english (eng) department

Sid Dobrin

Professor, Director of the Trace Innovation Initiative & Chair of the English Department

Positioned within writing studies, Dobrin’s research focuses on three distinct but overlapping subjects: the ecological properties of writing; ecocriticism and ecocomposition, including questions of oceanic criticism; and the relationship between writing and emerging technologies, including questions of contemporary digital and visual/screen culture. Dobrin is also Director of the Trace Innovation Initiative, a research hub that studies emerging writing technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) applications, comic forms as scholarship, writing ecology, and other cool stuff. Dobrin has been named a Digital Thought Leader by Adobe, and he serves as Chair of the American Sportfishing Association’s Advocacy Committee.