Stephanie L. K Kerschbaum is Associate Professor of English at the University of Delaware, where she teaches first-year writing, advanced writing, and disability studies courses, as well as graduate seminars in rhetoric and writing studies. Her experience working in the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has deeply informed her work as a teacher and researcher.
In her book, Toward a New Rhetoric of Difference, she addresses conversations about diversity in higher education, institutional racism, and the teaching of writing by focusing on how people talk with one another, especially around issues of difference. For example, she asks questions like, "How does someone come to realize another person has a different meaning for a word or a phrase than they do?" or "How does someone communicate to someone else how they want to be understood?" These questions underpin everyday acts of communication, from routine conversational exchanges to decisions about which direction to take a one-to-one conference.
With Margaret Price, she is currently at work on an interview study of disabled faculty members. Her most recent article, "Anecdotal Relations: On Orienting to Disability in the Composition Classroom," examines the ways that teachers use stories to create and frame the relationships they build with their students in the classroom where disability is concerned.
When she is not writing, researching, and teaching, she enjoys designing and making cross stitch projects, playing with her two small children, and watching old mystery shows.