Sean Meehan
- Professor of English • Director of Writing • Co-Chair of the Department of English
- 800-422-1782, ext. 6556
- smeehan2FREEwashcoll
- Smith 115
As Director of Writing, Sean Meehan works with faculty and students on writing across the curriculum and mentors students in editing and publishing the Washington College Review, which publishes exemplary student writing that emerges from the core requirements of Washington College's writing program. As a teacher of writing and literature, Professor Meehan cultivates the art of inventive reading and thinking that Emerson locates in the rhetorical foundations of liberal education, a focal point of his scholarship and most recent book. His longstanding interest in studying writing and technology now focuses on the uses and limits of AI tools for teaching and learning. Professor Meehan has published two articles in Inside Higher Ed, "When AI is Writing, Who is the Author?" and "Why Aren't We Asking Questions of AI?"
Education
- Ph.D., English, University of Iowa, 2002
- M.A., English, SUNY Buffalo, 1996
- B.A., English, Princeton University, 1991
Academic Expertise
- Emerson and Transendentalism
- Envrionmental Literature and Writing
- Nonfiction: Autobiography, Documentary, the Essay
- Writing and Technologies, including AI
- Rhetoric
- Liberal Education: History and Pedagogy
I regularly teach writing and rhetorical knowledge that engages with media, both older (such as photography and film) and newer (such as digital text and AI). These are technologies that might help us compose but also help us think about writing, which is itself a technology. Documentary film and literature are a particular area I teach for exploring writing in relation to media and technology.
I also teach and advise projects on environmental literature and writing, what is now more broadly called environmental humanities, and have focused on authors such as Henry David Thoreau, Annie Dillard, Wendell Berry, and Leslie Marmon Silko.
Additional Information
- English Department Chair and Sophie Kerr Curator, Washington College, 2019-2022
- Advisory Board, Ralph Waldo Emerson Society, 2018-2020
- Book Reviewer, The Key Reporter: Phi Beta Kappa Society, 2012-2014
- Ralph Waldo Emerson Fellow, Houghton Library, Harvard University, 2005-2006
- Assistant Professor of English, Morningside College, 2004-2008
- A Liberal Education in Late Emerson: Readings in the Rhetoric of Mind. “Mind and American Literature” series. Rochester, NY: Camden House/Boydell & Brewer (2019).
- Approaches to Teaching the Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Collection co-edited with Mark C. Long. “Approaches to Teaching World Literature” series. New York: Modern Language Association of America (2018).
- Mediating American Autobiography: Photography in Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass, and Whitman. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press (2008).
- Fellowship, Transylvania Seminar in Liberal Education, 2015
- Holstein Award for Ethics in the Curriculum, Washington College, 2013-2014
- Ralph Waldo Emerson Fellowship, Houghton Library, Harvard University, 2005-2006
- Phi Beta Kappa, Princeton University, 1991