Aileen Waters

Aileen Waters

Senior Lecturer in College Writing
MA, Washington University in St. Louis
research interests:
  • Transatlantic Modernism

contact info:

mailing address:

  • College Writing Program
    MSC 1096-153-122
    Washington University
    1 Brookings Drive
    St. Louis, MO 63130-4899

Aileen Waters has a Master’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis in English and American literature. She is a lecturer in the College Writing Program, where she teaches “Technology & Selfhood,” “Writing and Aging,” and “On Hoaxes." She also serves as co-chair for the McLeod First-Year Writing Prize, which awards original research written by first-year students on topics of race, gender, or identity.  She also has taught at Webster University, at the High School Summer Academy at WashU, and at Aim High St. Louis.  

When not teaching, reading, or writing, Aileen can usually be found in Forest Park with her dog Monroe, taking pictures of birds and trees.

 

Featured Courses

College Writing: Technology & Selfhood

In writing about technology we will consider perspectives across the university curriculum in order to better comprehend our relationship with our tools and to scrutinize the dynamic interaction, communication, and interdependence of different kinds of tools for various means of communication and representation. We will strive to think critically about ourselves as part of larger communities and systems by attending closely to the ways we communicate with and about others through technologies such as writing, film, and social media.

College Writing: Writing on Aging

Half of your generation will see your hundredth birthday. This writing class takes aging as its theme, sharpening our critical thinking through such practices as analysis, argumentation, and research, while asking: How will we negotiate the changing goals and life circumstances that accompany a century of life? How will new technologies change how we live as individuals and as a society? How will our experiences and those who go before us shift how we imagine the possibilities open to our future selves?

College Writing: Text & Traditions

In this course we look at a wealth of hoaxes, from those in art, which are often designed to shake our faith in institutions telling us what is valuable and to ask us to think for ourselves, to those of the newspaper wars of the 1800s, when outrageous scoops about the creatures who live on the moon helped sell papers to readers who were invited to enjoy, if not quite believe, the news. We will examine what we can learn from these historical and contemporary apolitical hoaxes, and how that knowledge can be brought to bear on those we see today, where hoaxes can fray trust in public institutions like the press, the government, and even the university.