Karen Waldron
Lisa Stewart Chair in Literature and Women’s Studies
ABOUT
Besides reading, writing, and teaching, I garden when I can, tend the plants in my office, and spend time thinking about psychology, education, religions, social identities, ecology, and the meaning of life. I am married to a software architect and the mother of two intelligent and wonderful grown sons.
I’ve spent many years as an academic dean of one sort or another. I’ve also been a soccer mom and have run sections of professional organizations.
Before COA
I earned the B.A. in Literature and Philosophy from Hampshire College in 1974, an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Massachusetts/Boston in 1988, a second M.A. in Women’s Studies from Brandeis University in 1993, and the Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Brandeis in 1994. From 1993 to 1995 I was an adjunct and then visiting faculty member at both Boston College and Brandeis University. During the years between my undergraduate education and graduate school, I had a wide range of professional experiences, including as a technical writer and computer assistant.
Course Areas
19th and 20th Century American Literature, Women’s Literature, Minority, Cultural and Feminist Theory
COURSES
More Information about my Courses
Students in my classes engage actively in literary studies and literary works, experiencing all of their component parts. My courses all involve reading, thinking, discussing, and writing. Students are theorists and thinkers already; my goal and practice involves fanning the flames. After all, books contain the world and provide a window onto and into that world. In my classes, we read.
EDUCATION
- Ph.D. English and American Literature, Brandeis University, 1994
- M.A. Brandeis University, 1993
- M.A. University of Massachusetts, Boston, 1988
- B.A. Hampshire College, 1974
HONORS & AWARDS
INTERESTS
I see myself first and foremost as a teacher and mentor. I came to COA in 1995 and have served many years as one of the college’s academic deans. My research on 19th and 20th century American women’s and minority literature is highly interdisciplinary and I have a wide diversity of literary, historical, and scientific passions, particularly the exploration of otherness and consciousness in narrative form and the power of language to represent and transform.
PUBLICATIONS
The long list below shows the diversity of my scholarly interests. Conferences are a wonderful way to keep my scholarship alive.
“Twelve Strange Men: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Zora Neale Hurston’s Trial.”Law and Legal Figures in Twentieth Century Ethnic American Fiction. American Literature Association Annual Conference. May 2015
Co-Chair, “Literary Landscapes: Historical, Psychological, and Ecological Reimaginings of Place. Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Annual Conference. April 2015
“Using the Sidekick in the Feminist Cause? Laurie King’s Mary Russell Remakes of Sherlock Holmes.” Popular Culture Association (PCA) Annual Conference. April 2015
Chair, “America’s Mythic Landscapes and Iconic Places: Human/Nature Intersections.” NeMLA Annual Conference. April 2014
“Claiming Nature: Sarah Orne Jewett’s Proto-Ecofeminist Argumentation.” Ecofeminist Readings of 19th Century American Women’s Fiction. NeMLA Annual Conference. April 2014
Chair, “Constructions of Landscape in American Literature I: Human/Nature Intersections.” NeMLA Annual Conference. March 2013
“Contemporary Humans and Nature: Barry Lopez’ ‘Winter Count’ and Remembering Places through Cognitive Dissonance. ” NeMLA Annual Conference. March 2013
“The Limits of Biblical Self-Authorization: Sarah Grimké’s Letters on the Equality of the Sexes.” Roundtable. NeMLA Annual Conference. March 2013
Chair, “The Question of Voicing in Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Literature.” NeMLA Annual Conference. March 2012
“A Country Doctor and Female Authority: Sarah Orne Jewett’s (Anxious) Influences.” Women and Medicine Session, NeMLA Annual Conference. March 2012
“Willa Cather’s Literary Ecology in O Pioneers!,” Literary Landscapes: Representation and Imagination Session, NeMLA Annual Conference. April 2011
Chair, “Contemporary Women’s Novels: The Changing Story?,” NeMLA Annual Conference. April 2011
“The Christian Indians: Wrestling With Conversation in the Native American Literature Classroom,” Native American Literature Session, NeMLA Annual Conference. April 2010
Chair, “Urban Places: The Literary Ecology of American Cities,” NeMLA Annual Conference. April 2010
“Agatha Christie and ‘The Purloined Letter’.” PCA Annual Conference. April 2010
“The Silent Partner and Deafness: A Story of Three Women,” Deafness in American Literature Session, NeMLA Annual Conference. February 2009
Chair, “Methods of Literary Ecology in American Literature: The Constitution of Place,” NeMLA Annual Conference. February 2009
Chair, Mystery and Detective Area Hosted Discussion of James Lee Burke’s The Tin-Roof Blowdown. PCA Annual Conference. April 2009
Chair, “Investigating New Orleans: The Work of James Lee Burke. PCA Annual Conference. April 2009
“Chandlerian Reprise or Revision: Gender and Romance in James Lee Burke‘s Dave Robicheaux Series,” PCA Annual Conference. April 2009
