Departmental Writing Fellow
2025-26 Departmental Writing Fellow: Keziah Anderson
The Departmental Writing Fellow (DWF) is a resource for all undergraduates enrolled in History Department courses (including Core/Gen Ed courses taught by History Dept. Faculty) who would like help with their writing and written assignments.
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My name is Keziah Anderson and I am a PhD candidate in History with a Secondary Field in African and African-American Studies. I study 19th and 20th century United States history with a focus on Afro-Indigenous, Black, disability, women's, and legal history. My research primarily focuses on the law's impact on and rendering of Afro-Indigenous women's bodies, lives, and geographies in the post-emancipation era. My dissertation uses Indigenous languages and GIS mapping, as well as other digital humanities methods, to uncover Afro-Indigenous women's histories.
As this year's writing fellow, I am excited to help all undergraduate students in History courses with the writing process. The Departmental Writing Fellow (DWF) is a resource for all undergraduates enrolled in History Department courses (including Core/Gen Ed courses taught by History Dept. Faculty) who would like help with their writing and written assignments. You can come for help at any stage of the writing process: finding a good question to pursue, starting a draft, formulating an argument, creating a paper outline or proposal, revising, restructuring your papers, or figuring out footnotes and other conventions of history writing.
My goal is to help you think and write like a historian: through our consultations I hope to help you understand how to formulate sound historical questions, write compelling thesis statements and arguments, tie secondary and primary sources together in your writing, and experiment with varied writing styles to weave together sound historical narratives in course assignments and senior theses. As the Departmental Writing Fellow, I can also assist students who have questions about how to incorporate interdisciplinary approaches into their history assignments while still maintaining high historical standards. Please feel free to ask any questions you might have along the process and in our meetings!
I will also be holding workshops for undergraduate student writers and would appreciate any ideas for workshops to be sent to me via email if possible.
Appointments
To make a 30-minute or 60-minute appointment please use the following link and instructions: Login to the Writing Center Scheduler at wcscheduler.fas.harvard.edu. Click on “other writing resources” and choose “history” from the menu.
If there are no slots that fit your availability, please contact me directly via email (keziahanderson@g.harvard.edu) to find a time we can meet. Please email me with the following subject: "Alternate Writing Fellow Meeting Time Scheduling".
There is no limit on the number of appointments you can book in a semester--please feel free to book multiple appointments for assignments if you continue to have questions along the writing process!
Preparation is always a plus. Please briefly let me know what you’d like to discuss when you sign up for a slot. You are welcome and encouraged to send me drafts, outlines, notes, and/or writing assignments and prompts ahead of our meeting time. I ask that you please send me these materials as soon as you can before we meet and preferably 24-48 hours in advance. If this is an issue for you, please email me ahead of time to let me know you may be getting materials to me later than preferred so that I can plan accordingly.
NOTE: The DWF will not comment on the grading for any assignment (either grades received, expected grades, grade averages, etc.). We can certainly discuss feedback received from your instructor and an assignment’s criteria to sharpen the quality of your written work.
Best,
Keziah Anderson