Keen, Suzanne

Suzanne Keen is a literary scholar, feminist critic, a poet, author and academic administrator. She was W. M. Keck Foundation Presidential Chair and Professor of English at Scripps College, the women's college of the Claremont Colleges. Previously she served as Dean of the College at Washington and Lee University and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dean of Faculty, and Professor of Literature at Hamilton College. She became president of Scripps College on July 1, 2022. Dr. Keen announced her resignation from Scripps College effective March 20, 2023. Her resignation letter states she intends to return to teaching at Scripps after a sabbatical on the East Coast to be near elderly family members. Keen is best known for her work on narrative empathy. She has published numerous essays and chapters on aspects of narrative empathy, extending the theories and applications of her book, Empathy and the Novel (2007). She has also published widely on contemporary British fiction, Victorian novels, postcolonial literature, and narrative theory. From 2012 until 2018, Keen co-edited the Oxford University Press journal Contemporary Women's Writing.