Susan Peterson

My teaching style is interactive. I expect students to fully participate in their learning. As an English professor this was especially important; when students struggled to understand the content, I worked with them to simplify what at first felt to them like incomprehensible material. I taught them how to discover the central theme of what they were reading and then to discern how the writer uses detail to lead the reader to that pivotal moment in the text.

My Ph.D. dissertation sought to demonstrate how Gandhi's nonviolence rhetoric almost exactly matched that of Percy Shelley in his works "An Address to the Irish People" and Proposal for an Association of Philanthropists. As part of my research I interviewed Ela Gandhi (Gandhi's granddaughter) and Mairead Maguire, Nobel Laureate from Northern Ireland. My dissertation director was Dr. Bernard LaFayette, Jr. He served on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s executive committee, co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and taught Kingian Nonviolence since King's death.

As a professor, I taught literature and writing courses. The literature courses included genres from Old English to contemporary texts. One of my most popular courses was "The Beatles as Poets". I also taught basic writing courses, First Year Seminar, Women's Studies, Honors English and World Literature.

I have presented papers at universities across the United States, at Oxford and in various countries such as Holland, Slovakia, Canada, and Italy.

As a follower of the Grateful Dead, I have presented papers at "The Grateful Dead Scholars Caucus" several times.