Position Title
Continuing Lecturer
Research Areas:
Teaching Areas:
Biography:
Nathaniel Williams joined UC Davis in 2012. He teaches business and technical writing, science writing, journalism, and other special topics. His research encompasses the history of technology, American literature, religious studies, and science fiction.
He is the author of Gears and God: Technocratic Fiction, Faith, and Empire in Mark Twain's America (University of Alabama Press. 2018). His scholarly articles have appeared in American Literature, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Utopian Studies, and elsewhere. He won Honorable Mention for American Literature's Norman Foerster Prize in 2011. He was the Academic-Track Programming Coordinator for the 2018 World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, CA. He is Associate Editor of the Mark Twain Annual.
He has nearly a decade of experience as a professional technical writer, creating online help and instruction manuals for custom software and writing inspection reports of air pollution control devices. He led statewide software trainings for government WIC employees in Indiana, Louisiana, and Missouri. He also wrote grants and online teaching materials for AboutSF, an educational outreach project sponsored by the Science Fiction Research Association, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and the University of Kansas.
His speculative fiction has appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Abyss & Apex, Perihelion, Poor Mojo's Almanac(k), Hadley Rille Books' Footprints anthology, and elsewhere.
Education:
Ph.D., University of Kansas, English
M.A., Truman State University, English
B.A., Truman State University, Communication (minor in International Studies)
- Science and Technical Communication, American Literature and Culture, Science Fiction, Genre and Rhetoric