Professor
- tpenry@boisestate.edu
- (208)426-3041
- LA 222 (faculty office
Dr. Penry came to Boise State in 2000. She teaches and writes about nineteenth-century American literature, the literature of the American West, and innovative teaching strategies for student leadership and teamwork.
She has received teaching awards from the Boise State College of Arts and Sciences and from University Foundations. In 2017 she created the Books in Every Home project with a class of English Literature capstone students. The project, in which college students raise funds to buy high-quality new books for children in need, continues as a Vertically Integrated Project and a periodic centerpiece of the ENGLIT 320 Children’s and Young Adult Literature course (open to all majors).
She is a past president of the international Western Literature Association and former editor of the Western Writers Series. She has received grants from the Idaho Humanities Council, American Antiquarian Society, and other organizations.
She is currently writing about a popular nineteenth-century writer who wondered if a consensual republic was contrary to human nature.
Education
- Ph.D. in English, Fordham University
Interests
- Project-based learning and teamwork
- U.S. regionalism and legacies of the Civil War
- Online & public sites for literary conversation
- Preparing English Literature majors for jobs and professions
- Western writers James Welch, Wallace Stegner, Marilynne Robinson, Tommy Orange, Maxine Hong Kingston, Thomas King, Robinson Jeffers, Lawson Inada, Bret Harte, Joy Harjo, Louise Erdrich, Sandra Cisneros, Horace Cayton, Octavia Butler, Michael Branch, Mary Clearman Blew, Sherman Alexie, and more.
Recent Publications
- See Dr. Penry’s Scholarworks page at Albertsons Library
Courses
- Books in Every Home, a Vertically Integrated Project elective
- ENGL 278 Survey of American Literature: Civil War to Present
- ENGL 378 American Realism
- ENGL 384 Literature of the American West