Dr. Sara Austin
Assistant Professor of English
What led you to be a professor?
I started college as a biomedical engineer, but that did not really fit and so I switched to English and education. I had wonderful high school teachers and I wanted to do what they did. After college, I taught high school English and Latin for three years at the same school I graduated from, working with my former teachers. It was weird, but nice. I was taking online classes to finish a Master’s degree in Classical studies when the district I worked for lost funding. My husband and I both decided to go to graduate school. Once I finished my Master’s in English, I taught middle school language arts for a little while, but college literature and writing was what I loved the most. So, I applied to PhD programs in English, and this will be my 12th year teaching college writing.
What are your favorite research topics and why do they interest you?
My primary research is in children’s and young adult literature and media, and comics. When I was in graduate school my friends were all reading Shakespeare and I was watching My Little Pony. I made a good choice. I love my field because it is so under researched. There is not 400 years of academic study in children’s literature. There is only about 40 years of research, which means there is a lot of space for me to work in. Also, people tend to dismiss children’s literature as unimportant because they tend to dismiss children, but that simply is not true. Children’s literature is just as culturally rich as any other genre, and I would argue does more to shape our culture. We can tell a lot about a group of people by what they teach their children, and what we read as children has a profound effect on how we think about ourselves and our world. My current projects look at how teens use TikTok as a therapeutic space, and what Lil Nas X and the My Little Pony movie show us about adaptations of Paradise Lost for children and teens.
What’s the top thing you’ve learned through your research, thus far, that you want to share with students?
Academic research can be whatever you want it to be. My undergraduate program was a Great Books program and so it was very focused on canon (Milton, Chaucer, Shakespeare, etc). I never felt a connection to what I was reading. In graduate school I discovered Cultural Studies, and I learned that I could research and write about things that I had never considered before such as games, or music, or picture books. I was able to connect and really be excited and passionate about my research. The most important thing I think for students to know is that you do not have to be invested in 200-year-old literature to be an English major or an academic generally, you can find an area that is interesting to you and pursue it. Come find me (office 13), I’ll help you.
What was your favorite project you’ve done and what do you think was the coolest/most interesting aspect of it?
My book is my favorite thing so far. It is called Monstrous Youth and it is about how children and teens use monsters to represent them. For example, teens in the 1950s went to the drive-in to see I Was a Teenage Werewolf because it was about adults telling kids what was best for them, even if it really wasn’t. In 2010, teens read Twilight because it was about adults telling teens what was best for them. Every generation just wants to be respected and allowed to make their own choices and we really see that in monster media.
What is your favorite course to teach?
This is my first semester at KWC and I am really looking forward to my Modernism course. In the spring I am excited to teach a course on Disability Studies. Eventually I will teach a comics course, maybe a science fiction or horror class, and maybe a children’s literature course. I could never pick one favorite. My favorite is always what I am teaching now.