Sara L. Pearson, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of English; Associate Dean, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; Chair, Department of English; Associate Editor, Brontë Studies
What could be more fruitful and delightful than journeying together in the company of other pilgrims telling stories, experiencing drama, reciting poems, and glorifying God?

Sara L. Pearson has advanced degrees in the areas of Classics (Greek and Roman literature), Christian Studies, and English Literature. She is a scholar of the works and lives of the Brontë family, and is delighted to be the editor of a new scholarly edition of Charlotte Brontë’s first novel The Professor as part of the forthcoming Cambridge Edition of the Novels and Poems of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë. She lives with her husband Ken in a small cottage on a horse farm, and enjoys gardening, tea and cake, and travelling in the UK. Sara and Ken have walked across England twice from coast-to-coast—once in the north and once in the south—and they are looking forward to future walking adventures.

  • PhD in English (Boston University)
  • MA in English (Boston University)
  • MA in Christian Studies (Regent College)
  • MA in Classics (University of Victoria)

Expertise

The Brontës’ literature and lives; nineteenth-century British literature; religion and literature; classical and biblical literature

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  • Pearson, Sara L., Peter Cook, and James Ogden, “A Brontë Reading List: Part 14.” Brontë Studies, vol. 47. no. 1, 2022, pp. 61-74.
  • Pearson, Sara L. “Charlotte Brontë in Narnia?: Intertextuality and Gender in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia.” The Inklings and Culture: A Harvest of Scholarship from the Inklings Institute of Canada, edited by Monika B. Hilder, Sara L. Pearson, and Laura N. Van Dyke, Cambridge Scholars, 2020.
  • Pearson, Sara L. “Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855): An Anglican Imagination.” Anglican Women Novelists: From Charlotte Brontë to P.D. James, edited by Judith Maltby and Alison Shell, T & T Clark, 2019, pp. 15-27.
  • Alexander, Christine, and Sara L. Pearson. Celebrating Charlotte Brontë: Transforming Life into Literature in Jane Eyre. Brontë Society, 2016.
  • Pearson, Sara L. “Charlotte Brontë: A Bicentenary Bibliography.” Dickens Studies Annual, vol. 47, 2016, pp. 353-87.
  • Pearson, Sara L. “‘God Save It! God Also Reform It!’: The Condition of England’s Church in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley.” Brontë Studies, vol. 40, no. 4, Nov. 2015, pp. 290-96.
  • Pearson, Sara L. “Allusive Pursuits: The Song of Songs in Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey.’” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 53, 2014, pp. 195-216.
  • Pearson, Sara L. “‘The Coming Man’: Revelations of Male Character in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.” Brontë Studies, vol. 37, no. 4, Nov. 2012, pp. 299-305.
  • Pearson, Sara L. “Charlotte Brontë’s Poetics: A Case Study of ‘Pilate’s Wife’s Dream’.” Brontë Studies, vol. 37, no. 3, Sept. 2012, pp. 194-207.

Awards & Honors

  • The Provost’s Innovative Teaching Award, TWU (2017)

  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Institutional Grant (2014)

Affiliations & Memberships

  • Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English
  • Christianity and Literature Study Group
  • Jane Austen Society of North America
  • Modern Language Association
  • The Brontë Society
  • Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada

  • ENGL 103 Introduction to Literature: Short Fiction and Poetry
  • ENGL 104 Introduction to Literature: Drama and the Novel
  • ENGL 214 Major Authors
  • ENGL 222 Studies in the Novel
  • ENGL 231 Classical Backgrounds of English Literature
  • ENGL 232  Biblical Backgrounds of English Literature
  • ENGL 371 The Nineteenth-Century Novel
  • ENGL 372 Romantic Poetry and Poetics
  • ENGL 390 Jane Austen
  • ENGL 390 The Brontës
  • ENGL 465 Eighteenth-Century Literature
  • ENGL 471 Victorian Poetry and Prose