Larry Carlson
English
1993 Distinguished Teaching Award
2002 Distinguished Advising Award
Dr. Carlson joined the College of Charleston in 1979. Professor of English, he is the recipient of the College of Charleston’s Distinguished Teaching Award (1993) and the Distinguished Advising Award (2002); he has also received the South Atlantic Association of Departments of English Outstanding Teacher Award (1993). Thrice he has been designated a South Carolina Governor’s Distinguished Professor (1994, 1996, 2002). He has been a finalist for the South Carolina Professor of the Year Award as well as a nominee for the CASE USA Professor of the Year Award. He is a member of Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. A specialist in American literature, Dr. Carlson has taught thirty-nine different courses (thirty-three undergraduate, six graduate) and has directed over fifty undergraduate and graduate tutorials, master’s theses, and bachelor’s essays. In recognition of his special individual work with undergraduates, he received an Undergraduate Research Initiative Award (2002) from the College of Charleston. During its six-year summer residency at the College of Charleston (1994-1999), he also taught visiting teachers in the Tubingen German-American Institute.
Dr. Carlson has received research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (Research Fellowship for College Teachers, Travel to Collections Grant), the American Philosophical Society, and the Southern Regional Education Board. He has served as a peer reviewer for the National Endowment for Humanities (Collaborative Research and Scholarly Editions Program; Research Materials Program; Summer Seminars for Teachers Program), Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, University of Tennessee Press, University of Georgia Press, Prose Studies: History, Theory, and Criticism, Nineteenth-Century Studies, Christianity and Literature, and the Ball State University Forum. Dr. Carlson’s publications have appeared in a variety of journals and books, including American Literature, Studies in the American Renaissance, The American Renaissance in New England, Lives Out of Letters: Essays on American Literary Biography and Documentation, Documentary Editing, Emersonian Circles, American Literary Magazines: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, The Encyclopedia of American Literature, and The Encyclopedia of Transcendentalism. He has been a nominee for the College of Charleston Distinguished Research Award.
He chaired the English Department at the College of Charleston from 2002 through the end of 2007. From its implementation in 1993 to 2002, he directed the M.A. program in English. In addition, from 2001 to 2002 he served as a special assistant to the Provost/Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs to coordinate the innovative teacher-scholar initiative sponsored by the Office of Academic Affairs.
A native of Poland, New York, Dr. Carlson was raised in the north central part of the Empire State (Herkimer County) on the Blue Line of the Adirondack Park. He received his degrees in English from the State University of New York, College at Oneonta (B.A., 1970), the University of Vermont (M.A., 1972), and the Pennsylvania State University (Ph.D., 1979). He has taught full-time at the University of Vermont as well as the College of Charleston.