Bio
Stephanie Browner has been the dean of Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts since 2011. The school received a $5 million grant from its founder, Mr. Eugene M. Lang, in honor of her leadership in 2012. With over twenty years of experience working in higher education, she was formerly the Academic Vice President and Dean of Faculty at Berea College in Kentucky, an institution nationally acclaimed for providing tuition-free liberal arts education to low-income students. Her accomplishments there included securing more than $2,000,000 in grants for academic innovation, increasing faculty diversity, designing and implementing new curricular initiatives, leading a campus-wide scenario planning process designed to ensure the college’s continued excellence and economic viability into the 21st century, and working with the city on projects such as bike trails and farmlands.
Stephanie’s scholarly research has appeared in leading journals including PMLA and American Quarterly, and she is the author of two books, one of which, Profound Science and Elegant Literature: Imagining Doctors in Nineteenth-Century America (University of Pennsylvania, 2005), was named an Outstanding Academic Title of the Year by Choice magazine. Stephanie has lectured widely, especially on literature and medicine, and has created websites on Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. She is also the founder and editor of The Charles Chesnutt Digital Archive. She has served on the Editorial Advisory Board of The Bedford Anthology of American Literature and currently serves on the Board of Networked Interface for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship (NINES).
Stephanie’s early experience includes work as a medical volunteer in Central America; as a high school English and Spanish teacher; and as a professional modern dancer. She has a BA from the University of Chicago and an MA and PhD in American Literature and American Studies from Indiana University in Bloomington.