Biography
Marilyn Sanders Mobley, Ph.D., was appointed the inaugural Vice President for Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunity at Case Western Reserve University on January 5, 2009.
Prior to this appointment she served as Provost at Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina. Prior to her provost appointment, she was the Associate Provost for Educational Programs at George Mason University and a tenured Associate Professor of English, where she was also a faculty member for 19 years. She founded the African American Studies Program at George Mason and served as its first director for six years. She has taught at Howard University, Marygrove College and Wayne State University. She has a Ph.D. in English from Case Western Reserve University, a master's degree in English from New York University and a bachelor's degree from Barnard College of Columbia University.
She is a published author and Toni Morrison scholar, whose first book—Folk Roots and Mythic Wings in Sarah Orne Jewett and Toni Morrison: The Cultural Function of Narrative (LSU Press, 1991)—was one of the first cross-cultural studies on the Nobel Prize winning author. Dr. Mobley is the former president of the Toni Morrison Society and now serves as a member of its advisory board. Her teaching, research and scholarship in literary studies, cultural studies and higher education have all focused on race, gender, diversity and inclusion and she consulted in these areas for more than 25 years. Her two books in progress include Spaces for the Reader: Toni Morrison's Narrative Poetics and Cultural Politics and The Strawberry Room: And Other Places Where a Woman Finds Herself, a volume of reflections on a woman's passage from family trauma to spiritual recovery.
Dr. Mobley is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, and is the proud mother of two adult sons—Rashad and Jamal—and two grandsons. She resides in Beachwood, Ohio.