Helen F. Lewis Professor of English, English
Susan Jaret McKinstry, Helen F. Lewis Professor of English, teaches 19th c British literature, theory, creative writing and journalism. She came to Carleton as a literary scholar, and she has publications on a wide range of authors and genres. At Carleton, she created experimental courses in fiction and film, memoir, contemporary short fiction, and narrative, and began designing cross-disciplinary collaborative class projects and exhibitions with professors and students in psychology, music, cinema & media studies, dance, art history, and studio art.
From 2009–2012, Susan co-directed Carleton’s Mellon-funded interdisciplinary initiative, Visualizing the Liberal Arts (Viz). Susan’s focus on how stories create, interpret, and even reshape culture inspired her to develop public scholarship assignments in her Creative Writing, Methods of Interpretation, and Narrative Theory courses. Her creative nonfiction journalism course, News Stories, was designated an applied ACE course in 2022 to deepen and formalize the collaboration with community partners.