Dean Shiner Wilson earned a Ph.D. in English Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington; an MA in English at the University of Kansas; an MA in French at the University of Missouri; a Certificat, niveau supérieur at the University of Paris. Sorbonne; and a BA in French. at Cornell College, Iowa, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She was selected for two National for the Endowment seminars and received an NEH travel to collections grant and an American Philosophical Society research grant. In 1995, she was named Outstanding Academic Woman of the Year by the Lehigh Valley Association of Academic Women.

She has published two books—The Galesia Trilogy and Selected Poems by Jane Barker (Oxford University Press, 1997) and Re-Visioning Romanticism: British Women Writers, 1776-1837 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994). The latter was recommended as a Choice Outstanding Academic Book of the Year. She has published numerous articles, invited book chapters, and review essays on women writers in England and the United States. She has also presented papers at numerous conferences, including the Modern Language Association, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, National Women Studies Association, and the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association.

Dean Shiner Wilson has taught courses including Survey of British Literature, The English Novel, British Romantic Writers, Continental Novel, World Literature Since 1500, Women and Literature, American Realism and Naturalism, Contemporary American Literature, First-Year Seminars, Literature and History, Narrators and Readers, Women’s Work in America, French Language and Civilization.

She has been active nationally in the follow professional associations: American Council of Academic Deans, National Fellowship Advisors Association, Modern Language Association, Northeast Modern Language Association, and American Eighteenth-Century Studies Association.

In the Lehigh Valley, Dean Wilson serves as a member of the Board of Directors, Turning Point of the Lehigh Valley, as a member of the Council of Provosts and Deans of the Lehigh Valley Association of Independent Colleges, and as a member of the Board of Associates of both the Allentown Art Museum and the Chamber Music Society of Bethlehem.