Faculty Profile: Dr. Carol Bender
Dr. Carol Bender, professor of English, has had a special interest in African-American literature since her guest professorship at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where the faculty she worked with had tremendous expertise in the subject. Much of her professional writing and scholarship focuses on black women writers such as Gwendolyn Brooks and Gloria Naylor. Her other interest, women's literature, stems from her curiosity in women's studies, a program she and a colleague started at Alma in 1992.
Bender has been honored numerous times for her creative and outstanding methods of teaching. She has received the Sears-Roebuck Teaching Excellence Award, the Outstanding Faculty in the Humanities Award, the Barlow Award for Faculty Excellence and the Posey Award for Teaching.
She teaches classes in composition, literature, American studies, creative writing and poetry, and has been known to take her students to lectures, concerts and readings by renowned authors. Throughout her career she has been a leader in the college's women's studies program, an advisor to the Pine River Anthology arts magazine and the faculty advisor to the women's music honorary Sigma Alpha Iota. Her articles have appeared in Language and Style, The Language Arts Journal of Michigan, Beyond Bindings and Boundaries, Issues and Identities in Literature, and several Masterplots reference works.
She received her B.A. and M.A. degrees from Central Michigan University and her Ph.D. from Michigan State University.
