Deborah C. AndrewsCenter for Material Culture Studies Phone: 302.831.1208
Memorial Hall 135
Deborah C. Andrews directs the Center for Material Culture Studies and is Professor of English. The Center administers an undergraduate minor and facilitates cooperation among several university programs in the field. She teaches courses in technical editing, in business communication, in researching and interpreting objects and sites for public understanding, and on American literature from 1865 to 1945, especially as it reflects and contributes to the cultural and material world in America at that time. She coordinates a colloquium series, “interpreting objects,” and is the faculty advisor to the “Material Culture Symposium for Emerging Scholars,” organized entirely by graduate students and now in its 11th year.
A researcher, consultant, and speaker on many aspects of professional communication, especially in an international context, she has recently emphasized how an object-oriented approach can enhance such communication. She is the former editor of Business Communication Quarterly and has contributed articles to major journals and anthologies, most recently, “North America, the State of the Field,” a chapter in the Handbook of Business Discourse (Edinburgh UP, 2011), and “Learning as Doing: Undergrads Using Special Collections for Conservation and Material Culture Studies” in Past Is Portal (Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2012).
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The author of articles about domestic science in 19th century America, whaling, and the architecture of banks in Philadelphia, she has published several texts on professional communication, including Technical Communication in the Global Community (2nd ed., Prentice Hall, 2001) and, most recently, Management Communication: A Guide (with W.D. Andrews: Houghton Mifflin, 2004). She is a past president of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (