Bio


Sarah Peterson Pittock is an Advanced Lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric. She earned a BA in English and French Literatures, with Honors in Humanities, from Stanford University and a PhD in Literature from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her PhD dissertation investigated the ways eighteenth-century British women became literary critics and scholars without access to higher education. Through salon conversation and letter writing, the Bluestockings, as learned women were then known, built reputations as public intellectuals. Their strategies — conversation, collaboration, and community — are at the heart of Dr. Pittock’s research and work as a teacher and writing program administrator. From 2013-2018, she served as Associate Director of the Hume Center, supporting a writing-enriched curriculum through tutor education, writing workshops, graduate writing and speaking programming, and writing pedagogy consultations. From 2017-2022, she directed Bing Honors College, a September program that accelerates rising seniors' progress on their honors research and writing.

Her PWR1 courses include Growing Up Global: The Rhetoric of Children's Culture Today and a number of writing courses for the first-year program Education as Self-Fashioning. She also teaches two PWR2 courses, Other Selves: The Art & Science of Friendship and Hope, Health, and Healing: The Rhetoric of Medicine as well as courses in PWR's Notation for Science Communication. Her work has been published in Women's Writing, the WAC Journal, Writing Center Journal, and edited collections.

Academic Appointments


  • PWR Advanced Lecturer, Writing and Rhetoric Studies

Administrative Appointments


  • Coordinator, Writing in the Major (2018 - 2021)
  • Director, Bing Honors College (2017 - 2022)
  • Associate Director, Hume Center for Writing and Speaking (2013 - 2018)
  • Writing Specialist, Department of History (2014 - 2015)
  • Co-chair, Curriculum Committee, Program in Writing and Rhetoric, Stanford University (2012 - 2013)
  • Co-chair, Curriculum Committee, College of Arts and Sciences Writing Program, Boston University (2009 - 2010)

Honors & Awards


  • Hoagland Award for Innovation in Undergraduate Education, Stanford University (2016-2017)
  • Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Research Award, Stanford University (2012-2013)
  • Harold D. Kelling Doctoral Dissertation Chapter Prize, University of Colorado, Boulder (2002)
  • Edwin Devaney Dissertation Fellowship, University of Colorado (2001)
  • Bernice Udick Dissertation Fellowship, University of Colorado, Boulder (2000)

Current Research and Scholarly Interests


SPECIALIZATION: Writing Across the Curriculum; Writing In the Disciplines; Tutoring Pedagogy; Rhetoric of Children's Culture; 18th-Century Studies

All Publications