Department of English
Sean Ross Meehan
Assistant Professor of English and Director of Writing
E-mail: smeehan2@washcoll.edu
Phone: (800) 422-1782, ext. 6556
Office: Goldstein 116
Education
- Ph.D. English, University of Iowa, 2002.
- M.A. English, SUNY Buffalo, 1996.
- A.B. English, Princeton University, 1991.
Selected Publications
- "Photography and Transcendentalism." The Oxford Handbook to Transcendentalism. Oxford University Press (forthcoming).
- "Text Minding." Digital Humanities Quarterly 3.2 (Spring 2009).
- Mediating American Autobiography: Photography in Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass, and Whitman. University of Missouri Press, 2008.
- "Pencil of Nature: Thoreau's Photographic Register." Criticism 48.1 (Winter 2006).
Scholarly and Teaching Interests
- Autobiography and Creative Nonfiction
- Digital Humanities
- Environmental Writing
- Literature and other Arts/Media
- Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture
- Writing Pedagogy
Honors and Affiliations
- American Literature Association
- Emerson Society
- Magna Cum Laude, Princeton University
- Modern Language Association
- National Council of Teachers of English
- Phi Beta Kappa: Member and Secretary at Washington College's Theta chapter
- Presidential Fellow, University of Iowa (1996-2001)
- Ralph Waldo Emerson Memorial Association Fellow, Houghton Library, Harvard University (2004-2005)
Bio
Professor Meehan began teaching at Washington College in 2008. His past teaching experiences include teaching at Morningside College (Iowa) and the University of Iowa as well as teaching English at in secondary schools, Mercersburg Academy (Pennsylvania) and Newark Academy (New Jersey).
Professor Meehan takes his passion for pedagogy and nonfiction writing into his new position as Director of Writing, where he works with faculty on all aspects of the college's writing program, from first-year seminars to writing intensives to senior capstones, as well as coordinates "Literature and Composition" (English 101). He is currently teaching an English 101 course subtitled "Writing Machines," a course that explores intersections of writing and technology from Frankenstein to Facebook. You can browse the course web site and blog (Comp\Post) to see what he and his students have been reading and writing. Other recent courses (and course sites) include American Environmental Writing (Spring 2009) and Emerson and Whitman (Fall 2009). Professor Meehan is also excited to be teaching the humanities/environmental writing component of the new Chesapeake Semester. In future semesters, he plans to teach courses on autobiography, the essay, and on technology and literature.
His current work in progress, Emerson's School, a study of the American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson and his interests in education and learning, combines Professor Meehan's research interests in Emerson and American transcendentalism, expertise in pedagogy, and concerns for the future of English and the humanities in the digital age. His goal is to create a scholarly study that will look forward as well as back into a rich period and figure of American educational and literary history, a study that can inform and inspire a wide range of educators in the practice and theory of what Emerson calls "living learning."
In addition to his office, the library, and any number of campus events sponsored by the Center for Environment and Society, the C.V. Starr Center, the Literary House, and Sophie Kerr—despite, or as he argues, because of, his considerable interest in virtual publication, he still loves to see and hear words in person--you will find Professor Meehan on the tennis courts, on his bike, or in a kayak with his wife, Mary, and his two children, Maisie and Hugh, with chocolate lab, Emer, close behind.