Dr. Carol Dickson

Associate Dean of Academics & Advising, Faculty in Environmental Humanities

Carol Dickson stands in front of trees holding a violin and playing it.

“I am fascinated by stories,” says Carol Dickson. “The house in which I grew up—in which my grandparents lived—resonated with stories. From the weather details noted in my grandparents’ guest book started in 1902, to the antique spinning wheel and muskets in the attic, to the pock-marked wood trim made from chestnut trees felled by blight—all of these fired my imagination as a child, and made me curious about the past and its inhabitants.” She continues, “I teach writing because I enjoy helping students realize and tell their own stories, and I teach literature because I enjoy seeing students make connections with others across time and culture.”

A product of traditional schooling, Carol is drawn to alternative education settings, in which students can direct their own learning and benefit from a range of pedagogical approaches. She has taught in diverse settings—from Goddard College and The Putney School, to an outdoor education center, to a service-learning faculty consulting program, to student travel programs in Ghana, Nepal, Israel, New Zealand, and Kazakhstan. She has lived most of her life in New England, and the last 27 in Vermont, and it is this place that has the biggest influence on her, as well as her own stories—in particular its farming heritage and its mix of cultures. Dickson’s hobbies seem to grow from a lifetime of living near the northern border: traditional Québeçois fiddle music, ice hockey, and cross-country skiing.

These days, Carol’s storytelling mainly centers on Bobolink Farm, the sheep farm in East Montpelier that she and her partner, Bruce Howlett, jointly operate: “Here I’ve found stories in the rusty old milking equipment found in remains of the old barn, in the antics of newborn lambs, in the customers we meet vending at farmers’ markets, in the sounds of peepers while boiling the last batch of sap for the season, in canoeing to feed sheep during last summer’s flood, in the tracks of the coyotes who trot by the sheep paddocks without slowing down.” She notes that conveying the joys, challenges, and complexities of small-scale farming in central Vermont is almost as difficult as farming itself, but that’s the beauty of it: the farm is its own story.

Carol started teaching at Sterling College in August 2009.

    • B.A. from Smith College

    • M.A. from University of Vermont

    • PhD University of Wisconsin-Madison

  • American literature and literary history, environmental literature, race and gender in literature, regional and place-based literature, cultural studies, African-American studies, gender studies, writing & composition, folklore.

  • Intensives in Writing, Literature & Culture:

    • HM107  Foundations of Environmental Humanities

    • HM229 Creative Writing

    • HM326 Nature Writing

    • HM345 Literature of the Rural Experience

    • HM391 Race & Gender in Images of the American West

    • HM481 Global Environmental Literature

    • HM264 We Are What We Tell: Oral History Methods & Meanings

    Experiential Endeavors:

    • HM481B The Meaning of Things: Curating Culture & Nature

    Scaffolding Seminars:

    • INT398 Capstone Year Workshop

    Carol also coordinates Sterling’s Advising program and directs the Learning Center, which includes training and supervising student Learning Center Mentors.

    • “Gendered Landscapes in Early Twentieth-Century New England Ballads”—Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (Lawrence, KS; May 2013).

    • “La Frontière/La Frontera”—Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (Bloomington, IN; June 2011).

    • “Maps and the Cultural Landscape of Vermont”—Rural Heritage Institute at Sterling College (Craftsbury Common, VT; June 2008).

    • “The Geography of Home: Proto-Feminist Visions of Nature in Nineteenth-Century Geography Textbooks”— Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (Spartanburg, SC; June 2007).

    • Food & Agriculture panel chair—Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (Spartanburg, SC; June 2007)

    • “Legacy: Stories from a New England Landscape”—Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (Eugene, OR; June 2005).”

    • ‘No Picture Postcard’: The New Regionalism and David Budbill’s Vermont”—Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (Boston, MA; June 2003).

    • “A Path towards Engagement: Service-Learning and Environmental Literature”—Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (Flagstaff, AZ; June 2001).

    • “Cooking with Mrs. Appleyard: Food, Landscape, and the Domestication of Rural Vermont”—American Women Nature Writers Conference (Castleton, VT; June 2000).

    • “Mary Austin, John Muir, and Early Twentieth-Century Narratives of Nature”—Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (Kalamazoo, MI; June 1999).

    • ’Recounting’ the Land: Mary Austin and Early Twentieth-Century Narratives of Nature”—American Women Nature Writers Conference (Portland, ME; June 1998).

    • Tilling New Ground: Smith Alumnae in Farming”—Smith Alumnae Quarterly (Fall 2013).

    • ‘Recounting the Land’: The Nature of Narrative in Mary Austin’s Narratives of Nature” in Such News of the Land: U. S. Women Nature Writers. Ed. Thomas S. Edwards and Elizabeth A. DeWolfe (University Press of New England, 2001).

    • Sense, Nonsense, and Sensibility: Teaching the ‘Truth’ of Nature in John Burroughs and Mary Austin” In Sharp Eyes: John Burroughs and American Nature Writing. Ed. Charlotte Z. Walker (Syracuse University Press, 2000).

    • “Mary Baker Eddy,” “Julia Ward Howe,” and “Mildred Didrikson Zaharias”—Entries in A Reader’s Guide to Women’s Studies. Ed. Eleanor Amico. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998.

    • ‘Through the Teepee Door’: Lessons in and of the Native American Storytelling of Zitkala-Sa and Mary Austin.” Phoebe: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Feminist Scholarship, Theory, and Aesthetics 9.2 (Fall 1997).

    • Dean of Academics, Sterling College (2014-2018)

    • Co-Organizer, Cultural Sustainability Symposium; Vermont Folklife Center and Sterling College (2013).

    • Selected Participant, Wildbranch Writing Workshop; Craftsbury Common, VT (2010).

    • Short-Term Fellowship in the History of Cartography, The Newberry Library; Chicago, IL (2006).

    • Selected Participant, National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar, The Newberry Library; Chicago, IL (2005). 

    • Kenneth E. and Dorothy V. Hill Fellowship, Huntington Library; San Marino, CA (1994).

    • Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony

    • Annie Dillard, The Living

    • Camille Dungy, ed. Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry

  • Board Member, Vermont Folklife Center (2013-2019, 2024- )

    Board Member, Northeast Heritage Music Camp (2012-2021)

  • Association for the Study of Literature and Environment

    American Studies Association

    American Folklore Society

  • Traditional fiddle music and dance, sheep farming, ice hockey, gardening & cooking, hiking, cross-country skiing, pinochle, word game competitions.

Email Carol