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9. Patricia Sharpe

Patricia Sharpe

Interests

Research Interests: Anthropology and literature; early college education

Teaching Interests: Postcolonial literature of India; theories of fiction; feminist literary theory; psychology and literature

Other Interests: Crossword puzzles, climate change and the environment, natural and cultural history of the Berkshires, Asian studies

Favorite/Regular Courses Offered

• Joyce's Ulysses
• Art of Fiction: The Novel

Biography

Dr. Sharpe attended Barnard College, SUNY Buffalo, and the University of Texas in Austin where she earned her PhD in Literature. After teaching in India on a Fulbright grant, Dr. Sharpe taught at the University of Michigan for 10 years before joining the Simon’s Rock Literature faculty in 1983. She was Dean of Academic Affairs for 1993-2005. In that period, she benefited intellectually and professionally from lively and fruitful collaboration with Simon's Rock faculty member in Anthropology, Frances E. Mascia Lees. In 2001-3 she designed the curriculum and helped select the founding faculty of the first Bard High School Early College in New York City. In 2007, she returned to New York to help found Bard High School Early College Queens where she served as Dean of Studies until 2016, at which point she was delighted to return to Simon's Rock as Dean of Academic Affairs at the request of her former student at Simon's Rock and colleague at BHSECQ, Provost Ian Bickford.  Dr. Sharpe retired in 2021.    

Highlights

• “Early College: What and Why?” revised and reprinted in Educating Outside the Lines: Bard College at Simon’s Rock on a New Pedagogy for the Twenty-First Century, Nancy Yanoshak, ed. New York: Peter Lang, 2011
• NACEP (National Association of Concurrent Enrollment Programs) Member and Presenter at National Convention, October 2011. “Professors in Ninth Grade: The Bard Model.”
• FIPSE Grant to Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Seminar Leader for faculty from early college programs across the country, 2006-2010
• “Confronting the Metaphysical, Ethical, and Moral in the work of J.M. Coetzee,” In Focus with Introduction, co-edited with Frances E. Mascia-Lees, American Anthropologist, 2006
• Participant, NEH Seminar, “Early American Microhistories,” University of Connecticut, Summer, 2005
• Taking a Stand in a Post-Feminist World: Toward an Engaged Cultural Criticism. Co-authored with Frances E. Mascia-Lees, State University of New York Press, 2000
• Participant NEH Institute, “Postcolonial Literature and Theory,” School for Oriental & African Studies, London, Summer, 1998
• “Locked in or Locked out or Holding Both Ends of a Slippery Pole: Confusion of Metaphors, Collaborations and Intellectual Travesties,” co-authored with Frances E. Mascia-Lees, in Making Worlds: Gender, Metaphor, Materiality, eds. Susan Aiken, Ann Brigham, Sallie Marston, and Penny Waterstone. University of Arizona Press, 1998
• “Women, Writing, and their Bodies: Exploring the conjunction of Writing Difficulties, Eating Disorders, and the Construction of Self among American Female Adolescents.” Co-authored with Frances E. Mascia-Lees and Deanna Scarfe. Berkeley Journal of Sociology 41 1996-97
• Frances E Mascia-Lees and Patricia Sharpe, eds. Constructing Meaningful Dialogue on Difference: Feminism and Postmodernism in Anthropology and the Academy. 2 special issues of Anthropological Quarterly, 66 (2 & 3) April & June, 1993
• Tattoo, Torture, Mutilation and Adornment: The Denaturalization of the Body in Culture and Text, Co-edited with Frances E. Mascia-Lees (with introduction by the editors), State University of New York Press, 1992
• “What is Equal Justice for All?” The Berkshire Eagle, September 5, 1990
• “The Postmodern Turn in Anthropology: Cautions from a Feminist Perspective,” Co-authored with Frances E. Mascia-Lees and Colleen B. Cohen. Signs: Journal of Women inCulture and Society 15 (1): 7-33, Fall 1989
• Participant Award, NEH Institute, “The Future of the Avant-Garde in a Postmodern Age,” Harvard University, Summer, 1989
• Woodrow Wilson Institute, “Reinterpreting the Humanities,” Hobart and William Smith Colleges, June, 1986
• Participant Award, NEH Seminar, Women and Representation in 19th Century Literature and Art, Brown University, Summer, 1986
• Class of ‘23 Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, The University of Michigan, 1977