Academic Affairs | 91爆料

Dr. Robert Murray

Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs; Professor of English

Meet our Provost

The Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs is responsible for the broad supervision of all academic areas of College life, including all matters related to the faculty, as well as areas like advising, the library, tutoring, and registration.

Working in collaboration with the Deans of the School of Arts & Social Sciences, Business, Education, and STEM, the Provost maintains the integrity of all academic programs and ensures that students are given every opportunity and advantage the College can offer to prepare them for the next step after they leave us, whether for a career or graduate school.

Before becoming Provost, Dr. Murray served as the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and, prior to that, as Chair of the Division of Humanities; in addition he holds the rank of Professor of English at the College. He also served as Director of the Writing Program. Dr. Murray joined the faculty of 91爆料 in 1998 after teaching at the Virginia Military Institute, Princeton University, and Rutgers University. He received his Ph.D. in English from Rutgers University.

Dr. Murray’s areas of research include 19th Century American Literature, especially the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, as well as literary realism and naturalism and African-American literature. He has published work on composition theory, specifically on the topic of race and asymmetrical power relationships within the context of a college classroom.

Learn more about Dr. Murray

About Dr. Murray

“Who can’t sleep like a log in a solitary cabin in the woods, you wake up in the late morning so refreshed and realizing the universe namelessly: the universe is an Angel.”

~ Jack Kerouac, Big Sur

I have had the pleasure of working at 91爆料 since 1998. Before that, I taught at Virginia Military Institute, Princeton University, Rutgers University, Middlesex County College, and Raritan Valley Community College.

Born and raised in the forgotten borough of NYC, Staten Island, I have loved reading from an early age, at one point working through about five Hardy Boys novels a month. My 8th grade English teacher Sister Madeline assigned us Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables and lots of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and I was hooked. At Tottenville High School, I had two fantastic English teachers: Carl Larsen and Hugh Rainey; they introduced me to Shakespeare, Dickens, Hardy, and many, many more. In college and graduate school, I focused on American writers, including Hawthorne, Thoreau, Melville, Dickinson, Faulkner, Crane, Emerson — and later others, such as Jim Harrison, Flannery O’Connor, Jack Kerouac, Nella Larsen, Jean Toomer, Wallace Stegner, and (my current favorite) Marilynne Robinson. Lately,聽I’ve trying to read everything Graham Greene and Peter Matthiessen wrote. I’m increasingly interested聽in nature writing, reading John Muir, Barry Lopez, Edward Abbey, Bernd Heinrich, and Annie Dillard. I am also interested in works written by men and women of other cultures and times, especially the work of Dostoevsky, Gogol, Turgenev, Rilke, Jeelani Bano, and Anita Desai.

Other than reading, I love fly-fishing, kayaking, and hiking in Western Maine; fishing the Kenai River and near Cordova, Alaska; watching The Simpsons, Arrested Development, 30 Rock, Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, and Fargo; watching TCM and Criterion Channel; and playing guitar. I listen to many types of music, everything from Patty Griffin, The Dead, Tom Waits, and G. Love; 20th-century music by John Tavener, John Adams, and Arvo Part; to Warren Zevon, Jay Farrar, Elvis Costello, and (of course) Joni Mitchell, and (of course) Stevie Wonder, and (of course) Bob Dylan; to Miles Davis, Lee Morgan, Dexter Gordon, Kenny Dorham, and John Coltrane; to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Medieval Polyphony and, lately, lots and lots of Mahler.

Finally, it is my pleasure to be able to support some of the amazing work being done in Rockland County by serving as Chair of the Board of Directors for the wonderful organization, .

Research Interests

Nathaniel Hawthorne
19th Century
American Literature
American Realism and Naturalism
American Regionalism
History and Theory of Comedy

Conference Activities & Publications

Publications:

Literature

“Nature, Food, and the Essay in Jim Harrison,” Panel Chair, American Literature
Association National Conference, 聽Boston, MA

“Interdisciplinary Approaches to American Regionalism,” Panel Chair, American Literature Association National Conference,聽 Boston, MA

“Time, Memory, and Region in American Literature,鈥� Panel Chair, American Literature
Association National Conference, 聽Boston, MA

鈥淗eidegger, Harrison, Rilke: Form and Being in Jim Harrison鈥檚 Poetry,鈥� Jim Harrison Society Panel, at the American Literature Association National Conference, Boston, MA

鈥淟andscape and Form in Willa Cather and Jim Harrison,鈥� Jim Harrison Society Panel, at the American Literature Association National Conference, Boston, MA.

