Dr. Casey Cothran is a beloved professor and mentor to many in the Winthrop community. She has been a full-time professor here at Winthrop for 20 years now, beginning as a part-time instructor.
Dr. Cothran originally majored in Pre-med but returned as an English major after failing chemistry in her first semester. She graduated with her bachelors from Clemson University and her masters and PhD from University of Tennessee.
After she graduated in 2003, Dr. Cothran taught at University of Tennessee and the College of William and Mary in Virginia before becoming a professor at Winthrop.
When asked why she picked Winthrop as the next step in her career, Dr. Cothran said, “We moved here for my husband’s job, and when I started here I had a five-month-old. I’ve taught at other schools, but as my child grew I became a full-time professor and now I’ve grown from one class to now multiple. It’s my favorite here, for many reasons.”
When asked about what motivated her as an educator during the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Cothran said, “My students, I enjoy working with college students. It’s interesting at the beginning of your adult lives, it was very frustrating with the rules but my students were never frustrated.”
Having taken one of Dr. Cothran’s classes, I can express the most admiration for her as a professor. She makes the classes interesting and keeps you involved, and you can tell she loves what she does, and she makes you love it even more.
Dr. Cothran shared that she had always loved English for as long as she could remember. English and literature had always been important to her, especially “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte. She said that it was special to her because her grandmother had given her a very fragile illustrated copy and she has treasured it forever. It made her realize her love for novels, especially fantasy, mystery and period novels.
This helped her decide what aspect of English literature she wanted to study and teach. She specializes in Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Women’s Writing and Feminist Criticism, Mystery and Detective Fiction, and teaches “Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing,” “Mystery and Detective Fiction” and “Fairy Tales and Heroic Quests.”
She shared her focus on British-Literature classes because of “Jane Eyre” and other books that led to her love of mystery novels, which brought her to where she is today.
During her free time, Dr. Cothran is not only a wife and mom, but she is also an author. Dr. Cothran is a co-editor of “New Perspectives on Detective Fiction: Mystery Magnified” (Routledge, 2015) and has published in the Victorians Institute Journal and the Wilkie Collins Society Journal.
She also writes on topics of new woman writers, and her work has appeared in “Nineteenth-Century Gender studies,” “Working papers in Irish Studies” and she has published in the book collection “New Woman Writers: Authority and the body.”
Dr. Cothran has also published young-adult fantasy novels, crime fiction, and graphic novels.
