Nancy Pagh has taught at Western Washington University since 1995, with the exception of the 1997-98 academic year when she was a visiting professor at a global-studies program in New York.  She teaches a wide range of courses on writing, literature, and cultural studies for the English Department and has also taught courses in the university Honors Program and Academy for Lifelong Learning.

A number of Nancy's courses are linked to WWU's Canadian-American Studies Program.  Nancy earned her Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and one of her strongest areas of interest is in cross-border Pacific Northwest regional identity.  She is fascinated by the differences and similarities in regional landscape and history and in how this shapes our sense of identity and is reflected through forms of creative expression (such as literature and sculpture).  Her dissertation was an analysis of travel accounts written by women who explored the Northwest Coast by boat in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  It was recently co-published by the University of Calgary Press and the University of Idaho Press.

Nancy's interest in marine travel accounts grew from her experiences boating with her family in Washington State and British Columbia.  She was born in the town of Anacortes, Washington.  She earned her undergraduate degree in English, with a minor in Publishing & Printing Arts.  For three years she worked as a scientific copyeditor for the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration in Seattle.  She went to graduate school in New Hampshire, earning M.A. degrees in Literature and Creative Writing.  She has published poetry in Poetry Northwest, Grain, Crab Creek Review, The Bellingham Review, Open Spaces, B.C. Studies, Room of One's Own, and WWU's online literary magazine, Arbutus.  You can read her lighthearted food poem in Arbutus with the following link: http://www.arbutus.net/proofing/sea-thai.htm.

This is the first time Nancy has taught a course on two of the great loves of her life: literature and food.  Bon appetite!