Ronald A. Sharp, PhD

Ronald Sharp came to Vassar in 2003 as Dean of the Faculty and Professor of English. He received a B.A. from Kalamazoo College, an M.A. from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. He taught at Kenyon College from 1970 to 2003, where he was also Co-Editor of THE KENYON REVIEW, Provost, and Acting President. He has also taught at the Breadloaf School and The University of Exeter, and was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Melbourne’s Australian Centre.

He has published more than fifty articles and six books:  KEATS, SKEPTICISM, AND THE RELIGION Of BEAUTY (University of Georgia Press, 1979); FRIENDSHIP AND LITERATURE: SPIRIT AND FORM (Duke University Press, 1986);  THE NORTON BOOK OF FRIENDSHIP, co-edited with Eudora Welty (Norton, 1992); READING GEORGE STEINER, co-edited with Nathan A. Scott, Jr.  (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); THE PERSISTENCE OF POETRY: BICENTENNIAL ESSAYS ON KEATS, co-edited with Robert M. Ryan (University of Massachusetts Press, 1998; and THE SELECTED POETRY OF MICHAEL HARPER (Arc, 2002).

Sharp’s primary fields are British Romanticism and the literature of friendship. In addition to teaching many courses in those fields, he taught contemporary poetry, critical theory, and various writing classes.