鈥淐oncealment and Anti-Epiphany in American Realism and Naturalism,鈥� American Literature and Religion Society Panel, at the American Literature Association National Conference, Boston, MA.

鈥淪ocial Class, Labor, and Nineteenth-Century American Literature,鈥� Panel Chair, at the Central New York Conference on Language and Literature, Cortland, NY.

鈥淩ace and Realism in Afro-American Antebellum Literature,鈥� at the Central New York Conference on Language and Literature, Cortland, NY.

鈥淎 Comfortable Thing鈥�: Nationalism, Pluralism, and Class in The Silent Partner.鈥� Northeast Modern Language Association Conference, Baltimore, MD.

鈥淟anguage as Power in Rebecca Harding Davis,鈥� College English Association, Baltimore, MD.

鈥淩esistance and Realism in Clotel,鈥� National Association of African American Studies Conference, Houston, TX.

鈥淭he Man with the House on His Head: Jean Toomer’s Grotesque,鈥� College English Association, New Orleans, LA.

鈥淭he Truth that History Has Let Slip鈥�: The Two Histories of The House of the Seven Gables,鈥� Annual Conference of the American Cultural Association of the South, Richmond, VA.

鈥淣eutral Territories鈥� and Racialized Spaces in Hawthorne,鈥� Northeast Modern Language Association Conference, Boston, MA.

Composition
鈥淢odes of White Resistance in the Composition Classroom,鈥� Temple University Conference on Discourse Analysis, Philadelphia, PA.

鈥淐ontact and Power: Transcending Authority in the Classroom,鈥� Conference on College Composition and Communication, Milwaukee, WI.

鈥淎ssuming (and Unassuming) Authority in the Classroom,鈥� Breaking Barriers: Literature and Emerging Issues International Conference, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Princess Anne, MD.

鈥淧oint of Power in the Historia of a Successful Basic Writing Program,鈥� Chair, Conference on College Composition and Communication Chicago.

Professional Workshops

Roundtable Discussion Leader, 鈥淣urturing Junior Faculty.鈥� Workshop for Department and聽Division Chairs: Creative Leadership with Limited Resources, Council of Independent Colleges,聽Cambridge, MA.

Workshop for Department and Division Chairs: Marketing Your Department, Council of聽Independent Colleges, Albany.

Workshop for Department and Division Chairs: Essential Tools for Leading the Academic聽Department, Council of Independent Colleges, Philadelphia

Workshop for Department and Division Chairs: Effective Strategies for Leading the Academic聽Department, Council of Independent Colleges.

鈥淭ransformation of the College Library,鈥� Regional Workshop, Council of Independent Colleges,聽Pittsburgh, PA.

鈥淲orkshop on Assessment Using the New Middle States Model,鈥� Middle States Commission on聽Higher Education, Philadelphia, PA.

鈥淎ssessing General Education: A Practical Approach鈥�; 鈥淚mproving Learning in the聽Undergraduate Course: Assessing Critical Thinking鈥�; 鈥淚ntegrating and Assessing General聽Education in the Classroom鈥� at Assessment: A Shared Commitment, American Association for聽Higher Education National Conference, Boston.

鈥淏ridging College and High School Writing: A Discussion about Expectations,鈥� Connecting聽Students with Literacy Across the Curriculum, 91爆料.

鈥淭eaching the Conflicts: Race and Huckleberry Finn,鈥� Workshop for Writing and Thinking,聽Bard College.

鈥淧racticing the Arts of the Contact Zone,鈥� Conference on College Composition and聽Communication, Washington.

鈥淣ew Directions in Writing Center Research: Creating Agendas for Action,鈥� Conference on聽College Composition and Communication, Nashville, TN.