2010 CASE Professor of the Year

Dr. Josephine M. Dunn

The University of Scranton named Dr. Josephine M. Dunn, Ph.D., its CASE Professor of the Year in recognition of her outstanding performance as a member of the faculty.

Professors awarded by individual schools are then eligible for further recognition by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) at the state and national levels.

Josephine M. Dunn arrived at the University of Scranton in 1988 after teaching Art History at Rice University, Houston, Texas. She holds two undergraduate degrees, summa cum laude -- one in studio art (BFA) and the second in art history (BA) from the University of Houston, where she graduated as Phi Kappa Phi Distinguished Graduating Senior in the College of Fine Arts and Humanities. Her academic studies were subsequently completed by an M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dunn teaches a wide range of courses, from Native American Art to Art of the Holocaust, and offers readers and tutorials in topics ranging from The Forbidden City to Sacred Spaces to the “Art” of Costume. Currently, she directs the Art and Music Program and collaborates with art history minors preparing for graduate study in art history, museum studies, and historic preservation. She co-directs a faculty seminar, The Catholic Intellectual Tradition, and is Co-Director of the Italian Studies Concentration. Organizer and leader of 3-week travel seminars to Italy and one-week seminars to Greece, she regularly schedules art trips for students to New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, DC as well. Recently, she collaborated in designing the Individualized Major, and now directs the university’s first student to major in art history.

A strong advocate of local history research, Dunn designs courses and museum internships for students on the art and architecture of Scranton, the history of women, city-planning and urban reform, and oral history. In 2007, she founded the Biennial Regional Conference on Women and History in NEPA that brings leading historians to Scranton and provides a platform for students to share their research with the local community. As a twice Pennsylvania Commonwealth Speaker, Dunn represents the Pennsylvania Humanities Council throughout the state as she lectures on extraordinary and largely unrecognized women in regional history. In May 2010, her lecture will be filmed for PCN’s “Humanities on the Road.”

During the 22 years she has taught, Dunn has received numerous grants and scholarships: two Fulbright grants to Italy; a Samuel H. Kress Foundation Scholarship at the Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence; two NEH Summer Seminar/Institutes (Cornell University and Oxford, ENG) and many local and state grants. Her articles on Renaissance art have appeared in international journals, and she has twice presented papers at the Medieval International Congress at Kalamazoo, MI.

In 2010, she became an honorary member of the National Jesuit Honor Society, Alpha Sigma Nu.

List of Past Recipients

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