Thirteen faculty members were honored with the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching during the annual Faculty Awards Convocation. One of the people honored was the Department of English's Alison Chapman.

Chapman specializes in early modern literature and culture. A native of Birmingham, Chapman graduated magna cum laude from Davidson College and earned her Ph.D. in English literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the cultural effects of the English Reformation, and she has published in the top academic journals in her field. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Renaissance poetry and prose, Shakespeare, Milton, British literature to 1800 and composition. She is known for her vibrant and accessible teaching.

One co-worker says, “Alison is able to inspire students with love for Milton and Renaissance poetry through her own expertise and infectious enthusiasm. She works with literature that even to me, a scholar in contemporary literature, hardly seems innately exciting or even accessible, but she really manages to bring it alive for students. Students commonly talk about how much they learned in her class, and they come out of her classes with a genuine passion and enthusiasm for texts as initially daunting as Milton’s Paradise Lost.”