Trisha M. Cowen

Dr. Trisha M. Cowen

Associate Professor of English

Heritage Chair

Ph.D., Binghamton University

M.A., Binghamton University

B.F.A., Emerson College

Trisha M. Cowen has been with Westminster College since 2018. She received her doctoral degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Binghamton University (SUNY) and completed her BFA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College. She specializes in Creative Writing (Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, and Screenwriting), American Multicultural Literature, and Transnational Literature. Her current scholarship focuses on ghost, monster, and supernatural symbolism in film and fiction. In 2015, Dr. Cowen was awarded the Alfred Bendixon Prize for Teaching Excellence.

For her scholarship, Dr. Cowen was granted the Marion Clayton Link Fellowship in Creative Writing and the Rosa Colecchio Travel Award for Dissertation Research, which enabled her to carry out research for her first novel manuscript Five Thousand Days of Autumn in Japan and China in 2013 and 2014. For her work in Asia, she received Binghamton University’s Graduate Student Award in Research Excellence, as the novel is the first of its kind to capture the experience of a "comfort woman" of Japanese descent. She has worked as the editor-in-chief of Harpur Palate, and her creative work has appeared in The Portland Review, Bitter Oleander Press, and 2 Bridges Review, among others, and she is the 2014 winner of the Gertrude Press chapbook contest for fiction for her chapbook Mobiles in the Sky. 

In addition to Dr. Cowen's experience teaching Literature and Film, she has also worked as a travel journalist, covering events such as the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. She enjoys teaching classes such as Native American Literature, Children's Literature, Inquiry, Film Studies, and Literature of Prejudice and Discrimination.