Dana Cairns Watson

Dana Cairns Watson received her BA, MA, and PhD in English from UCLA, then spent short stints at Middlebury College and Santa Monica College before returning to UCLA. She taught American literature for three years before beginning to teach public science writing in the Honors Collegium, academic writing for the Electrical Engineering PhD program, and Writing I and II courses in Writing Programs. With an abiding interest in science communication, Watson develops courses intended to attract science students. These course topics include public science writing, a widely interdisciplinary approach to food, science and society, and health care.  Watson serves as a writing consultant for the First-Year Cluster courses, has won two Non-Senate Faculty Grants, continues to write literary criticism, organizes a small book group for EE PhD students, and runs the incipient “writingEEring.org” intended to offer ongoing writing support to publishing engineers. She is the author of Gertrude Stein and the Essence of What Happens (Vanderbilt, 2005), and “Building a Better Reader: The Gertrude Stein First Reader and Three Plays (in The Lion and the Unicorn, Johns Hopkins UP, Sept. 2011). Forthcoming from ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment is an article on Robert Frost and economics.