Dr. Levin Arnsperger

I am currently the Associate Director of the Emory Writing Center (EWC) and the English Language Learning Program at Emory University. Among my main duties are teaching writing classes for multilingual students (mainly ENGRD 101 and ENGRD 221) as well as recruiting, hiring, and supervising our large staff of about 35 graduate and undergraduate tutors at the EWC.

After growing up in Stuttgart, Germany, I studied American Studies, Political Science, History, and Comparative Literature at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Free University – primarily at the John F. Kennedy Institute – and Emory University. I finished my dissertation in the English Department at Emory under the supervision of Dr. Walter Kalaidjian, Dr. Craig Womack, and Dr. Michael Elliott; the doctoral degree was awarded in August 2013.

My article on “Communal and International Visions in Muslim and Arab American Poetry after September 11” was published in 2016 in the book Islam and Postcolonial Culture, edited by Esra Santesso and Jamie McClung. A review of a two-volume work on American Indians and Popular Culture was published in the Spring 2014 issue of the American Indian Quarterly. In 2012, the journal LWU published my article on “Paranoia after September 11: Submitting to the Specter of Terrorism”. My research interests have included twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literature as well as Native American literature and contemporary global literatures. More recently, I have conducted research in the field of writing center studies, and I have presented at various conferences, for example at IWCA and SWCA. I have also taken a close look, by traveling to China and interviewing and surveying students, at the journeys of college-bound students from China to the U.S. With Hong Li and Michael Cerny, I published “Censorship Fears and Vampire hours: Chinese International Students, Zoom, and Remote Learning” in 2020 and “International Student Migration: Pre-COVID Educational Paths of Chinese Undergraduate Students at Emory University” in 2021.

During the academic year 2013-2014, I was Visiting Assistant Professor at Kennesaw State University, with a joint appointment in English and American Studies. At Kennesaw State, I taught graduate and undergraduate classes, including the 90-seat section of ENGL 2110-World Literature and AMST 7520-America in Transnational Context.  Previously, as a graduate student at Emory, I had gained substantial experience as a literature and writing teacher, teaching first-year writing classes and upper-level seminars.

From 2014-2019, I primarily taught first-year writing and continuing writing courses, exclusively designed for non-native speakers of English. The thematic emphasis of these classes was frequently on the very experiences of the students, on understanding the opinions, beliefs, and perspectives of different groups, or on sustainability and environmentalism. Since 2019, I have accepted more administrative duties, but I have continued to teach writing and other courses, including classes open to native speakers as well, for example a freshman seminar. Each year, I also co-teach a practicum class mandatory for our incoming writing tutors, and I have developed a one-credit course on academic communication skills. In addition, our ELLP Director and I have been offering an annual certification course for instructors interested in working with multilingual students. Over the years, I have taught and mentored hundreds of internationals students, and half of the students meeting with our tutors are English language learners. For my positive impact on this population, I was awarded Emory University’s International Outreach Award for 2020-2021.

Working and engaging with students has been infinitely inspiring. I enjoy studying and teaching writing and rhetoric as well as contemporary American literature and culture, and I am excited to work with different communities, both on campus and off campus, for instance via EWC partnerships with the Emory Autism Center and Freedom University (or in the past as a tutor for Refugee Family Services, since renamed New American Pathways). Through my current position in Emory’s ELLP and EWC, I can combine my interests in writing studies, American Studies, international relations, and program management.

In addition to my main teaching and service in the ELLP and EWC, I have assumed other various other academic and non-academic roles. Throughout my graduate studies I have conducted research as a graduate assistant for The Letters of Samuel Beckett. Similarly, starting with my time as an exchange student and Fulbright grantee in 2004-2005, I was involved with the Richard Ellmann Lectures as a volunteer coordinator and graduate assistant. For two summers, I served as an orientation assistant for Emory’s International Student and Scholar Services. I have also been a teacher at the Goethe-Zentrum Atlanta, where I have been leading German language classes at all levels since 2012. I have studied Latin (1992-1998), English (since 1993), French (since 1994), Italian (since 2001), and Arabic (mostly 2009-2013), and I have worked on a number of smaller interpretation and translation projects in addition to a published translation of Barack Obama’s speeches into German.

I also acquired valuable experience as a teacher-facilitator in the Business School, tutoring in the Business Writing Center and assisting with Business Communication classes. During my final year at Emory, in 2012-2013, I worked as a Graduate Fellow with the Office of Sustainability Initiatives and the then-Center for Community Partnerships. My fellowship allowed me to gain insights into efforts on the part of Emory and non-profits in Atlanta to promote healthy, sustainable life styles and protect precious natural resources. Prior to commencing my doctoral studies, I worked as an intern for The Carter Center in Atlanta, the German Consulate General in New York, and the German Department of State in Berlin.