Advising Philosophy

In the Clark Honors College, advising work is the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion. CHC advisors provide academic advising support and mentorship to honors college students from their first day of class through graduation in order to help every CHC student find their passion and pursue their goals. As Assistant Dean of Advising, I’m thrilled to be a member of your advising team, and I’m looking forward to helping you discover your own unique path.

Teaching Philosophy

I believe that critical thinking and the writing process, far from being inexplicable, can be mastered through continuing attention to basic techniques. It is for this reason that the paradox of what I call "advanced basics" forms the foundation of my pedagogical approach. Attention to "advanced basics" involves teaching (or re-teaching) the basic analytical skills and composition techniques that all readers and writers must engage with before sophisticated ideas can emerge. As a result of my pedagogical strategy, each one of my classes is a composition as well as a literature course.

Past Courses

HC 222H: Literary Gestations: Pregnancy and Childbirth in Poetry and Prose

HC 223H Artificial Births in Speculative Fiction from Frankenstein to the Present

HC 421H Digital Humanities

CHC Advising »

Academic Background

Ph.D., English, University of California - Los Angeles
M.A., English, University of Colorado - Boulder
B.A., English (summa cum laude), Northern Michigan University

Dr. Raisanen served in the Scholarship Resource Center at the University of California - Los Angeles before joining the Clark Honors College in 2015. As Assistant Dean of Advising and Strategic Partnerships, Dr. Raisanen collaborates with colleagues across campus to assist honors college students with their advising needs. She develops advising resources and programming, mentors CHC students, provides support for students who wish to apply for distinguished scholarships and fellowships, and provides weekly updates with advising tips, deadlines, and opportunities to honors college students.

Dr. Raisanen was instrumental to the development and launch of the 3+3 Program, which guarantees admission to Oregon Law for qualifying honors college students. Her close collaboration with partner departments across the university, as well as her oversight of the program through Undergraduate Council, Graduate Council, and University Senate review, ensured a robust program with a broad base of support.

Dr. Raisanen maintains active membership in the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) as well as other professional organizations relevant to her research areas.

Research Interests & Current Projects

Dr. Raisanen specializes in the women writers of the British Romanic period, and her research explores pregnancy and childbirth as metaphors for authorship in the Romantic era. She is also a founding editor of Digital Mitford: The Mary Russell Mitford Archive, a Digital Humanities project that was created at the 2013 British Women Writers Conference.

Dr. Raisanen is collaborating with colleagues across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. to create a comprehensive digital archive of scholarly editions of Mitford’s correspondence, poetry, prose, and dramatic works by editing Mitford’s texts in eXtensible Markup Language (XML). XML coding will not only present Mitford’s texts for reading - thus making a significant author with a largely inaccessible oeuvre widely available to scholars, students, and the general public - but will also tag and identify contextual information, enabling the project team to develop graphical navigation tools to display complex transatlantic networks of people, places, and literary texts that will educate the site’s visitors about Mitford and her era.

Dr. Raisanen is currently editing Mitford’s play Foscari (1826), as well as a number of Mitford’s manuscript letters from the 1820s, for the Digital Mitford.

Awards

• 2018:  University of Oregon Outstanding Faculty Advising Award
• 2016: Finalist, University of Oregon Excellence in Undergraduate Advising Award
• 2015: University of Alberta Digital Diversity Conference Travel Grant
• 2014: UCLA STAR (Staff Appreciation and Recognition) Award
• 2013: UCLA English Department Research & Conference Travel Grants

Selected Publications

• 2023, “Who Belongs in Honors? Culturally Responsive Advising and Transformative Diversity,” Honors Colleges in the 21^st Century (edited by Richard Badenhausen), National Collegiate Honors Council Monograph Series.
• 2023, “Kelly (née Fordyce), Isabella,” The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Romantic-Era Women’s Writing (edited by Natasha Duquette), Palgrave Macmillan.
• 2016 (co-authored with Elisa Beshero-Bondar), "Recovering from Collective Memory Loss: the Digital Mitford’s Feminist Project," Women’s History Review (Feminist Histories and the Digital Revolution special issue).
• 2016, "Pregnancy Poems in the Romantic Era: Re-Writing the Mother’s Legacy," Women’s Studies: An Inter-Disciplinary Journal, 42.2: 101-21.
• 2014, "Mary Wollstonecraft, Anna Barbauld, and Equality Feminism," Called to Civil Existence: Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (edited by Enit Karafili Steiner), Amsterdam: Rodopi Press.
• 2011, "'Speech / is your fit weapon': Mary Russell Mitford’s Rienzi and the Gendering of Speech Acts," European Romantic Review 22.2: 209-33.