Ph.D. Literature, UC Santa Cruz, 1988
B.A. English, UC Irvine
Patricia MacKinnon did her graduate work at the University of California at Santa Cruz where she studied several languages (Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and German) in order to specialize in the literary tradition from antiquity through the Renaissance. Her doctoral dissertation in Comparative Literature traced the centrality of the Platonic analogy of the body politic from the Republic as the governing, organizing trope in the epic productions of a subsequent series of inter-textually linked authors including Vergil, St. Augustine, Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto.
For the past 16 years since receiving her doctorate, Patricia MacKinnon has been engaged in the development and teaching of a wide range of broadly conceived, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural Humanities courses. She has taught in the adult and professional universities (Golden Gate University), the traditional black colleges of the South (Tougaloo College, Mississippi), the science/engineering/business/technology colleges (Clarkson University), the small public and private liberal arts colleges (St. Lawrence University and Potsdam College, SUNY), and the large public and private research universities (UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, UC Davis, and Stanford University). She has taught a wide range of courses in the Humanities including Comparative Literature, English, Philosophy, History, and Medieval Studies. She has served as the "Director of Arts and Sciences" overseeing the undergraduate, general education program; she has been the Faculty Coordinator for a national grant (FIPSE) to institute a Writing Across the Curriculum program.
Her most recent teaching assignments in the University Writing Program have been English 101 ("Advanced Writing") and English 104D ("Writing for Educators"). Currently (2004-5), she is also returning to teach in the Comparative Literature Program and serve as the TA Coordinator for the Comparative Literature Graduate Program.
Last updated: September 20, 2004
