Susan Shillinglaw, a leading figure in Steinbeck studies for three decades, has resigned as Director of the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California, effective June 15. The Pacific Grove resident and San Jose State University English professor took over management of the organization three years ago, guiding the transition to a new landlord and reviving the annual Steinbeck Festival, an anticipated event in Steinbeck’s home town since 1981. Built on Main Street in downtown Salinas, the center contains an archival collection and space for exhibitions, meetings, and educational programs.
The author or editor of numerous books and articles—and an internationally acclaimed speaker known for style and substance—Susan Shillinglaw has co-directed six National Endowment for the Humanities interdisciplinary summer institutes for high school teachers in Pacific Grove, including one this summer. For 18 years she directed the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State, where she began her teaching career in 1984. She transitioned to half-time faculty status when she accepted the position in Salinas, and she will teach courses in Steinbeck and creative nonfiction in the fall.
Since opening its doors 20 years ago, the National Steinbeck Center has had to overcome challenges of staff turnover and financial troubles typical of small, non-urban museums burdened with start-up debt and dependent on local philanthropy and tourism for survival. The building was sold to California State University, Monterey Bay as a partial solution to the problem, but museums in this era must also offer new kinds of programs and shift the ways exhibits are structured—activities begun in earnest under Susan Shillinglaw’s leadership.
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