About
Eleanor Whitfield-Boyer is Professor of English at Alderson Broaddus and the editor of The Hilltop Review, AB's student-led literary journal which she has shepherded continuously since 2003. She joined the AB English department in 2003 after completing her doctorate at the University of Virginia. She teaches across the literary curriculum, with particular strengths in Appalachian and American literature, women writers of the twentieth century, and the practice of literary criticism.
A native of Lewisburg, West Virginia (where her father taught at the New River Community & Technical College), Whitfield-Boyer is the rare AB faculty member who is herself a fifth-generation West Virginian. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia (2003), an M.A. from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop (1996), and a B.A. from Hollins University (1994).
Her scholarly work focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century American women writers, especially Marilynne Robinson, Lee Smith, Denise Giardina, and Toni Morrison. She is a frequent reviewer for The Hudson Review, Image, and the Appalachian Journal, and has been a Visiting Scholar at the Marilynne Robinson Reading Project at Yale.
Education
- 2003Ph.D., English — University of Virginia. Dissertation: The Domestic and the Sacred: Marilynne Robinson and the Theology of Place.
- 1996M.F.A., Fiction — University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
- 1994B.A., English (summa cum laude) — Hollins University. Phi Beta Kappa.
Teaching
Dr. Whitfield-Boyer teaches three signature literature courses each year — the Hilltop Core writing-intensive intro, the Appalachian Literature junior seminar, and the legendary senior Marilynne Robinson seminar.
- ENG 105Introduction to Literary Study (Writing Intensive)The required gateway to the AB English major. A writing- and discussion-intensive close-reading course on poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Each section is capped at 16 students.
- ENG 315Appalachian LiteratureA junior seminar on the literature of central and southern Appalachia, from Mary Lee Settle and Wilma Dykeman to Crystal Wilkinson and Silas House.
- ENG 470Senior Seminar: Marilynne RobinsonA capstone seminar in which seniors read the entire Robinson corpus — fiction and essays — closely over a single semester. Limited to 12 students. Required for the English major.
Scholarship & Editorial Work
Whitfield-Boyer's scholarship focuses on the moral and theological work of late-twentieth and early-twenty-first century American fiction. Her three books — The Domestic & the Sacred (2009), Reading Robinson (2016), and Mountains and Mothers: Women's Voices in Appalachian Fiction (2022) — are widely taught at undergraduate and graduate programs across the country.
She has edited The Hilltop Review, AB's student-led literary journal, since 2003 — making her one of the longest-tenured undergraduate literary editors in the United States. The journal has published early work by writers who went on to win the Whiting Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer.
Selected Publications & Presentations
- 2022Mountains and Mothers: Women's Voices in Appalachian Fiction. University Press of Kentucky.
- 2016Reading Robinson. Eerdmans.
- 2009The Domestic and the Sacred: Marilynne Robinson and the Theology of Place. Penn State University Press.
- 2024"Robinson's Late Style." The Hudson Review, Spring.
- 2023"On Reading Aloud." Image, Issue 117.
Honors & Service
- 2023AB Lifetime Teaching Excellence Award.
- 2020WV Humanities Council Distinguished Scholar.
- 2016University of Kentucky Weatherford Award (for Reading Robinson).
- 2009Modern Language Association First Book Award nominee.
- 1994Hollins University Phi Beta Kappa.
Marilynne Robinson teaches that reading slowly is not a literary skill. It is an ethical practice. The senior seminar exists to give twelve students, every spring, one entire semester in which to practice that ethic — and then to take it with them into a world that will demand of them the opposite.— Dr. Eleanor Whitfield-Boyer
Beyond the Classroom
Whitfield-Boyer lives on a small farm just outside Philippi with her husband Thomas (a high-school teacher of Latin) and a small herd of Nigerian Dwarf goats. She is an enthusiastic amateur beekeeper, a serious gardener of heirloom tomatoes, and a slow but devoted hiker on the Allegheny Trail.
She has read aloud to her students at every commencement she has attended since 2008 — most recently a passage from Robinson's Lila. The students request the readings.