Rollins Scholarship Online

Title

Oral History Interview - Barbara Carson

Authors

Barbara Carson, Rollins College
Wenxian Zhang, Rollins CollegeFollow

Document Type

Oral History

Publication Date

3-26-2007

Biography

Barbara Carson began teaching at Rollins in 1973, where over the course of twenty-eight years, she distinguished herself as one of the faculty’s pre-eminent professors and valuable contributors to the community.

A native to Florida, Carson received her primary education in Cocoa, Florida. She studied at Brevard Junior College for a year and then at Florida State University, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1964. Four years later, Carson graduated from John Hopkins University with a Ph.D. in English. After teaching for two years and completing a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Carson accepted a teaching position at University of Massachusetts Amherst and then at Valencia Community College before joining the Rollins faculty in 1973.

While at Rollins, Carson taught courses in freshman composition, as well as in British and American Literature. She also served as chair of the English department, participated in the GLCA and ACS teaching workshops, and took an active role in the development of the Academic Honor Code. For her outstanding contributions to the college, she was selected twice for the Hugh F. McKean Award, named Author Davis Fellow by her peers, received the Hamilton Holt School’s Distinguished Teacher Award, and in 1994, named to the Theodore Bruce and Barbara Lawrence Alfond Chair of English.

Carson retired from the College in 2007, but as one student stated, “Like the giant oak tables in Orlando Hall, will be a permanent fixture at Rollins.”

Recommended Citation

Carson, Barbara and Zhang, Wenxian, "Oral History Interview - Barbara Carson" (2007). Oral Histories. 3.
https://scholarship.rollins.edu/oralhist/3