By Amelia Bickel
Copy Editor
Dr. Martha Pitts, Washington College’s new Assistant Professor of English, is excited to join the campus community this fall.
This semester, Dr. Pitts is teaching English 101 with a focus on illness and disability; African American Literature and Culture 213, the first part of a year-long survey; and an African American autobiography class. WC’s English faculty is looking forward to the research and teaching expertise and experience Dr. Pitts brings to her position.
“I think she’s going to be a great addition to the department,” Associate English Department Chair Dr. Elizabeth O’Connor said. “Her research in 19th and 20th century literature [and] African American literature…will really help deepen and broaden the types of classes that we can offer.”
Dr. Pitts was born and raised in New Orleans. She later moved to the Baltimore area and then to Delaware, where she heard about WC from while working at a high school in Middletown.
She has extensive teaching experience in both higher education and high school. Passionate about teaching, Dr. Pitts values curiosity and problem-solving in the classroom.
“I just look at every class as just like this lab and experience and experiment,” Dr. Pitts said. “I want [students] to be curious, and if they don’t understand what we’re reading, I want them to ask questions and…navigate those kinds of challenges together.”
With two teenagers at home, the new professor is not a stranger to the current experiences of young people.
“I think one of the reasons I enjoy working with college students or teenagers is because I have two teenagers…and I think that just gives me another kind of perspective on what you all are going through or navigating,” Dr. Pitts said.
After initial screening and virtual interviews, the hiring process involved a teaching demonstration and research talk during which the candidate and WC faculty could meet each other in person to determine if the position was a good fit.
Dr. Pitts’ demonstration took place during Dr. O’Connor’s women’s literature class.
“Her teaching experience and her excellence in that teaching demonstration [stood out],” Dr. O’Connor said. “We are a teaching-centric college in that we really value and put a premium on good teachers and I think we found one.”
English Department Chair Dr. Courtney Rydel also spoke highly of Dr. Pitts’ teaching style.
“[Dr. Pitts] is a fantastic model and inspiration for our aspiring high school English teachers,” Dr. Rydel said. “I loved how she listened to student responses, made students comfortable, and really reinforced and extended their ideas…I think she’s really going to give students that confidence and reassurance in their own intellectual agency.”
For her research talk, Dr. Pitts presented her findings surrounding the Civil War stories of African American nurses.
“That narrative is part of the larger research interest of first-person narratives by African American women, especially those who are formerly enslaved, but they don’t really prioritize [their enslavement] in their narrative,” she said.
Dr. Pitts focuses on how the women use their narratives to “engage in citizenship practices” and “present themselves as citizens of the world, even though legally they may not have been considered as such.”
Recently, Dr. Pitts has become interested in disability and illness studies in relation to autobiographical accounts.
“It all comes down to these autobiographies [and] how these first-person narratives really challenge…the medical discourses that have dominated how we think about illness and disability,” Dr. Pitts said.
In addition to being a researcher, Dr. Pitts is a creative writer who hopes to spend more time both writing and teaching the form at WC. After settling in, she looks forward to meeting more of the campus community.
“I really want to get to know the students and figure out what they bring to the classroom [and] help them become critical readers and thinkers and get to know my colleagues beyond the English Department,” Dr. Pitts said, “I’m looking forward to just being out and about and meeting more folks.”
Photo courtesy of Martha Pitts.
Photo Caption: Dr. Martha Pitts joins Washington College’s faculty this year as an associate professor in the English department.