Jessica Pauszek

Jessica Pauszek is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Boston College and Director of the First-Year Writing Seminar. Her work focuses on community literacy, working-class studies, archival methods, and digital humanities. She leads the FWWCP Archival Project, which has curated over 2,350 community publications and developed a pilot digital archive (http://www.fwwcp-dc.org). Her research is informed by her upbringing in a working-class Polish community near Buffalo, NY, shaping her interest in labor, deindustrialization, and immigration.

Education: B.A. from Stetson University, M.A. from Northeastern University, and Ph.D. from Syracuse University. Her doctoral training in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric underpins her interdisciplinary approach to labor narratives and archival preservation.

Research interests include the curation of print and digital archives of the Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers (FWWCP), labor history, and the intersection of working-class agency with cultural heritage. She emphasizes collaborative preservation and the reclamation of marginalized voices through archives and digital tools.

Scientific awards include the CCCC Emergent Researcher Grant and Honorable Mention for the CCCC James Berlin Outstanding Dissertation Award. Her work has also been featured by the Coalition of Community Writing.

Advising and grants: Pauszek has collaborated with Vincent Portillo and students across universities on archival projects. She is co-editor of the Best of the Journals in Rhetoric and Composition and Writing and Working for Change series, as well as the co-edited volume Writing Democracy: The Political Turn in and Beyond the Trump Era. Her projects often involve community partnerships, such as the creation of Preserving Hidden Histories with students and local groups.

Labs/Teams: She directs the FWWCP Archival Project, a transnational initiative that bridges academic research with community-driven archival efforts. This project highlights the importance of preserving working-class histories and fostering collective memory through collaborative digital archives.