Ted Howell

I’m Ted Howell, a Lecturer at Rowan University with a joint appointment in the Departments of Writing Arts and Geography, Planning, & Sustainability. I earned my Ph.D. in English from Temple University in 2017. Before graduate school, I worked as Production Editor, and then Managing Editor, for the Taylor & Francis Group in downtown Philadelphia.

My teaching focuses on environmental and sustainability issues, specifically climate change. I love to help students develop their capacity for ecological thought and enable them to find actionable solutions to incredibly complex problems. Currently, I’m a Teaching Fellow with Rowan’s Center for Responsible Leadership, where I’m developing a module that introduces students to the UN Sustainable Development Goals through an attention to their local environments and communities. My course on climate change fiction, which is often called “cli-fi,” has been featured in The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Smithsonian, and I also lead workshops for local libraries about what novels can teach us about climate change. You can read my reflections on that course on a Medium post I wrote about it.

My Ph.D. research focused on British modernist fiction, early ecology, and the Anthropocene. I’m interested in how philosophies of nature are reflected in literary works and how scientists, reformers, and authors collaborate to formulate and frame ideas about the environment. My work has been published in Modern Language Quarterly and the collection Modernism and the Anthropocene, and I’m now working on an article about the speculative fiction of Octavia Butler.

In addition to my scholarly work, I present and write about teaching and pedagogy, most recently at the 2021 KEEN National Conference and the 2020 UN PRME NE Conference on Sustainable Development Goals. I’ve also created a series of freely available learning modules through my work with Rowan’s Cultivating the Environmental Humanities group.,

I live in Glassboro with my wife and two kids, and I enjoy hiking, gardening, playing disc golf and board games, and exploring parks and woods at every opportunity.

Education

• Doctor of Philosophy - PhD Temple University (2010 — 2017)
• Master of Arts - MA Villanova University (2008.09 — 2010.08)
• Bachelor of Arts - BA Eastern University (2000.09 — 2004.05)

Companies

• Lecturer Rowan University (2017)
• 3/4 Time Instructor Rowan University (2015 — 2017)
• Graduate Teaching Assistant Temple University (2012 — 2015)
• University Fellow Temple University (2010 — 2012)
• Graduate Assistant / Writing Center Tutor Villanova University (2008 — 2010)
• Production Supervisor Taylor & Francis (2008 — 2008)
• Production Editor Taylor & Francis Group (2006 — 2008)