Carol (Kate) Hale

Professor Hale joined the English Department in the fall of 1987. Her graduate degrees are from Michigan State University with concentrations in nineteenth-century British literature, British culture and society (1789-1914), and composition theory/pedagogy.  For her doctoral dissertation, she produced a scholarly edition of the British working-class novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.  During her years at UW-Eau Claire, she has developed courses in the female bildungsroman, in the literature of witness, on the Canadian author Margaret Atwood, and—for the Honors Program— a literature course informed by Martha Nussbaum’s concept of the “narrative imagination.”  Since the late 1990s, Dr. Hale has been exploring her interest in natural history, which has manifested in several ways: development of an English 110 focused on Aldo Leopold’s idea of the land ethic—and the consequences of neglecting it; participation as a co-coordinator of the Confluence Center for Chippewa River Studies; development (with faculty colleagues from chemistry and geography) of the Environment, Society, & Culture minor—an  interdisciplinary program based in the humanities but grounded in a familiarity with either biology or chemistry; and participation on the steering committee of the Watershed Institute for Collaborative Environmental Studies.  At the UW-System level, she serves as a member of the advisory group for the Liberal Education Initiative.