Sean McDowell, PhD

• Sean McDowell CV (PDF)

I joined Seattle University in 2002 after a two-year stint as a visiting professor at Indiana University, where I received my Ph.D. in Renaissance literature and culture in 2000. Like many people, I consider myself a lifelong learner. As a result my teaching has ranged across a wide territory, including classical, medieval, and Early Modern poetry and drama; Irish literature; Chinese and Japanese poetry in translation; historical phenomenology; the history and philosophy of science; archipelagic literature; film studies; and creative writing. I’m a naturally curious person, and this shows up in my teaching.

From 2012 to 2021, I served as Director of the University Honors Program. I received the Most Inspirational Faculty Award from the Graduating Class of 2006 as well as the 2016 Distinguished Faculty Award from the Seattle University Alumni Association. Since 2005, I have co-taught the popular Writers’ Workshop in Ireland, most often with Inaugural Washington State Poet Laureate Sam Green. I am a poet and fiction writer as well as a scholar. My most recent book of prose Metaphysical Shadows: The Persistence of Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, and Marvell in Contemporary Poetry was published by Lexington Books in 2022. My first full-length collection of poems Learning to Jump was published by Wipf and Stock under its Resource Publications imprint in 2023.

I believe that through reading, writing, and studying the great voices of world literature, we can discover our own voices, regardless of who we are or where we come from. Every writer is an opportunity; every course, a journey of discovery.