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Lynne Simpson, Ph.D.

Professor of English, Department Chair
English

Education

Ph.D., English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
M.A., English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
B.A., Business and Economics, English,
Washington & Jefferson College, Washington, PA

Research or Areas of Specialty

Shakespeare and British Literature

Recognitions

  • Fred Standley Lifetime Achievement Award, College English Association, 2025
  • Named the Charles A. Dana Professor of English, 2024
  • Joe D. Thomas Distinguished Service Award, College English Association, 2022

Classes at PC

  • Austenmania!; Composition
  • The English Novel to 1900
  • Introduction to Literature
  • Nineteenth Century British Literature
  • Shakespeare; Surveys of British Literature I & II
  • Topics in Renaissance Literature
  • The Victorian Age
  • Women’s Literature

Organizations

  • College English Association
  • Interim Executive Director (2023)
  • Associate Director and Treasurer (2019-2022)

Publications

Forthcoming: “Averting the Apocalypse: Teaching Ecology, Racial Justice, and Morality in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Colson Whitehead’s Zone One.” Approaches to Teaching the Works of Colson Whitehead, edited by Stephanie Li, Modern Language Association, anticipated 2026.

“Beyond ‘Mourning and Melancholia’.” The Power of Death: Perceptions of Death in the Western World, edited by Maria-Jose Blanco and Ricarda Vidal, Berghahn Books, 2015, pp. 22-38.

“’Immortal Longings’: The Death Drive in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.” Edited by John V. Nance, Spec. issue of The Humanities Review, St. Johns UP, 2010, pp. 65-79.

“The Failure to Mourn in All’s Well That Ends Well.” Shakespeare Studies. Vol. 22. Edited by J. Leeds Barroll, Associated UP, 1994, pp. 172-88.