Image of Karen Clausen-Brown
Printer's Ornament

Welcome! I am a scholar of English literature, a teacher, and a librarian-in-training.

Currently, I am a student at Simmons University in Boston, earning my MLIS degree with a concentration in Archives Management. To gain experience as a librarian, I also work several part-time jobs: I'm a Digitization Assistant in the Schlesinger Library at Harvard, a Manuscript Processing and Digitization Assistant in the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum, and a Reference Assistant at Boston College. After I complete my MLIS degree, I hope to pursue a career in special collections librarianship.

Before moving into a career in library science, I worked for over a decade as a scholar and teacher of English literature. I got my B.A. at Walla Walla University with a triple major in English, religion, and biblical languages. I then earned my M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in English literature. I focused on medieval and Renaissance literature, and my dissertation was about the poet John Milton's responses to seventeenth-century English Sabbath debates. After graduate school, I returned to Walla Walla University to work as an English professor, earning tenure there. I taught courses for the English Department and Honors Program on academic writing and research, medieval and Renaissance literature, religion and literature, and literary theory. I also served for a year as Director of the Honors Program. I published articles in peer-reviewed journals including The Seventeenth Century, Religion and Literature, and Milton Studies. My article in Milton Studies won the 2018 James Holly Hanford Article Award, presented annually by the Milton Society of America for the best article on John Milton. I continue to be an active scholar, and my research interests include early modern English literature, religious history and biblical studies, gender studies, and book history.

Printer's Ornament