2022 Teaching Excellence Award

Associate Professor of English

Dr. Gerry Canavan has created a sizable number of courses since arriving at Marquette in 2012, covering a variety of topics, including cultural preservation, science fiction, fantasy, the graphic novel, Afrofuturism and others supporting environmental and cognitive sciences. He also regularly teaches a course on J.R.R. Tolkien that offers students a guided study of the Tolkien manuscripts housed in the Raynor Memorial Libraries’ Special Collections.

“Gerry is well-known for his wide-ranging teaching interests because he is an authentically curious person, scholar and teacher with a sense of expansive and questioning intelligence,” said Dr. Leah Flack, professor and chair of English. “His students benefit from this quality, but they also learn to inhabit the space of voracious curiosity and intellectual inquiry he creates in every course he teaches.”

Canavan serves as the director of graduate studies in the Department of English. He has a substantial network that he shares with students by connecting them with editors interested in publishing their work and with possible field mentors who are also recognized leaders in their fields.

“I was really honored and honestly humbled to receive this award,” Canavan said. “Marquette has so many absolutely terrific, life-changing instructors, that to be recognized by my peers for my teaching was incredibly moving. Especially after the last few years, which have been such a challenge for all of us in high ed, it was a true career highlight and something I’ll really cherish.”