Mary Webb
Mary Webb has been teaching first-year writing, advanced nonfiction, technical communication, and a variety of undergraduate literature courses at UNR since 1985. Her research interests center on how particular landscapes foster our attachments to place. She is currently working on a nonfiction project that will explore how military families develop a connection to (or disconnection from) place, based partially on her own military family's experiences at Pearl Harbor in 1941.
She published a book of documentary nonfiction, with collaborating photographers Robert Dawson and Peter Goin, called A Doubtful River (University of Nevada Press, 2000) that explores the history of damming the Truckee River and the environmental and cultural effects on Pyramid Lake. The book presents a cultural critique of how arid landscapes are adapted to (or not) by present day inhabitants of the Truckee Meadows.
Mary Webb serves on MA committees to work with students who are writing nonfiction, especially with a focus on place. She is on leave for 2005-2006, but can be reached by email at marywebb@unr.edu.