Christian Knoeller

Promoted to Professor
Department of English
knoeller@purdue.edu

Christian Knoeller received a Ph.D. in education in language and literacy from the University of California, Berkeley, a master’s degree in linguistics and an MFA in English and creative writing from the University of Oregon. In addition to his work in English and comparative literature, Knoeller is an affiliated faculty member in American studies. His research interests include Bakhtinian theory in educational research, classroom discourse analysis, teaching literature in conjunction with creative writing, and why, historically, English teachers have been encouraged to write.

A member of the Purdue faculty since 1999, Knoeller offers courses on pedagogical approaches for teaching writing and literature at middle and secondary school levels. He has taught high school and college English throughout the country and has been involved in extensive school district curriculum development projects.

Knoeller has published book chapters and articles on both critical and pedagogical topics. His current scholarly work focuses on environmental and Native American literature, including his most recent book, Reading Environmental History: Ecological Memory in the Wake of Landscape Change (University of Nevada, 2017). His research on teaching appears in Literacy Instruction for Culturally Diverse Students, and in his book, Voicing Ourselves: Whose Words We Use When We Talk About Books (State University of New York Press, 1998). His first collection of poems, Completing the Circle (Buttonwood, 2000), was awarded the Millennium Prize by Buttonwood Press.

Knoeller has received both the Midwestern Heritage Prize for Literary Criticism (2007) and the Gwendolyn Brooks Prize for Poetry (2011) from the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, and he is a past president of the organization.