Emily Thompson, MA
Emily Thompson began her teaching career in 2012 with the English Department at Northern Virginia Community College. This formative experience instilled a passion for equity-minded pedagogical practices that make higher education as accessible as possible to all learner populations. Emily carried this passion for equity and accessibility with her when she joined The American Women's College as an Academic Director in 2016 and strives to apply a student-centered mindset to every aspect of her academic programs. Emily holds an MA in English Literature from George Mason University and is a Ph.D. Candidate at UMass Amherst, specializing in English Renaissance drama and theatre history. Her other areas of interest include performance studies, body studies, affect theory, posthumanism, and decolonized pedagogy. She is currently working on her dissertation, which studies the affective encounters between stage and spectator during moments of staged bodily violence in Tudor and Stuart tragedy.