Deirdre Egan-Ryan

Professor of English
Director of Academic Service-Learning

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 academic service-learning 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 recently published book “Modernist Women Writers and American Social Engagement,” 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.

She is currently at work on another book project that takes New York City in the early decades of the twentieth century as its focal point. The book investigates the ways in which changing urban and rural spaces influenced the modernism of a diverse group of women urban planners, intellectuals, writers and artists. Another strand of her research and writing examines best practices in community-engaged pedagogy and its place in mission-based higher education. Egan-Ryan has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the MacArthur Foundation.

Courses
AMER 128 American Myths, Community, and the Individual
AMER/HUMA 261 Introduction to American Studies 
AMER/ENGL/WMGS 311 Women and Literature
AMER/ENGL 323 The Harlem Renaissance 
AMER/ENGL 329 Literature of Service 
AMER 499 American Studies Research Project 
ENGL 150 Introduction to Literature 
ENGL 222 Modern Poetry 
ENGL 236 Survey of U.S. Literature 2 (1865 to the present) 
ENGL 318 The Modern American Novel 
ENGL 489 Advanced Seminar in English Literary Studies: Hurston and Morrison