Alina Vamanu



Hello everyone,

My name is Alina Vamanu and I look forward to meeting everyone tomorrow! I am a Ph.D. student in Schools, Culture, and Society within the College of Education. However, I am currently in the process of switching to the Ph.D. program in Anthropology, which I believe is going to be a much better fit for me, given my methodological and research interests. Ethnographic fieldwork and ethnographic writing are my passions. Over the next few years, I am planning to undertake an ethnographic study of immigrant mothers who go back to school. I am particularly interested in exploring the ways in which these women juggle childcare responsibilities and school requirements.

I have taught numerous courses over the years. Before coming to Iowa, I earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from Rutgers University in New Jersey. At Rutgers, I taught many courses in Political Science, but my favorite was Nature of Politics, a course in Political Philosophy which covered the history of political thought from the ancient Greeks (Plato and Aristotle) to contemporary thinkers (Martin Luther King and feminist scholars such as Carole Pateman and Susan Moller Okin).

At Rutgers, I also served as a full-time instructor in the Writing Program of the English Department. I taught several sections of Expository Writing, the required writing course for all incoming Rutgers students. Besides teaching, I had the opportunity to conduct one-on-one tutoring sessions for undergraduate students at two of Rutgers’ three writing centers, namely the Plangere Writing Center and the Livingston Writing Center. This experience was very rewarding because it gave me the chance to engage in close dialogue with my students and develop methods tailored to their individual situations and learning styles.

Here at the University of Iowa, I have been teaching a course called Human Relations for the Classroom Teacher, which engages future teachers in conversations about diversity in the classroom.

Briefly put, I love fieldwork and ethnographic writing, and I love teaching and interacting with students. I also enjoy spending time with my two children, Oliver and Emilia. Oliver is 5 and a half and Emilia is 2 years old. Both of them are book lovers. Before going to bed tonight, Oliver told me that stories are the best thing in the world. We read Roald Dahl's The Enormous Crocodile and he laughed himself silly, particularly when we reached the end and the crocodile "went shooting high up into the sky like a huge green rocket." Oliver has already written a few books of his own, and they are all about his favorite stuffed toy, a fox by the name of Rocco. It's really a series which includes titles such as Rocco Goes to School, Rocco Goes to the Children's Museum, Rocco's Birthday Party... Now he's considering writing a book about Rocco blasting off into space. We'll see what tomorrow brings in the world of stories. Until then, I hope everyone has an enjoyable evening.

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