About
Crystal J. Zanders is a neurodivergent writer, educator, scholar, and activist living in Oklahoma. A PhD Candidate at the University of Michigan in the Joint Program in English and Education, Crystal is also a Rackham Merit Fellow, a 2022-2023 Oklahoma Center for the Humanities Fellow, and a Tulsa Remote alumna. With the support of an American Association of University Women (AAUW) Dissertation Fellowship, Crystal is working on her dissertation, Unseen: Black Autistic Women's Masking Practices, Pressures, and Possibilities which examines how Black autistic women hide their autism in the hopes of building a world in which they don’t have to.
Crystal’s research includes topics such as race, disability, intersectionality, digital pedagogy, language, Black educational history, poetry, activism, and educational inequity in the writing classroom. Her scholarly work has been published in College Composition and Communication, Pedagogy, and Assessing Writing. Her creative work has been featured in Mud Season Review, Rigorous, WusGood? and elsewhere.
Crystal began her teaching career in rural Mississippi in 2007 after earning her BA in Spanish at the University of Tennessee at Martin. Since then, she has taught English to every grade from 7-12 in traditional and alternative settings as well as GED classes, community college courses, and university English and/or education classes. Along the way, she received her Master of Teaching-Secondary from Mississippi State University and her Master of Fine Arts-Poetry from the University of New Mexico.
