Ellen Cushman

College of Social Sciences and Humanities Dean's Professor, Civic Sustainability; Professor, English; Associate Dean, Academic Affairs, Diversity and Inclusion

As Dean’s Professor of Civic Sustainability, my research explores the perseverance of people made possible with reading and writing. I’m currently co-leading a team that is developing a digital archive to support the translation of Cherokee language manuscripts housed in museums and archives around the country in an effort to advance language perseverance and preservation efforts. This project has been generously supported with an Institute for Museums and Library Services Sparks! Ignition Grant and a Northeastern University Tier 1 Grant.

My current research also includes two forthcoming edited collections: Literacies: A Critical Sourcebook, 2nd edition, with co-editors Christina Haas and Mike Rose (Macmillan); and Landmark Essays on Rhetorics of Difference, with co-editors Damián Baca and Jonathan Osborne (Routledge). My sole-authored books, The Cherokee Syllabary: Writing the People’s Perseverance (Oklahoma UP 2012) and The Struggle and the Tools: Oral and Literate Strategies in an Inner City Community, (SUNY UP 1998) were based on activist qualitative research with my tribe and urban community members in upstate New York.