Chair and Associate Professor, English
Michelle Filling-Brown, PhD, chairs the Department of English which includes majors in English, Writing, and Gender and Body Studies and minors in Theater, English, Writing, and Gender and Body Studies.
The cornerstone of Filling-Brown’s educational approach is making the students her primary focus. She is constantly developing innovative strategies for teaching writing.
Her article “iFeedback: Using Video Feedback for Supporting Student Revision” (co-authored with Dr. Noreen Moore, Journal of College Literacy and Learning, April 2012) highlights her use of video feedback in ECG100 as a valuable tool for engaging with students throughout the writing process.
In addition to composition studies, Filling-Brown’s research focuses on beauty culture and 20th-century African American women writers.
In her publication “Images that Sell: The Black Female Body Imag(in)ed in 1960s and 1970s Magazine Advertisements” in Imagining the Black Female Body: Reconciling Image in Print and Visual Culture (Carol Henderson-Belton, ed., Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), Filling-Brown examines the iconography of black beauty as it became interconnected with social and political aesthetics of the era.
Filling-Brown also serves as the Artistic Director for the English Department’s Theater Program and oversees both theater curriculum and the student productions. As a classically-trained dancer, she choreographs Cabrini student musical productions. Additionally, she hosts the Department of English’s annual One-Act Play Festival, which features staged readings of students’ scripts.
She is committed to the first-year student experience as she serves as director for the Body Language Living and Learning Community, instructor for the College Success seminar, and faculty advisor for the Alpha Lambda Delta first-year honor society.
Filling-Brown earned Doctoral and Master’s degrees in English from the University of Delaware, and a Bachelor’s in English education from West Chester University.
