R.I. Professor of the Year

Carnegie Foundation honors Dean as top professor in Rhode Island

Carolyn Dean, associate professor of history, has been named the 1996 Rhode Island Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has named Carolyn Dean the 1996 Rhode Island Professor of the Year.

Dean, associate professor of history, is considered by many University officials as one of Brown's rising young professors. "She inspires, energizes and speaks to students," said colleague Mary Gluck, associate professor of history. "She is a very concerned person who spends a lot of time with her students."

Dean teaches courses in European women's history, French history and the history of sexuality. As a scholar, she is breaking new ground with her study of the intersection of sexuality and culture and has written a formal history of modern Western sexuality. Currently, Dean is researching the changing meaning of pornography in France from the mid-nineteenth century through 1940 for a forthcoming book. She believes that by examining the history of sexuality and pornography one can "speak to the distribution of power" in a society.

"When I was told that I had won (R.I. Professor of the Year), I was really surprised," said Dean. "It really moved me that students and colleagues thought enough of me to write letters of recommendation for the award. I was really honored that Brown had the confidence in me to nominate me."

Dean arrived at Brown in 1991. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1987. She is the author of Sexuality and Modern Western Culture and The Self and Its Pleasures: Bataille, Lacan, and the History of the Decentered Subject. She is regarded by students and colleagues as an excellent teacher in and out of the classroom receiving the William G. McLoughlin Award for Teaching Excellence in the Social Sciences in 1993. She has also held teaching appointments at Harvard and Northwestern Universities.

The Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) established the Professors of the Year program in 1981 and works in cooperation with the Carnegie Foundation and various higher education associations in its administration.

This year, the Carnegie Foundation announced winners in 47 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. CASE assembled two preliminary panels of judges to select most state winners and national finalists. The Carnegie Foundation then convened a special panel, which selected the remaining state winners in addition to the national finalists.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, a policy center located in Princeton, N.J., is devoted to strengthening America's schools and colleges. CASE, based on Washington, D.C., is an international association of colleges, universities and independent elementary and secondary schools.