Cynthia Richards, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English
Office: Hollenbeck Hall 107 (937) 327- 7053
E-mail: crichards@wittenberg.edu

Although they bear only minor physical resemblance, Cynthia Richards fell in love with her husband and the Romantic poet John Keats at the same time--and has yet to determine whether her passion for her husband led to her passion for literature or the other way around. Regardless, she has remained firmly committed to both and currently teaches courses in early British literature, eighteenth-century literature, women's studies, and composition.  For her teaching, she has won several awards, including the American Society for Eighteenth-Studies Innovative Course Design Award in 2002 and the Omicron Delta Kappa Excellence in Teaching Award at Wittenberg University in 2000. In 1999, she was a finalist in the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies national teaching competition. She has published on the eighteenth-century women writers Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Hays, and given numerous conference presentations on such diverse topics as feminism, eighteenth-century British literature, composition theory and teaching practices in both the writing and women's studies classroom. She most recently edited a volume (available January 2004 from College Publishing) that pairs Mary Wollstonecraft’s Maria with William Godwin’s Memoirs of the Author of "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" and is currently at work on a book-length project entitled Radical Correspondences: Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Contemporaries. When not immersed in her work, she likes hiking, camping, canoeing, gardening and hanging out on the farm with her husband, daughter Lily, son Samuel, dog, bunny, and two cats.