Degrees: PHD, 1983, SUNY Univ Cntr Stony Brook; BA, 1979, SUNY Univ Cntr Stony Brook

Bio:

Paula Uruburu, an Associate Professor of English and former Chair of the English Department, is currently the Vice Dean of the School for University Studies at Hofstra. She received her Ph.D. from SUNY Stony Brook in English in 1983 with specializations in American literature, modern drama, and film studies. Her research and teaching interests include Poe, the Gothic and the Grotesque, women’s studies (especially Emily Dickinson and Flannery O'Connor), art history, the history of photography, and 19th- and 20th-Century American popular culture. The acknowledged expert on Evelyn Nesbit, her new book, American Eve, tells the story of the Gibson Girl's meteoric rise to fame and the tragic consequences of her fated relationships with famed architect Stanford White and his murderer Harry Thaw, whose trial marked the beginning of our country’s obsession with celebrity. In American Eve, Dr. Uruburu separates the fact from the fiction, and puts previously widespread, distorted interpretations of Nesbit’s life into accurate cultural context. Dr. Uruburu has acted as a consultant to A&E, PBS, the History Channel, and the Smithsonian Channel. Of Basque-Irish descent, she is a native New Yorker who lives in her haunted 1890 house on the South Shore of Long Island and has always liked the fact that her last name is a palindrome.