Dr. Barbara Emrys
associate professor, UNK English department, 308.865.8293
Dr. Susanne George Bloomfield, an English professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, has been awarded the Martin Distinguished Professorship.
The award was established by former Congressman David Martin and his wife Tancie to recognize excellence in teaching and research, according to UNK Dean of the College of Fine Arts & Humanities Dr. William E. Jurma.
Dr. Bloomfield will hold the position for three years and will receive an annual stipend. Professors holding this position before Dr. Bloomfield, include Dr. Don Welch, Dr. Richard Jussel and Dr. Charles Peek, who finished his last term in China on a Fulbright grant.
Dr. Bloomfield’s areas of expertise include Western American literature, multicultural literature, and memoir and biography. Her two most recent works, Impertinences, about a woman reporter for theOmaha World Herald in the 1890s, and From the Beginning, a history of the University of Nebraska at Kearney, were published in 2005.
Dr. Barbara Emrys, professor and chair of the Department of English, said that Bloomfield, a Nebraska native, is currently writing a memoir of her family which includes four generations on the family farm.
She has received numerous awards and honors including the Nebraska Library Association’s Mari Sandoz Award, the Pratt Heins Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Susan Koppelman Award for Kate M. Cleary: A Literary Biography With Selected Works, one of more than seven books she has written or co-edited.
Dr. Bloomfield earned her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln in 1988, and the master’s and bachelor’s in English from UNK. She has taught at UNK since 1979.
The recipient of the Martin Distinguished Professorship award, who must hold the rank of professor in the English department, is selected by a committee comprised of the dean of the College of Fine Arts and Humanities; three members of the English department, with the rank of assistant or associate professor, appointed by the senior vice chancellor for Academic Affairs and Student Life; one alumnus; and one graduate student, who is appointed by the dean and the three faculty members from the English department.
