Kelly Ritter is Chair of the School of Literature, Media, and Communication and Professor of Writing and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Her scholarship focuses on archival histories of U.S. writing programs and pedagogies, and cultural-historical conceptions of social class and literacy education. Her latest book is Beyond Fitting In: Rethinking First-Generation Writing and Literacy Education (MLA, 2023) and her current book-in-progress is From Liberation to Remediation: The Rhetorical Histories and Futures of General Education.

Ritter earned her Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Illinois-Chicago, her M.F.A. in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and her B.A. in English and Communication Studies from the University of Iowa. Prior to coming to Georgia Tech, she was LAS Alumni Distinguished Professorial Scholar and Professor of English and Writing Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she also served as Interim Head of the Department of Philosophy (2021-2022), Associate Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences (2017-2021), Provost Fellow for Undergraduate Education (2016-2017), Interim Director of the Center for Writing Studies (2014-2015), and Director of the Undergraduate Rhetoric Program (2013-2017). She previously was a faculty member and writing program director at UNC-Greensboro (2008-2013) and Southern Connecticut State University (2000-2008).

Beyond these institutional roles, Ritter’s leadership training includes participating as a Faculty Fellow in the Big Ten Academic Alliance Leadership Program (2018-2019), and also as a fellow in the President’s Executive Leadership Program (PELP) for the University of Illinois System (2021-2022). She is past editor of the NCTE flagship journal College English (2012-2017) and current editor of the Practices and Possibilities book series published by the WAC Clearinghouse.