01/21/2016

English Faculty Member Selected as New M.L.A. Director

Quick Facts

Siobhan Brownson said she looks forward to supporting and encouraging interdisciplinary study in the program as a guarantee for developing student readiness to confront 21st-century opportunities and challenges.

After earning her Ph.D. in English from the University of South Carolina, she was hired at Winthrop in 2002 as assistant professor of English to teach literary theory and contemporary British literature.

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Siobhan Brownson

ROCK HILL, SOUTH CAROLINA - Siobhan Craft Brownson, an associate professor of English, will take on a new role this spring as director of the Master of Liberal Arts program at Winthrop.

Brownson said she looks forward to supporting and encouraging interdisciplinary study in the program as a guarantee for developing student readiness to confront 21st-century opportunities and challenges. “I am also excited about building upon the program’s obvious success by maintaining its current dedication to lifelong learners as well as advancing new initiatives to ensure the continuing viability of the program,” she said.

Brownson is a good fit for the job, said Karen Kedrowski, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “She has a variety of qualifications and skills that she brings to the M.L.A. program,” she said. “The program will thrive under her leadership and grow because of her passion and energy.”

Brownson joined the Winthrop English faculty in 1984 as a part-time lecturer and then became an instructor of English. After earning her Ph.D. in English from the University of South Carolina, she was hired at Winthrop in 2002 as assistant professor of English to teach literary theory and contemporary British literature.

Brownson earned her B.A. in English from Miami of Ohio and her M.A. in English from the University of Michigan. She began her teaching career at the Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she became an assistant professor of English.

At Winthrop, Brownson now serves as director of composition. She continues to teach undergraduate and graduate courses in literary theory and British literature as well as freshman and advanced composition. Her other teaching interests include 19th- and 20th-century British literature, and she has taught courses in British Romanticism, modern British poetry, the British novel, world literature, literature and film, and the short story.

Brownson’s research interests include the work of Thomas Hardy, Victorian Literature and the Victorian Periodical. Her forthcoming book, a collection of essays entitled “Thomas Hardy’s Short Stories – New Perspectives,” co-edited with Juliette Schaefer, will be published by Ashgate later this year and contains her essay analyzing Hardy’s Christmas stories in the Illustrated London News.

Also forthcoming this year are her essays investigating Victorian editors and on the history of the New Quarterly Magazine. She has published on Hardy’s short stories, literary theory, Emily Brontë’s fiction and poetry, James Barrie’s short stories, Romantic women writers and the poet John Clare. She presents papers frequently at the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals and the Victorians Institute.

Brownson has served on the editorial board of Postscript, on the board of directors and as membership chair of the College English Association and as the secretary for the Philological Association of the Carolinas. She has been active with South Carolina Women in Higher Education for many years, first as Winthrop’s institutional representative for the organization; she currently serves on the group’s executive board and as its secretary.

For more information, contact Judy Longshaw, news and media services manager, at 803/323-2404 or longshawj@winthrop.edu.

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