Margaret Urie
urie@unr.nevada.edu

University of Nevada, Reno
Department of English

Margaret Urie grew up in a parochial Irish Catholic community outside Chicago, thinking her name was Peggy Ann Wilcox Margaret. She attended St. Mary's Catholic grammar school, Regina Dominican, an all-girls Catholic high school, and Marquette University, majoring in English. While at Marquette she spent most summers working at an advertising agency on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, one summer interning for Senator Everett Dirksen in Washington D.C., and after graduating in 1967, teaching a year of high school English in Boston. She returned to Marquette as a teaching assistant to obtain her masters degree in English and was awarded an NDEA Fellowship to complete her Ph.D. However, this being the tail-end of the 60s, she married her college sweetheart Steve (after he obtained his final 4F--the Viet Nam War was in progress) and they temporarily "dropped out," moving to Lake Tahoe, where she taught at Tahoe College for all of one semester before the school folded.

When she and her husband were rejected by the U.S. Forest Service as potential fire lookouts, she returned to graduate school to complete her Pd.D. at the University of Nevada and began writing her dissertation on William Faulkner. In 1975, between chapters 2 and 3, her daughter Meg was born, and then she graduated in 1978. The next year, her family moved to Reno, and she joined UNR's English Department; two years later she became Director of the Core Writing Program. In this position, she worked to implement the Core Curriculum and to establish the University Writing Center. After that, she became Director of Undergraduate Studies, a position she currently holds, and also served a stint as Chair of Faculty Senate.

Peggy enjoys teaching her classes in American literature, particularly courses in African American literature, women and literature, nonfiction writing, and WT 202. The highlight of her academic career was the semester she taught in UNR's London Studies program, and she thinks all students should plan a semester abroad in their curriculum. While directing the Core Writing Program, she co-edited a book, Modern English Rhetoric, and has given presentations and papers on the teaching of writing, the Harlem Renaissance, and women and literature. When not teaching, she enjoys traveling (here she is with Meg at a painting workshop in southern France-a treat to herself after teaching a mini-session on Toni Morrison) and being outside in the beautiful Reno/Tahoe weather-gardening, running, and downhill skiing. Returning refreshed from a sabbatical last spring, she looks forward to developing new courses in African American literature and teaching her other classes.

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