If memory serves, Stephanie Odom came to UT as a literature student, and she was a gifted reader and teacher of literature. But, as often happens, her experience teaching first year writing caused her to change course to rhetoric. She loved it. She loved what happens to students as they become better writers—more confident, more intellectually curious, better at research.
And she really enjoyed reading scholarship in rhetoric, as it was a “conversation” she wanted to join, asking questions that intrigued her,and to which she wanted answers.
But her love of literature, and her wide reading in it, meant that she was puzzled and sometimes irritated by what she saw as an unnecessary antagonism between literature and rhetoric. While it was long past the culture wars of the 80s and 90s that had led to the banning of literature from composition classes, literature was still banned. And, certainly, she saw the reasons for keeping first and second year writing courses from being intro to lit crit or literature appreciation classes—not that she saw such approaches to literature as bad, but simply as out of place–but she didn’t see why banning literary texts (still a common practice) was the necessary outcome of ways of teaching literature being not particularly useful to the goals of introductory writing classes.
Behind these arguments about literature, she thought, there was an argument about the purpose of humanistic studies. Initially, she imagined that she would write a dissertation that would focus on the term“humanism,” and its post-Matthew Arnold permutations. And she was well-trained and well-equipped for exactly that dissertation—one that would require close textual analysis, capacious reading, and precisely her kind of intellectual generosity. She could have written that dissertation about as easily as anyone writes a dissertation. She, however, did something that required more courage.
The problem for her, and this is typical of Stephanie, was that she wasn’t just interested in the theoretical disagreements or intellectual genealogy of the place of literature in writing classes: she wanted to do scholarship that would help teachers teach better. She wanted to know if bringing in literature did actually inhibit writing instruction. And that meant a whole set of other questions—how many people are bringing in literature? What are they doing with it? How do we assess the effectiveness of any teaching practice?
So, partway into her dissertation, she developed a set of questions that required that she learn entirely new methods—survey writing, qualitative analysis of data. She was brilliant, and so certainly smart enough to learn new material, new skills, and even new ways of conducting research. But it took more than intelligence to make that cognitive shift. It took a kind of bravery, and she did it. She was intellectually fierce.
She was also kind and funny, who inspired love, admiration, and respect everywhere she went. She was an Assistant Director in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing, meaning that she helped prepare others to teach writing, who was always kind and helpful to fellow graduate students as they were trying to learn the thing at which she was so skilled.
She was active in a graduate writing group for years, a kind, clear, generous, and usefully critical reader of fellow graduate students’ work. Perhaps more important, at times when other members were slacking off—or even thinking about slacking off—she was cheerfully fierce at holding everyone accountable, partially through her breathtakingly practical approach to solving whatever problems people were presenting as obstacles.
She worked in what was then the Undergraduate Writing Center, and was a respected and talented writing consultant, with whom everyone loved to work. When the Writing Center shifted to the University Writing Center, and moved to a new space, there were two major new opportunities. One was the opportunity to work with graduate students, something that would require establishing a cultural practice of accountable writing groups. The other was to have rooms which would be quieter and less distracting than the hectic and often noisy common space—rooms crucial for being able to resolve the problems faced by students whose hearing, cognitive processes, writing project,or previous experiences meant being in the midst of a crowded and very public consulting space wasn’t practical.
Thus, when there was the possibility of naming one of those rooms, it was obvious that it should be named for Stephanie. Her commitment to writing—at both the graduate and undergraduate level—and her skill as a teacher and facilitator of writing meant that she was a model of what the UWC was trying to be. That the rooms were also a practical solution to a vexing problem of exclusion made it perfect.
When Stephanie was diagnosed with cancer, all those qualities—her brilliance, ferocity, pragmatism, and ability to inspire love—were tested. And still, she persisted.
And she got a really good job—Assistant Professor at UT-Tyler—where she branched into yet another area of research, working with a criminal justice professor on pragmatic ways of improving student writing. The smart and beautifully-written co-authored article ended up published in a journal on criminal justice education, another intellectually brave venture.
At UT-Tyler, she met a smart, kind, funny, and loving man, and it was wonderful to see her so happy. She also got an adorable dog, whom she loved even after the dog broke a sliding glass door multiple times (because squirrels).
Stephanie died yesterday. She was loved, admired, respected, and needed. I will miss her so very much. She was fierce.