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A scholar of Medieval literature, the English language and technology, Carolynn Van Dyke has been a faculty member and head of both English and computer science. She was also a founding member of Lafayette’s Women’s Studies program in 1983.
“I’ve always been interested in science as well as language,” says Van Dyke, professor and associate head of the English department. “I was revising a book manuscript in the early ’80s when mainframes were coming out and [Provost] June Schlueter showed me how to do word processing [on the mainframe computer]. I was fascinated with the process of computing and taught myself programming.”
Lafayette started its computer science department in 1983. “When the field was new, it was hard to hire [faculty with] Ph.D.s in computer science,” says Van Dyke. When the department advertised for a humanist to teach introductory courses, she applied and shifted to the computer science department for six years. “As the field grew [nationwide] it was clear we needed faculty with that [computer] expertise and there were more available. So I hired my replacement [as department head] and returned to English.”
“You can not predict when you get a degree what you will be doing down the road,” says Van Dyke about her career. She is currently working on a book about Chaucer and his use of characters that are not humans but agents such as animals or gods.
Her interest in technology has continued. She teaches a Values and Science/Technology course examining automation, and does research on the Web, examining digital images of old manuscripts rather than traveling to the library holding the actual document.
“Lafayette demands breadth in a career,” she says. “It is both challenging and rewarding to be active in lots of different roles. We [faculty] are constantly juggling teaching, lots of contact with students, our own scholarship, and playing our role in the governance of the institution. We’re running in lots of different directions.”
“One-on-one contacts with students are very rewarding,” she adds. “Years after graduation you will find out that you made a real difference [to a student].
“I loved Prof. Van Dyke’s classes,” says Carolyn Leder ’98, trade reprint administrator for Penguin Putnam Press, New York, who did an honors thesis with Van Dyke. “She was always very positive. She encouraged my writing. She had a wonderful ability to lead class discussions. She could always find something relevant in a student’s comments to move the discussion forward and make the main points she wanted to discuss.”
Leder, who graduated with a double major in English and art, adds, “I got to know her personally. When I graduated, she gave me a book of poetry. When I started thinking about graduate school, I came back to talk to her. She has been very supportive.”
Highlights
Publications:Fiction of Truth: Structures of Meaning in Narrative and Dramatic Allegory, Cornell University Press, 1985. “‘To Whom Shul We Compleyne?’: The Poetics of Agency in Chaucer’s Complaints,” Style, 1998. “The Lyric Planet: Chaucer’s Construction of Subjectivity in the Complaint of Mars,” Chaucer Review 31, 2, 1996.
Honors: Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award, 1998; Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Lecture Award, 1986.
Achievements: associate head, English; former head of both English and computer science departments; chair of the faculty promotion and tenure review committee
Contact: (610) 330-5536; vandykec@layfayette.edu
Olivia Garnett explored the appearances of ghosts in medieval literature with Carolyn Van Dyke, Francis A. March Professor of English.