Brian Norman

Brian most recently served as the inaugural Dean of the Gwen Ifill College of Media, Arts, and Humanities at Simmons University in Boston. He worked with faculty and other community partners to build the mission, vision, and values for one of four new interdisciplinary colleges as part of a university strategic plan focused on “Academic Redesign” to bring together graduate and undergraduate education across the professions and liberal education.

Prior to his role at Simmons, Brian was Associate Vice President for Faculty Affairs and Diversity at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore where he oversaw faculty development, faculty governance, and academic diversity initiatives.

Brian states, “I am drawn to the good work to be done at Antioch. This is a consequential moment for Antioch, as it is for all of higher education. I am so inspired by Antioch’s mission and place in American higher education, and I am excited about the possibilities as it reinvents itself to meet the needs of the world and the hopes of the next generation. On campus, I was blown away by the community – faculty, staff, students, alumni, and Yellow Springs residents – and their commitment to imagining a future and rolling up their sleeves to get it done. I am ready to roll up my sleeves, too, as we win some victories for humanity.”

As an academic leader, he believes in the transformative power of liberal education and the civic role of institutions of higher education. He brings special experience in organizational change, faculty development, institutional equity, and shared governance. He has also published on moving the needle on faculty diversity (Department Chair 2022), faculty leadership development (Change: A Magazine of Higher Education 2019), and religious pluralism and intolerance on campus (Conversations 2017).

As a scholar, he has studied and taught American literature, especially African American and twentieth-century literature, and he has published a number of books on the relationship between literature and social change, including Dead Women Talking: Figures of Injustice in American Literature (Johns Hopkins 2013), Neo-Segregation Narratives: Jim Crow in Post-Civil Rights American Literature (Georgia 2010), and The American Protest Essay and National Belonging (SUNY 2007). He has held residential fellowships at University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Wesleyan University, and Rutgers University. He is currently a Visiting Practitioner at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Dr. Jane Fernandes, Antioch College President, states, “I am enthused to announce that Dr. Brian Norman is our new Antioch College Vice President for Academic Affairs. Brian is an experienced academic leader and engaged scholar-teacher with a deep commitment to liberal education, inspired by his own experience as a first-generation college student.”