Mary Sellers

Professional Bio

Mary L. Sellers serves as an Associate Teaching Professor of English and American Studies and the Assistant to the Program in Writing and Rhetoric. She teaches a wide variety of courses including English 15, 105, 202A, 202B, 202C, 202D, 202H,  American Studies 100, 140Y, and 170N, and Communication Arts and Sciences (CAS) 100A. She was the 2019 recipient of the English Department’s Excellence in Teaching Award, the 2020 Excellence in Online Teaching Award, the 2024 Nancy Lowe Excellence in Teaching Award, and the 2024 Schreyer Honors College Excellence in Honors Teaching Award. She has also won writing awards for her research in folklore, including the American Folklore Society’s Richard Reuss Prize for Most Outstanding Graduate Paper in Folklore and History (2018) and the Eastern American Studies Association’s Simon J. Bronner Award for Most Outstanding Graduate Student Paper (2017). Her research has appeared in Midwestern Folklore and The Folklore Historian. She contributed a chapter, “The Folklore and Folklife of Age Groups and Aging,” to the award-winning Oxford Handbook of American Folklore and Folklife Studies.  She finds much joy as a mentor to new hires and graduate students in English. In her non-work hours, Mary enjoys the paradoxical activities of going to Orangetheory Fitness and eating copious numbers of chocolate chip cookies.