Belton, Texas—The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor has appointed Dr. Sean Benson as the Frank W. Mayborn Chair of Arts and Sciences as of June 1, 2020. Dr. Benson comes to UMHB from the University of Dubuque, where he chaired the department of language and literature and directed the liberal studies program.
Dr. Benson was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of The University of Iowa and earned his Ph.D. from Saint Louis University. A Shakespeare scholar by training, his literary criticism includes three books on Shakespeare, the most recent of which, Heterodox Shakespeare, was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2017. He has published more than a dozen essays on film as well as on American and Renaissance literature in arts, philosophy, and literary journals. Benson’s article, “Augustinian evil and moral good in Lolita,” won the Joseph M. Schwartz Memorial Essay Prize in Renascence (2014). His essay, “‘[D]runk with those that have the fear of God’: Shakespeare on Social Drunkenness,” is also forthcoming in Renascence (summer 2020). He and a coauthor are in the final stages of Anti-Realism in America, a book that examines the corrosive effects of social constructivism in American thought and life.
Benson served as a Fulbright Scholar in Barbados in 2016. He has received two awards, both sponsored by The Council of Independent Colleges, to participate in national seminars on art history and classical Greek literature. He also regularly reviews books for a number of journals, including Shakespeare Quarterly. He has taught a variety of courses from medieval and Renaissance literature to film noir and screwball comedy. He and his wife, Jennifer, are the parents of two children.
The Frank W. Mayborn Chair of Arts and Sciences was established in 1988 in memory of Central Texas communications pioneer Frank W. Mayborn of Temple, Texas. As editor and publisher of the Temple Daily Telegram for more than 50 years and later as president of the Killeen Daily Herald and KCEN-TV, he exerted a major influence on the prosperity of the Central Texas region. Mayborn was a firm believer in the value of a broad liberal arts education, and the Frank W. Mayborn Chair of Arts and Sciences is used to bring outstanding scholars to the university who will inspire students to pursue a high quality education and respond to noble callings in their lives.
