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An Episcopal, co-educational 100% boarding school in Middletown, Delaware for grades 9 – 12

Emily Pressman

Interim Dean of Teaching & Learning, History

Emily grew up on the campus of The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn. As a student at Hotchkiss, Emily served as head of the community service organization, edited and wrote for a student magazine and was deeply involved in the drama program. In her senior year she served as a proctor in an underclass dorm.

After Hotchkiss, Emily went on to Yale University, graduating in 2002 summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, with distinction in history. In her studies, she focused on American history, particularly Southern history and issues of race and slavery. During the summer of 2001, she worked as research assistant for a Yale historian and, supported by a Richter Fellowship, pursued her own research at UNC-Chapel Hill. Beyond academic pursuits, her college years found her directing a Sondheim musical as well as serving as a residential first-year counselor.

During the 2002-2003 academic year, Emily taught at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. As the Richard M. Lederer Teaching Fellow in history at Andover, she taught world history, lived in a dormitory as a house counselor and directed the ninth grade play. In summer 2004, Emily was awarded a fellowship to the Klingenstein Summer Institute through Columbia Teachers College. In more recent summers she has pursued study in England, Ireland and Northern Ireland, including a program focused on educational leadership at Oxford in 2019. In the summer of 2015, with Giselle Furlonge and Ana Ramírez, she co-founded the St. Andrew's Summer Institute (SASI). SASI engages a small cohort of St. Andrew's faculty each summer in new thinking, research, collaboration, and reflection on our work as teachers, advisors, counselors, dorm parents and coaches. Coming full circle, Emily was appointed to the faculty of the Klingenstein Summer Institute in the summer of 2021; at KSI each summer, she is a lead teacher in history, mentoring early career teachers from around the country and world.

Emily returned to Yale in fall 2008 for a master of arts degree in history. In addition to further work in 19th century American history and Southern history, her studies encompassed 20th century American conservatism, comparative genocide studies, and issues in historical memory. Her graduate research brought her back to our state archives, as part of her examination of massive resistance to school desegregation in Milford, Del., in 1954.

At St. Andrew’s, Emily teaches history and is the Interim Dean of Teaching and Learning. Together with Elizabeth Roach, she created and teaches a fully interdisciplinary course for seniors entitled “History, Literature and the Contested Past.” The course examines how novelists, poets, playwrights, and historians have wrestled with and made sense of the past and their relationship to it. Emily enjoys cooking, reading, travel, music of all kinds, tracking down quirky historical monuments, and going to the theater any chance she gets. She lives in a house on Hickory Point with her hound dog, Ruthie.