After joining GWSS in 2010, Mary Ann taught courses on writing by and about American girls, Working for Social Justice, and women’s art and writing. She developed the department’s capstone Senior Research Seminar into collaborative research and writing workshop where students created their own scholarly and creative projects. Before joining GWSS, Mary Ann served as Lecturer and Director of Honors for the Department of English from 1997 to 2009 where she taught the department’s first ever Honors Thesis Workshop and courses in American and Asian American literature, women writers, and World War II in Japan and America. As the Director of Undergraduate Studies in GWSS from 2013-2020, she initiated an undergraduate internship program and created the department’s first online digital magazine of student and community art and writing.  Earlier in her career she taught in the Humanities Program at the University of California-Irvine and in the Department of English Literature at Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan. 

Mary Ann served on the Women’s Resource and Action Center Advisory Council and on the UI Council for the Status of Women from 2007-10 and was Chair of CSW from 2009-2010. Her research and writing were focused on the fields of Girls’ Studies, narratives of historical trauma, and feminist pedagogy.