Dr. Rachel Dean Ruzicka

Biography

Rachel Dean-Ruzicka is a Senior Lecturer in the Writing Communication Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She specializes in co-requisite course design and instruction and began her role at Georgia Tech in 2016 after serving as a Marion L. Brittain Fellow from 2011 to 2014. Her research primarily focuses on popular culture, with substantial publications in the fields of young adult literature and comics. Dean-Ruzicka authored the book, 'Tolerance Discourse and Young Adult Holocaust Literature: Engaging Difference Identity', published by Routledge in 2017 and released in paperback in 2019. She has contributed to the 'Children’s Literature Education Journal' and has an article forthcoming in the 'Oxford Handbook of Young Adult Literature'. Additionally, she has presented her work on pedagogy at various conferences and is a longstanding member of the Children’s Literature Association, where she serves on the Chaif Astrid Lindgren Award Committee. Her teaching methodology emphasizes the use of popular culture artifacts to teach multimodal communication. Rachel holds a PhD in American Culture Studies from Bowling Green State University, along with an MA and BA in Literature and English from Colorado State University.

Research Interests

Courses