Catherine Eagan

Background

About Catherine Eagan

I work to foster empathy and equity in educational settings at home and abroad. My passion for intercultural engagement and intellectual exercise drives me to listen and learn, read and research, teach and translate. In short, I am happiest when I am exploring, whether alone or with friends, family, colleagues, or students. My commitment to sharing the joy of exploration has driven me to internationalize my classroom and open doors for students who are (or become) curious about the world around them. For twenty years, I have taught English full-time at a community college in the San Francisco Bay Area, helping readers to connect to texts and the authors behind them, writers to find their voices and ground their thinking in empathy and evidence, and beginning researchers to discover questions and find answers. I work with students on editing with intention and precision, whether their concerns be expressing their own ideas or crediting others’ ideas. I also live an interdisciplinary life; my other Bachelor’s degree in history led me to American Studies and Irish Studies in graduate school, to a Fulbright award to teach both in Croatia, and to founding the Global Studies program at my college. On the institutional level, I have worked for many years on broadening access to transfer-level composition and mathematics, thereby increasing success rates and shortening pathways to graduation. This focus has been pursued as a department coordinator, grant administrator, curriculum writer, student of assessment, professional development leader, and student equity and achievement committee co-chair. My equity work has been inspired not only by my experience with teaching in diverse settings and my personal commitment to racial justice, but by my long-time investment in transnational research on the racial formation of identity in the Atlantic world. My research and publications in Irish Studies, along with being raised and attending college in the San Francisco Bay Area, brought me to that work. Both have led me to think, on personal, historical, and theoretical levels, about the daily choices white people can make to live in solidarity with others, offering themselves as allies and accomplices who are willing to be uncomfortable and uncertain most of the time and thereby find fulfillment in community.