Independent scholar, writer, educator, and coach.
Jennifer
Ansbach, PhD
I’m an independent scholar combining a long career teaching literacy and literature with research on democracy, identity, memory, and place.
My work appears in peer-reviewed journals, scholarly book chapters, magazines, and newspapers. I’m the author of Take Charge of Your Teaching Evaluation, originally published by Heinemann, and I’m currently developing new work on the Jersey Devil, the Pine Barrens, education, reading, and public culture.
As a coach, I help people find the story inside their ideas and figure out how to communicate what they know, what they’ve done, and where they want to go.
I love books, book people, and thinking on paper. I keep a field notebook for questions, observations, fragments, and ideas that may eventually become essays, talks, articles, or something else entirely.
Writing & Research
I write for scholarly and public audiences about democracy, identity, memory, place, education, reading, and public culture.
Coaching
I help people find the story inside their ideas and communicate their experience, thinking, and goals clearly.
Books & Projects
Published and in-progress work, including Take Charge of Your Teaching Evaluation and current research on the Jersey Devil and Pine Barrens.
Current Work
The Pine Barrens
Research and writing on wilderness, cultivation, memory, labor, and the communities shaped by—and often written out of—the region.
The Jersey Devil
A book-length project on folklore, regional identity, cultural memory, and the stories New Jersey tells about itself.
Reading, AI, and the Work of Thinking
Work on reading, attention, empathy, technology, and what happens when we outsource too much of the work of thinking.
Get in Touch
I’m available for writing, speaking, workshops, and selected coaching engagements.