David Robson
Professor of English
M.F.A.
Officially, I teach writing, but I’m most interested in helping students hone the critical thinking skills they’ll need in the world beyond college. In my class, we do this through the writing of essays of all sorts, research papers, and personal responses. Effective writing is hard won by working through a series of steps. Beyond that, it is the student’s job to challenge his own sense of self as a writer. Your primary task (at least at first) is to interest the reader in what you are writing about. Try choosing the least traveled path, or the least voiced opinion on a subject. Be outrageous, be passionate, be angry, or be euphoric, but BE something. And, above all, make your writing worth reading! How to do this is what my classes are all about.
Education
B.A. – Communications, Temple University
M.S. – English Education, Saint Joseph’s University
M.F.A. – Creative Writing, Goddard College
Academic Biography
I began teaching at Delaware County Community College in 1992 as an adjunct instructor. I’ve been a full-time faculty member since 2002, earned tenure in 2007, and was presented with the Gould Award for Teaching Excellence in 2010. During that time, I have served the college on the Tenure, Emerita, Gould Award, Professional Development (Co-chair), Safe Spaces, and Middle States Accreditation and Planning Committees (co-chair), among others. Beyond my work at the college, I am an award-winning playwright. My dramas and comedies have been performed and published across the country and abroad, and I have received two fellowships and three grants from the Delaware Division of the Arts. I am also the author of more than a dozen books of YA non-fiction on subjects ranging from social justice to history to mythology. I recently spoke at the Lewes Creative Writers’ Conference in Lewes, Delaware, and the AWP Conference in Seattle, Washington.
Scholarly Interests
- Artist Opportunity Grant, Delaware Division of the Arts, 2025
- Artist Opportunity Grant, Delaware Division of the Arts, 2022
- Delaware’s Best Playwright, 2017
- Gould Award for Teaching Excellence, 2010
- Artist Opportunity Grant, Delaware Division of the Arts, 2010
- Artist Opportunity Grant, Delaware Division of the Arts, 2007
- Individual Artist Fellowship. Delaware Division of the Arts, 2006
- Individual Artist Fellowship. Delaware Division of the Arts, 2000
Books
Playing Leni (Drama)
Without Consent (Drama)
Playing the Assassin (Drama)
After Birth of a Nation (Drama)
A Few Small Repairs (Drama)
Man Measures Man (Drama)
Killing Neil LaBute and Other Plays (Drama)
The Decade of the 2000s (Non-fiction)
The Murder of Emmett Till (Non-fiction)
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Non-fiction)
Racism (Non-fiction)
Auschwitz (Non-fiction)
Disaster Response (Non-fiction)
Steroids (Non-fiction)
The Black Arts Movement (Non-fiction)
The Kennedy Assassination (Non-fiction)
Colonial America (Non-fiction)
Shakespeare’s Globe Theater (Non-fiction)
Cyclops (Non-fiction)
The Internment of Japanese Americans (Non-fiction)
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