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Scott R. MacKenzie, Assistant
Professor of English
Cham 321A Scott MacKenzie, a new assistant professor in the English department,
may be the college's first New Zealand-born faculty member.
He grew up in the small town of New Plymouth in the North Island of that
nation, and attended the University of Canterbury in the South Island.
He studied English, drama, and philosophy there, then received a fellowship
to do graduate work at Cornell University. His flight to Ithaca, New York,
was his first ever out of the country. He spent six years at Cornell,
which included 18 months in England visiting literary resources like the
British Library and the Bodleian Library at Oxford for dissertation research.
He wrote about late 18th and early 19th century British novelists like
Laurence Sterne, Jane Austen, and Walter Scott and how they used the concept
of "home" as a metaphor for England as a nation during that time. Scott
explained, "They're novels set in and around home. The issue that drives
the plot has to do with trying to establish a home as a sanctuary. I read
them as meditations on nationality, as well as on people's private lives."
He received his Ph.D. in 1999 and was an instructor at Texas Christian
University in Ft. Worth for a Year. He then did two years at the University
of Alabama, and came to Davidson via application and interviews at the
Modern Language Association convention.
Scott's teaching load this semester includes a "W" course, a survey of
literature from 1660-1800, and an upper-level seminar entitled, "The Invention
of Tristram Shandy." He said, "It's a big and complicated novel by Laurence
Sterne, that I can expound upon for a whole semester." He has not yet
received his assignments for the spring semester.
Scott has joined the noontime basketball bunch in Baker, and also enjoys
soccer and cricket. He's also looking for Mah-Jongg players! He and Deanna
are living in college housing on Concord Road.
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B.A. (University of Canterbury), M.A., Ph.D. (Cornell)
