Susan Shillinglaw

Susan Grace Shillinglaw is an American literary scholar and professor emerita of English and comparative literature at San José State University, where she taught for 37 years and directed the university’s Center for Steinbeck Studies for 18 years. She is known for her work on John Steinbeck, having served as director of the Martha Heasley [Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies] and as scholar-in-residence and director of the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California, from 2015 to 2018 and has been described by the California State University system as one of the leading scholars of Steinbeck’s work.

Early life and education

Shillinglaw was born in New Hampton, Iowa and raised in Englewood, Colorado. She earned her B.A. in art and English from Cornell College in 1973, followed by an M.A. and Ph.D. in American literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her doctoral dissertation, completed in 1985, was titled The Art of Cooper’s Landscapes: Identity, Theme, and Structure in the Leatherstocking Tales and examined landscape and narrative structure in the fiction of James Fenimore Cooper.

Academic career

Shillinglaw began teaching at Wake Forest University, followed by positions at Canisius College and the Buffalo Seminary in New York. She joined San José State University in 1984, where she remained on the English and comparative literature faculty until her retirement in 2021.
At SJSU, she served as director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies from 1987 to 2005. In that position she organized several international conferences on Steinbeck’s work, edited the award-winning Steinbeck Newsletter, and co-founded the Steinbeck Award, given to artists, writers and activists who represent Steinbeck’s empathetic, democratic vision, with the first awardee being Bruce Springsteen in 1997. she has continued to serve on the Center’s board since 2012.
For over a decade, beginning in 2005, she was scholar-in-residence and later Director of the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California.
She has also been a visiting professor at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station, co-teaching the interdisciplinary course Holistic Biology with marine biologist William Gilly between 2005 and 2012; as a visiting professor, she continues to teach with Professor Gilly at Hopkins. Since 2012, she has taught courses regularly for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at CSU Monterey Bay.
Shillinglaw has co-directed seven National Endowment for the Humanities summer institutes for schoolteachers on Steinbeck's work, “John Steinbeck, The Voice of a Region, A Voice for America.
She is also a volunteer docent at Robinson Jeffers's Tor House and a member of the board of the Tor House Foundation.

National Steinbeck Center and public programs

Shillinglaw became scholar-in-residence at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California, in 2005, contributing to public interpretation of Steinbeck’s work and legacy for the yearly Steinbeck Festival and for programs during the 75^th anniversary of The Grapes of Wrath.
She was appointed director of the center in 2015 and served until her resignation in 2018. Following her departure, she returned to research, writing and teaching related to Steinbeck and other writers.
Shillinglaw has co-directed multiple teacher-focused summer institutes on Steinbeck, supported by grants from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities. These three-week programs, first held in 2007, brought middle- and high-school teachers to California’s Monterey region for lectures, workshops and field-based study connecting Steinbeck’s writing to place,ecology and history.

Steinbeck research and scholarship

Shillinglaw is widely regarded as a leading figure in Steinbeck scholarship. A California State University profile describes her as among the foremost scholars of Steinbeck’s work, noting her influence on both academic research and public humanities programming. Cornell College has similarly referred to her as a leading Steinbeck scholar, awarding her the college’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 2013.
Shillinglaw's research examines Steinbeck's engagement with ecology, politics, gender, and place. Her scholarship examines the ways in which Steinbeck's fiction brings together scientific inquiry, spiritual reflection, and social conscience. She has published on Steinbeck's relationships with his first wife, Carol Henning Steinbeck, and with his close friend, Edward F. Ricketts. Her research also focuses on Steinbeck’s collaborations with figures associated the social, political and ecological dimensions of his fiction and nonfiction. Early in her career, she also wrote on American literary realism and on James Fenimore Cooper.
Shillinglaw frequently contributes to public discussions of Steinbeck through lectures, interviews and essays, including features in the Smithsonian magazine, the Washington Post, and National Endowment for the Humanities publications.
Her major books include On Reading The Grapes of Wrath, Carol and John Steinbeck: Portrait of a Marriage, A Journey into Steinbeck's California and Steinbeck's Landscapes. Each combines close reading, archival research, and cultural history to show how place, friendship, and politics shaped Steinbeck's writing.
She has also co-edited interdisciplinary volumes such as Steinbeck and the Environment ''Beyond Boundaries: Rereading John Steinbeck, as well as Steinbeck’s Uneasy America: Rereading Travels with Charley. She also wrote introductions for Penguin Classics, including Cannery Row, Of Mice and Men, A Russian Journal, The Winter of Our Discontent, and A Portable Steinbeck''.

Publications

Shillinglaw has written and edited numerous books and essays on Steinbeck and American literature.

Books

Selected Articles

’A Feeling of Oneness’: Modernist Experiments of James Fitzgerald, Edward
Flanders Ricketts, and John Steinbeck” in James Fitzgerald: The Watercolors, Robert L. Stahl, The James Fitzgerald Legacy, 2022.
The Grapes of Wrath” in Literary Journeys, edited by John Sutherland, Elwin Street Pub, UK. 2021