“The Complex Environment of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God as Complete Literary Ecology” Nature and Environmental Writers (NEW-CUE) Biennial Conference. June 2008
Chair, Poetry Session, NEW-CUE Biennial Conference. June 2008
“Traveling in Tibet with Eliot Pattison,” PCA Annual Conference. March 2008
“Desire and Danger: Negotiating the Real Reader through Representations in Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple,” NeMLA Annual Conference. April 2008
Chair, “”From the Country to the City: Literary Ecology in American Realism and Naturalism, NeMLA Annual Conference. April 2008
“Collaborating on the Scholarly Essay” with Julia Gregory. NeMLA Annual Conference. March 2007
“Echoes of – or answers to – the lost Lenore? Edgar Allen Poe’s Theory of Dead Women and Three Twenty-First Century Women’s Mysteries.” PCA Annual Conference. April 2005
“Different Sexes, Different Series: Dana Stabenow’s Male and Female Leads and Lives.” PCA Annual Conference. April 2003
“Mongrels, Shadows, and Stories in Mirrors: Cities as Sanctuaries in Gerald Vizenor’s Dead Voices.” “Imagining Native Americans Off the Reservation” Panel. NeMLA Annual Conference. March 2003
Chair, “Nineteenth-Century American Women: The Short Fiction.” Two panels. NeMLA Annual Conference. March 2003
“Women Who Run with the Wolves: Dana Stabenow’s (Re)Gendering Plots.” PCA Annual Conference. April 2001
Chair, “Ethnicities, Regions and Nature Writing: Complicating the Landscapes of American Realism 1860-1920.” NeMLA Annual Conference. March 2001
“Teaching Cooke, Davis, Woolson, Freeman, Austin, Sin-Far—and Jewett—in Maine: Regionalism and Women Authors in Theory, Practice, and Pedagogy.” NeMLA Annual Conference. March 2001
“The Problem of Female Awakening in A Lost Lady: Despair, Desire and Landscape as Interacting Spiritual Frontiers.” Women in the Spiritual West Conference. April 2000
“Historical Events in Contemporary International Women’s Novels: A Case Study of the Intersection of Historical Vision and Women’s Plots,.” “Historical Events, Historical Figures, Contemporary Fictions: The Historical Vision of Contemporary Novelists” Session. NeMLA Annual Conference. April 2000
Chair, Nineteenth-Century Periodical Literature and the Evolution of the American Novel: Reading Proliferating Narrative Forms, Technologies, and Identities. NeMLA Annual Conference. April 2000
“The Radical Work of Marketing Compromises, or: Can Mainstream Publishing be a (Lesbian) Feminist Act? Examining the Case of Katherine Forrest.” Popular Culture Association. April 2000
“Women in the City: An Evolution of Realism through Women’s Plots from Fanny Fern to Stephen Crane.” American Realism Session, NeMLA Annual Conference. April 1999
Chair, Roots, Regions, and Realisms: Appalachian Literature and American Community. NeMLA Annual Conference. April 1999
“Women and Evil: The Modern Female Detective.” Popular Culture Association. April 1999
Chair, City/Country: American Literary Landscapes, NeMLA Annual Conference. April 1998
“Illness, Rage, and the Question of Plot: The Risks and Rewards of Heroine Survival.” Nineteenth-Century American Women: Communicating Through Illness Session, NeMLA Annual Conference. April 1998
“Environmental Literature: The Literary Ecology of Team-Teaching.” Society for Literature and Science Annual Conference. October 1997
Chair, American Women Writers Section: “Imagining Science.” NeMLA Annual Conference. April 1997
“Indians, White Women, and Removals: the Migration of Story in (Re)Publications of Mary Rowlandson’s Captivity Narrative.” American Studies Association Annual Conference. October 1996
Chair, African American Women Writers Section, NeMLA Annual Conference. April 1996
“O My Frontier: Willa Cather and the American Literary Landscape.” American Women Writers Section, NeMLA Annual Conference. April 1996
“Discovering or Creating the Shape of Time? Reading The Time Machine through Einstein’s Dreams.” Literature and Science Section, NeMLA Annual Conference. April 1995
“The Narrative and the Shape of Time” Society for the Study of Narrative Literature Annual Conference. April 1995
Chair, Willa Cather Section, NeMLA Annual Conference. April 1994
“The Masculine Rescue of the Feminine in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day.” African American Women Writers Section, NeMLA Annual Conference. April 1994
“Problematic Novels of Female Awakening: From Edna Pontellier to Myra Henshawe,.” Willa Cather’s Women Panel Philological Association of the Carolinas. March 1994
“Feminism, Religion and the Instruments of Women’s Voicing.” Antebellum America Panel LeMoyne Forum on Religion and the Literary Imagination. October 1993
“Breaking the Bonds of Form: The Sketch and the Emergence of the Mother’s Voice in Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall.” Nineteenth-Century American Literature Section, NeMLA Annual Conference. March 1993
“The Power of Feminine Consciousness: Authority, Voice and Myth in Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Mid-Atlantic Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference. October 1992
“Awakening to Death and Life: Feminine Consciousness and the Problem of Desire in The Awakening and A Lost Lady.” Willa Cather Section, NeMLA Annual Conference. April 1992