 

I have a horror novella coming out in July and am putting the finishing touches on a scholarly collaboration that puts Wordsworth and Coleridge’s "Lyrical Ballads" in conversation with intellectual history, contemporary poetry, and early feminist writings. I’m also cooking up some experiments in new genres, and look forward to sharing more soon. 

What drew you to these research topics, and how do they contribute to ongoing conversations in your field? 

I’m interested in genre as a form of experiment, one that imagines its audience into being. This preoccupation leads me to understand my “field” in capacious, dynamic ways. Across projects and genres, I’m particularly interested in the connections between literary history and our shared cultural mythologies. This is a broad topic that feels relevant to scholarly conversations about literature and to a broader reading public, as well.