WELCOME!
After earning degrees from Oxford University (UK) and Birkbeck College, I gained a Phd in Literature at Newcastle University and joined the faculty of the English Department in the University of Greenwich London. Eventually I became a full professor of English and Jungian Studies. In 2009, I emigrated to the United States, where I now teach on hybrid programs in Engaged Humanities, Creativity and Jungian & Archetypal Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute in California.
In ten books, I have written about the psychology of the creative imagination, using Jung to excavate a lost feminine. I have always been fascinated by detective fiction, in which I am now actively engaged with my Mary Wandwalker Mysteries.
You can read more about these, and my exploration of the essence of writing, in my blog, download some of my papers, listen to talks and see upcoming events.
Susan Rowland, Ph.D
NEWEST RELEASE
The Sleuth and
the Goddess:
Hestia, Artemis, Athena And Aphrodite In Women's Detective Fiction
Exploring the divine feminine energies in mystery fiction by women from Christie to Paretsky, Evanovich, and Winspear.
New
Edition
Jungian Literary Criticism The Essential Guides
This is a "how to" book for literary students who want to explore the intrinsically creative imagination and for Jungians who want to explore literature. It is also a "why" book on the importance of Transdisciplinarity for the Climate Emergency and more.
This book teaches all of us to read again. Through a Jungian lens, Susan Rowland guides us through a familiar literary landscape and shows us how to see it as if for the first time. In an act of alchemy, her insights transform our understanding of literary relationships in the books themselves.
Dr. Luke Hockley, Professor of Media Analysis, University of Bedfordshire, UKCP psychotherapist, UK
A forerunner of Jungian literary criticism, Susan Rowland has now provided here an updated volume of ambition and character with rigorous and brilliant attention to individual pieces of writing. She challenges the very necessity and notion of a Jungian approach to studying literature and responds to that query with thoughtful but sweeping notice of commentary over centuries. Highly recommendable for its clarity and scope.
Leslie Gardner, Ph.D., Fellow, Department Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex
THE BOOKS
WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW
Without generosity, we lose in spiritedness.
-Susan Rowland, Ph.D
Bones of the Earth by Eliot Pattison is a wonderful addition to the Shan in Tibet series. I devoutly hope it is not the last. In a way these books are about family, but not as we usually think about it. Here again the reader learns that crime is a potentially mutable category in Tibet. Those in political power spawn bullying hierarchies with crimes against the human soul. These books are particularly suggestive in our era of Climate Emergency, and of the rise of tyranny. Detective Shan will uncover crimes perpetuated by and for the gods.
So Under an English Heaven by Alice Boatwright, which introduces Ellie Kent, American academic as newly minted Vicar's wife in a typically incestuous yet innocent seeming English village. Naturally, murder ensues... It is delightful to see the traditional mystery take on the challenges of 21st-century womanhood and marriage with such rich observation and humor.
With a very different hero (let's abolish the word heroine!), archeologist Faye Longchamp, the remarkable Mary Anna Evans finds her sleuth and family apparently caught up in domestic terrorism when a hotel is bombed. However... the bomb uncovers the long-buried Catacombs of the title. Its crime proves to be domestic and familial as well as strikingly resonant to contemporary anxieties about religion, freedom, and government This is a superb read that leaves the reader invigorated!
