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University Leadership

Beth Maclay Doriani, Ph.D.

Beth Maclay Doriani, Ph.D.
Contact:
Beth Maclay Doriani, Ph.D.
Dean of College of Arts and Sciences
T: 610.341.5893
bdoriani@eastern.edu
Beth Maclay Doriani is a scholar in American literature, focusing on the literature from the beginnings of our nation through the early twentieth century. A nationally known Emily Dickinson scholar, she is the author of Emily Dickinson, Daughter of Prophecy (University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), as well as a number of articles and reviews on Dickinson and other American writers. She is the author of a landmark literary study entitled "Black Womanhood in Nineteenth-Century America" (American Quarterly 43.2) and was an early scholar of woman-authored nineteenth-century texts, both fiction and poetry, as these were re-discovered by scholars over one hundred years after their initial publication.

In more recent years, Dr. Doriani has served as the academic dean or provost of several Christian, liberal arts colleges. Although she has never left the classroom, she has turned her attention to academic leadership, accreditation, and general education, focusing on maintaining and strengthening the quality of undergraduate education in the liberal arts tradition. She seeks to create a learning environment favorable to the values of the liberal arts, such as life-long learning and the potential of the liberal arts to engender careful thinking, self-awareness, compassion for others, good leadership, and the fostering of a more just and humane world.

Dr. Doriani holds a B.A. in English from Calvin College (Grand Rapids, MI), an M.A. in English from Kent State University, and a Ph.D. in English (American Studies) from the University of Notre Dame. She has served as a professor of English at Northwestern College (IA) and as the academic dean and/or vice president of academics at Malone College (OH), Montreat College (NC), and the School of Undergraduate Studies at Regent University (Virginia). Her current work-in-progress is a book co-authored with an ethicist on effective, ethical leadership in higher education.