Karyn Z Sproles

Biography

Karyn Sproles is the director of the Center for Teaching & Learning at the US Naval Academy, where she also teaches in the English Department. She earned her Ph.D. in English (1987) from the University of Buffalo and her BA in Literature from The American University (1982). She taught and chaired the English Departments at Hamline University in St. Paul, MN (1987-97) and James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA (1997-2007). She served as the Director of Faculty Development at the University of Southern Indiana (2007-10), where she founded the Center for Academic Creativity. Her subsequent experience in higher education administration includes positions as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Carlow University in Pittsburgh and Provost at Marietta College in Ohio. She has published extensively on pedagogy and faculty development as well as in the field of British Modernism and critical theory, including Desiring Women: The Partnership of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West (Toronto UP 2006) and Reflective Reading and the Power of Narrative (Routledge 2019), which integrates literary theory with learning theory in order to interrogate the effects of reading on the unconscious of the reader.

Education

PhD University of Buffalo, State University of New York

Areas of Research / Professional Expertise

Critical theory, literature, feminist theory, and psychoanalysis

Personal Interests

I enjoy gardening, cooking, reading, and walking my 3 poodles.

Books