Along with his duties as Senior Associate Dean for Liberal Arts, Thorne Compton teaches a variety of literature courses in the Department of English. He has served as the Department Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance where he taught theatre history and dramatic literature, and as Associate Director of the Institute for Southern Studies From 2000 to 2002 he coordinated the University’s Bicentennial celebration His primary areas of research and teaching are dramatic literature, theatre history and censorship, southern literature and film and Eighteenth Century literature and public performance. He has previously served as Associate Dean of the Colleges of Humanities and Social Sciences and the College of Liberal Arts.

Personal Statement
One of the differences between institutions of higher education and factories is that factories strive to insure that each product of a certain type is uniform and identical. Universities strive to insure that our products—our students—are individual and unique. Each student should get an education of high quality, but that education should help them grow in different and astonishing ways. We hope that students do more that learn the ideas of the past—our job is to help them create the ideas of the future.