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Faculty and Staff

Dean Mark Blackwell
Dean Mark Blackwell

The College of Arts and Sciences has more than 100 full-time faculty members who are dedicated to your success.

Meet Our Dean

Mark Blackwell, PhD
Interim Dean, College of Arts and Sciences

PhD, Cornell University; MA, Cornell University; BA, Princeton University

Mark Blackwell began serving as the interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences July 1, 2022. He earned an AB in English from Princeton University, summa cum laude, and won the Class of 1859 Prize for outstanding work on the senior thesis and the departmental exam. He received his PhD from Cornell University, where he was awarded the Guilford Essay Prize for the dissertation exhibiting the highest standard of excellence in English prose. Following four years at California State University, Chico, Blackwell came to the University of Hartford in 2001, where he has been Chair of the English Department, Chair of the Department of Rhetoric and Professional Writing, Interim Chair of the Cinema Department, Director of the University Honors Program, Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Director of the University Preceptor Program. 

Blackwell teaches seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and early nineteenth-century British literature and culture, including courses on Milton, satire, Austen, and talking things. He has also led a first-year seminar entitled Castaways and Survivors, offered honors seminars entitled Gothic Thrills, Humans & Animals, and Representing Death, and directed independent studies on the graphic novel and on contemporary fiction.