Sarah Durst received her PhD in curriculum and instruction and writing studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Durst’s research focuses on the literate activity of people’s disciplinary work and argues for a lifeworld perspective of writing that focuses attention on the situated and dispersed nature of how people act with text-artifacts across the span of their lives. This attention to the making and remaking of texts across space and time is taken up in Dr. Durst’s teaching in her first-year composition classroom.
Dr. Durst is an active scholar doing writing research into lifespan and disciplinary writing development while simultaneously researching Medieval cosmology and the teaching of English literature within the literary tradition. Dr. Durst serves on the Editorial Board of the journal, Literate Activity, and is a member of the Conference on Christianity and Literature. Dr. Durst’s research has been featured in Written Communication, Literate Activity, and she has presented at the Conference on Christianity in Literature. She is also a columnist and creative writer for Okra magazine.
Previously, Dr. Durst served as a teacher collaborator at the Center for Education in Small Urban Communities at the University of Illinois. Dr. Durst worked with English teachers across multiple school districts, developing coursework and helping teachers enact strong reading and writing pedagogy in middle and high school classrooms. Dr. Durst was also an instructional coach and taught middle and high school English literature and writing.
Degrees and Certifications
- PhD, Curriculum and Instruction; Concentration: Writing Studies, University of Illinois
- MEd, Language and Literacy, University of Illinois
- BA, English, University of Illinois
Select Publications
- Durst, Sarah. “Disciplinarity and Literate Activity in Civil and Environmental Engineering: A Lifeworld Perspective.” Written Communication, vol. 36, no. 4, 2019, pp. 471–502.
- Durst, Sarah. (2025). Home: It’s Where the Past Lives On. Okra, Summer (2025).
- Durst, S. (2024). Threaded Together. Okra, Summer (2023). 20-37.
- Durst, S. (2023). The Sunrise Inn. Okra, Spring (2023), 96-97.
- Durst, S. (2022). These Goats Do What They Want. Okra, Summer (2022), 96.
