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Alison Gibson 2024

All Faculty

Alison Caviness Gibson, Ph.D.

Senior Lecturer of English, Director of the Writing Center and First-Year Writing

Biography

I am the Director of the Writing Center and the First-Year Writing program. I believe that as Christians we are called to be storytellers, and I love working with students to help them develop writing as a spiritual practice.

I teach courses in writing, American literature, dramaturgy, and drama. At Wheaton, students know me best for an interdisciplinary theater and literature course called Comedy and Tragedy, in which we read, watch, and act out plays together. Louisa May Alcott is one of my favorite authors, and my students and I wrote a blog about her in 2020.

I love to teach in Wheaton's pre-college BRIDGE program, to supervise student teachers, and to mentor HNGR students.

When I'm not in the English department, you can find me at Arena Theater or the Conservatory, where I work as a dramaturg for our campus productions. Some of my favorite shows that I've supported as a dramaturg are Into the Woods, The Importance of Being Earnest, Sense and Sensibility, and Little Women.

My husband, Richard Gibson, is also a professor in the Wheaton English department. Students affectionately call us Mr. Dr. Gibson and Mrs. Dr. Gibson. We have two kids, and, as a family, we love to cheer on Wheaton athletic teams, especially volleyball and basketball.

I recently had the blessing of speaking to our campus in chapel on Jesus feeding the 5,000.

Education

University of Virginia
Ph.D., 2011

University of Virginia
M.A., 2005

Wofford College
B.A. Summa Cum Laude, 2003

Areas of Expertise

  • Writing Center Administration
  • Writing Pedagogy
  • Drama
  • American Literature
  • Southern U.S. Literature

Affiliations

Wheaton College Affiliations

Professional Affiliations

Presentations and Publications

Fairy Tale to Realism: Sondheim and Lapine’s Into the Woods
pre-show lecturer and talk-back moderator, Wheaton College Mainstage Opera production of Into the Woods, January 2025

God of Compassion
chapel speaker, Wheaton College, October 2024

Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor as an Opera
pre-show lecturer and talk-back moderator, Wheaton College Mainstage Opera production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, January 2024

Spiritual Memoir and Theater
presented at The Conference on Christianity and Literature: Literature and Life Writing, Wheaton College, October 2023

Panel Response to Murray Watts’s Mr. Darwin’s Tree
faculty panelist, Wheaton College Science Symposium, March 28, 2023

Little Women for Our Time
pre-show lecturer and talk-back moderator, Wheaton College Conservatory production of Little Women, January 2023

Welcoming the Student Writer: Hospitable Christian Pedagogy for First-Year Writing 
Christian Scholar’s Review, Fall 2022, Vol L11:1.

Panel Response to Murray Watts’s Fire From Heaven
faculty panelist, Wheaton College Science Symposium, March 31, 2022

An Introduction to Shakespeare in the Park’s Henry IV, Part 1
presented as moderator at “Reflections on Henry IV, Part 1,” Wheaton College, September 2021

Imagination in Much Ado About Nothing
recording presented at Shakespeare in the Dark, Wheaton College, October 2020

An Introduction to the E. Beatrice Batson Shakespeare Society
presented as moderator and event organizer at “Shakespeare in Performance: Prayer, Providence, and the Past,” Wheaton College, October 2019

Hospitality and the Teaching of Writing: Assignment Design, Grading, and Classroom Practices presented at the Associated Colleges of the Chicago Area Scholarship of Pedagogy Symposium, University of St. Francis, November 2018

A Mad-Lib of a Play: An Introduction to The Tempest in Performance
presented as moderator and event organizer at “Reflections on The Tempest in Performance,” Wheaton College, September 2018

Hospitality and the Teaching of Writing
presented at the Humanities Brown Bag Colloquium, Wheaton College, September 2018

Hospitality and Gift Exchange in First-Year Writing Pedagogy
presented at the Kuyers Institute conference on “Faith and Teaching: Virtue, Practice, and Imagination,” Calvin College, October 2015

Beyond Consumerist Education: Gift Exchange and Hospitable Writing Pedagogy
presented on the panel “The Hospitality of Composition: Imagining Habitable Sites for Writing on Campus” at the College English Association conference, Indianapolis, March 2015

The Southern Flapper: White Southern Womanhood in The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald Society Conference, Montgomery, AB

White Southern Femininity in A Streetcar Named Desire
Gender, Place and Space: An Interdisciplinary Conference, University of Notre Dame

‘There’s Something in that Voice of Hers’: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Gendering of the U.S. South in His Great American Novel
Thesis Presentation before the Department of English, University of Virginia

Beyond the Belle’s Borders: Fitzgerald’s Americanization of White Southern Femininity in The Great Gatsby
American Literature Association Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA

Southern Womanhood in Fried Green Tomatoes
presented at the Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association annual conference, Boston, MA

Courses

  • ENGW 103: First Year Writing
  • ENGL 112: Studies in Western Literature: Comedy and Tragedy
  • ENGL 343: American Literature, 1945 to the present
  • ENGL 447: Reading and Writing about Theater: Dramaturgy
  • ENGL 473: Louisa May Alcott
  • BRIDGE: Academic Writing
  • BRIDGE: African-American Literature in Focus: August Wilson’s Fences
  • BRIDGE: American Theater in Focus: Hamilton

Writing at Wheaton

Writing at Wheaton