Dr. Susanne K. George Bloomfield, who holds the Distinguished Martin Professorship, received her BA and MA from the University of Nebraska at Kearney and her doctorate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1988. In addition to general studies courses in composition and literature, she teaches American literature, specializing in the late nineteenth century, Literature of the American West, Native American Literature, and Creative Nonfiction.
Dr. Bloomfield is the author of three biographies published by the University of Nebraska Press: The Adventures of The Woman Homesteader: The Life and Letters of Elinore Pruitt Stewart (1992), Kate M. Cleary: A Literary Life with Selected Works (1997), and Impertinences: Selected Writings of Elia W. Peattie, a Journalist in the Gilded Age (2005). In the fall of 2007, the University of Nebraska Press published Adventures in the West: Stories for Young Readers , co-edited with UNK English graduate student, Eric Melvin Reed.
In 1995, she edited Wellsprings: Poems by Six Nebraska Poets, a collection of critical essays about Nebraska poets with samples of their poetry, through the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Dr. Bloomfield also co-edited and wrote articles for The Platte River: An Atlas of the Big Bend Region (1993), A Prairie Mosaic: An Atlas of the Land, Culture and Nature of Central Nebraska (2000), and A Presidential Visit (2002). She and English Graduate student Eric Melvin Reed also wrote the history of the university for the centennial celebration: From the Beginning: A Century of Excellence at the University of Nebraska at Kearney (2005).
In addition to serving as past editor of the Platte Valley Review, critical articles and reviews by Dr. Bloomfield appear in the Heritage of the Great Plains, Nebraska Humanist, Platte Valley Review, Journal of the West, Great Plains Quarterly, and Western American Literature. She has also published poetry in the 1996 Nebraska Poets Calendar, The Platte River: An Atlas of the Big Bend Region, Nebraska English Journal, The Sandhills and Other Geographies, A Prairie Mosaic: An Atlas of the Land, Culture and Nature of Central Nebraska, A Hard Row to Hoe, Cattails and Meadowlarks, and Skiing magazine as well as nonfiction in By Grit and Grace: Women Who Shaped the Pioneer West, Leaning into the Wind: Women Write from the Heart of the West, published by Houghton Mifflin, and Times of Sorrow, Times of Grace: Writings by Women of the Great Plains/High Plains.
A Graduate Fellow of the University of Nebraska and a Fellow of the Center for Great Plains Studies, Dr. Bloomfield has served as the national President of the Western Literature Association and on the Board of Directors for the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Education Foundation. As a scholar for the Nebraska Humanities Speaker's Bureau, she has given numerous presentations in Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming, Texas, and Idaho, and has co-directed the 1995 Nebraska Book Festival and directed the 1992 and 2004 festivals.
bloomfields@unk.edu
