Deirdre Egan-Ryan

Professor of English
Director of Faculty Development

B.A., College of the Holy Cross 
M.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison 
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison

Programs: English, American Studies

Deirdre Egan-Ryan is a professor of English and director of faculty development at St. Norbert College. She specializes in 20th century American literature. Her scholarly work engages with modern American literature and culture, race, ethnic and women’s studies, especially in the context of interdisciplinary modernism. Her publications include essays on such literary figures as Zora Neale Hurston, Mina Loy and Gloria Anzaldúa.

Her edited collection, “Modernist Women Writers and American Social Engagement,” (March 2019) explores the role of social and political engagement by women writers in the development of American modernism. In this collection of scholarly essays that she co-edited with Jody Cardinal and Julia Lisella, Egan-Ryan contributes an essay on modernist children’s writer Virginia Lee Burton. Another strand of her research and writing examines best practices in community-engaged pedagogy, questions of vocation and their place in mission-based higher education. Her writing and workshops through the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE) help faculty and staff consider questions of meaning and purpose in their work with undergraduate college students. Egan-Ryan has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the MacArthur Foundation.

Courses
ENGL 150 Literature and Writing
ENGL 201: Introduction to Literary Studies
ENGL 221: The American Short Story
ENGL 222 Modern Poetry
ENGL 236 Survey of U.S. Literature 2 (1865 to the present)
ENGL/WMGS 311 Women and Literature
ENGL 318 The Modern American Novel
ENGL 323 The Harlem Renaissance
ENGL 329 Literature of Service
ENGL 350 Major Authors: Hurston and Morrison
ENGL 385: Heroes and Sages
ENGL 489 Capstone in Literary Studies: Profession, Vocation, and Meaning
WMGS 205: Race and Ethnicity in the Lives of U.S. Women
LIST 505: Living Vocationally: Pursuing a Life of Meaning and Purpose