Dr. Rebecca W. Bushnell
Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences
Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor, Department of English
Rebecca
W. Bushnell was appointed dean of the School of Arts and
Sciences and Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor in January 2005.
She is a professor of English who has served on the Penn
faculty since 1982 and is also a member of the graduate groups
in comparative literature and history.
Dr. Bushnell is a scholar of early modern English literature, culture, and history as well as an expert on the literary genre of tragedy. Her books include Prophesying Tragedy: Sign and Voice in Sophocles’ Theban Plays; Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the English Renaissance; A Culture of Teaching: Early Modern Humanism in Theory and Practice; and Green Desire, a study of early modern English gardening books. She has recently edited A Companion to Tragedy for Blackwell Publishing. She has received grant support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. She is also a recipient of the University’s Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching.
From 1998 to 2003, Dr. Bushnell served as associate dean for arts and letters in the School of Arts and Sciences, overseeing faculty affairs, budgets, and strategic planning for humanities departments, centers, and programs. As dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from 2003 to 2004, she led Penn’s undergraduate programs in the liberal arts. She is a former chair of the graduate group in English and from 1993 to 1994 directed the University-wide Presidential Commission on Strengthening the Community.
Dr. Bushnell holds a B.A. from Swarthmore College, an M.A. in English literature from Bryn Mawr, and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton.