Claudia Van Gerven, PhD

Claudia Van Gerven was born in Salt Lake City, UT. She received her B. A. degree in English Literature from the University of Massachusetts in 1970, her M.A. degree in English Literature from the University of Kentucky in 1974 and her PhD degree in English Literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1984.

Dr. Van Gerven has taught in a number of venues at the University of Colorado, including the English Department, the Humanities Program and the Kittredge Honors Program. She was hired in 1993 by the Honors Program to devise a series of writing courses for honors students and create a series of workshops to support students writing honors theses. She also has created and taught a number of courses in women’s literature, such as Heroines in Heroic Tradition and The Reproduction of Reproduction.

In 1986, she was awarded the Farrand Hall Academic Program’s Teaching Excellence Award.

She is a published poet. Her chapbook, The Ends of Sunbonnet Sue, won the 1997 Angel Press Award and her full-length manuscript, The Spirit String, has been a finalist for the Backwaters Poetry Prize (1998), the Verse Poetry Award, (2000) and the Bright Hill Press Poetry Prize (2003). In August of 2003, she won a Residency at Hedgebrook Farm Writing Retreat on Whidbey Island, Washington. She also researches and writes about feminist pedagogy, writing pedagogy, and women’s literature.