Mara N. Scanlon

Mara Scanlon, Associate Professor of English, received a Ph.D. (1998) in 20th-century literature and an M.A. (1992) in English language and literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, after earning a B.A. (1991) in English from the University of Virginia.

Dr. Scanlon’s articles have been published in College Literature; LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory; Bucknell Review; World Literature Today; The Virginia Review of Asian Studies; Asian American Novelists; The Writer’s Chronicle; and Approaches to Teaching H.D.’s Poetry and Prose. Her professional work includes a collaborative, multi-university National Endowment for the Humanities Grant awarded for a project in the digital humanities called “Looking for Whitman: the Poetry of Place in Life and Work of Walt Whitman.” In a recent interview aired on the “With Good Reason” public radio program, Dr. Scanlon discussed how poet Walt Whitman helped heal wounded Civil War soliders in Fredericksburg in the same way he hoped his poetry could heal the war-torn nation.

Dr. Scanlon is a UMW delegate-at-large and recent co-president of the Virginia Humanities Conference and a member of the Modern Language Association, the Modernist Studies Association, the American Literature Association, and the American Studies Association, among others. In addition, she is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.