Dr. Abby Goode is an award-winning teacher and scholar, specializing in American literature and culture, environmental studies, and interdisciplinary education. Currently, she is Associate Professor of English and Sustainability Studies at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. She is the author of Agrotopias: An American Literary History of Sustainability (University of North Carolina Press, 2022), which was featured on the New Books Network Podcast. In Agrotopias, she reveals the eugenic foundations of some of our most well-regarded American environmental traditions. Her peer-reviewed essays appear in journals such as Early American Literature, ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, Studies in American Fiction, Hybrid Pedagogy, and American Studies in Scandinavia. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the American Association of University Women (AAUW), the American Antiquarian Society, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, and the First Book Institute at the Center for American Literary Studies at Penn State. Her most recent scholarly interests include environmental storytelling, interdisciplinary pedagogy and program design, and early climate theories in the Americas. In 2022, she received the Transformative Teaching Award and the Distinguished Scholarship Award at Plymouth State.

In the classroom and in her writings, Abby is a proponent of project-based learning, open education, and interdisciplinary collaboration. In 2019, she developed the concept of “Slow Interdisciplinarity”: a learner-centered approach to facilitating disciplinary stewardship and permeability in the classroom, the curriculum, and higher education writ large. She has designed and taught courses in environmental humanities, American studies, contemporary food movements, literary theory, environmental justice, wilderness literature, and environmental writing and communication, among other topics. Over the years, she has focused on creating opportunities for community engagement and student-led projects that extend beyond the semester. For instance, in her courses, students have co-authored digital textbooks, established food pantries, and spearheaded community gardening projects.

Abby’s service, collaboration, and community outreach is characterized by leadership in curricular reinvention, interdisciplinary teaching, and the environmental humanities. Most recently, she worked with faculty across the disciplines to create a new Sustainability Studies major at Plymouth State. This Bachelor of Arts degree program is the first of its kind in New Hampshire, drawing meaningfully on the arts, humanities, and social sciences to investigate pressing environmental questions. As part of this program design work, Abby created the core Environmental Humanities course, which joins a suite of classes in Public Health, Economics, Sociology, and Environmental Science, among other disciplines. In the broader community, she has led STEAM workshops on environmental writing for K-12 teachers and visited local public schools to discuss wilderness, literature, and the environment with middle- and high-school students. 

Before joining the Plymouth State faculty, Abby developed and taught courses at Rice University on topics such as literature and medicine, sustainability, first-year writing, and Global literature. In recognition of this teaching, she was named the recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Instructor Award in 2017. In addition to her work at Rice, she has taught high school Spanish in Brooklyn, NY, middle school creative writing for Writers in the Schools, and a range of American literature courses for continuing learners at The Women’s Institute of Houston.

Abby holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in English from Rice University, an M.S.T. in Education from Pace University in New York City, and a B.A. in English and Spanish from the University of Vermont.