Susan Gail Cosby Ronnenberg

Susan Gail Cosby Ronnenberg, 59, of Durant, OK (originally from Mt. Ida, AR), passed away on June 3, 2026. She was born on March 1, 1967, to Tommy and Dana (Gatlin) Cosby in Dallas, TX, joining sisters Karen and Pam to complete the family of five. Extended family gatherings occurred frequently with Texas relatives over the holidays and summers, immersed in talkative aunts and uncles and laughing and bickering Susan cousins, all playing board, card, and dice games into the wee hours and/or picnicking and swimming at the Cosby Family Reunion or in the river behind her parents’ house. Susan met the love of her life, Clint Ronnenberg, in 2003 and they were married in 2004 at Central Lutheran Church in Winona, MN. Over the course of four residential moves, including two remodel projects, they built a wonderful life together, making each home their sanctuary from the rest of the world. Susan grew up in Mt. Ida, AR, graduating from Mt. Ida High School in 1985. She earned a B.A. in English Literature from Hendrix College in 1989, an M.A. in English Literature from Southwestern Missouri State University in 1992, and a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Oklahoma in 2000. Her professional career was spent in higher education, working in Student Affairs and in Academic Affairs. She was a Residence Life Graduate Assistant in Southwestern Missouri State University’s Freudenberger House. She served as the Director of Galloway Hall and the Assistant Director of Residence Life at Hendrix College from 1992-1994. From 2000-2002, she was Director of the Women’s Outreach Center at the University of Oklahoma. She left that position to become a tenure-track faculty member, teaching college courses as she had long planned. Susan was an English professor at Viterbo University in La Crosse, WI for 18 years. She loved working with students and her colleagues. She was recognized as Viterbo’s 2008 Teacher of the Year. In 2010 she received the Alec Chui Memorial Scholarship Award. She received a sabbatical in fall 2010, which included travel to Chicago to make use of the Newberry Library’s historical collection. Susan’s scholarship focused on gender roles, women writers, literary representations of grief, madness, and melancholy in early modern English drama, poetry, and prose and, eventually, narrative devices in modern American television series. Her dissertation at OU, Resisting Madness: Women’s Negotiations with Social Control in Early Modern English Literature (2000) analyzed hysteria, madness, melancholy, and non-conformist behaviors in the culture of 16th and 17th century England. In 2011, she received a D.B. Reinhart Ethics Institute Fellowship for her project “Exploring Gender Markers and the Ars Moriendi Tradition in Selected Works of Mary Sidney Herbert and Katherine Philips.” She authored Deadwood and Shakespeare: The Henriad in the Old West (2018, McFarland Press). Her “So Many Chick Flicks: Dean Winchester’s Centrifugal Evolution”, was included in Gender and Contemporary Horror in Television (Emerald Publishing, 2019). In 2019, based on her Deadwood and Shakespeare book, her chapter, ‘It’s the Beauty that Hurts the Most’: Rectify as Televisual Novel”, was included in the collection Television Series as Literature (Palgrave McMillan, 2022). In addition to teaching, Susan served in a number of part-time administrative leadership roles, including as a department chair for English, Assistant Dean for the School of Arts and Humanities, and co-director of the Honors Program. In 2020, she moved into full-time administrative work, as Dean of the Undergraduate College at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota in Winona, MN, and from 2022-2026 as the Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, OK. Susan was involved in the Rotary Club of Durant and served on the boards for the Crisis Control Center and the Oklahoma Shakespearean Festival. When Susan wasn’t working or volunteering, she could often be found curled up with a cat or dog, immersed in a book, gardening, baking, sewing, or going for walks or drives with Clint. She loved spending time at home with her hubby and their pets, out adventuring on their day trips, and spending time with family and friends. The homelife that she and Clint built together was a happy, peaceful, and quiet sanctuary that served as a necessary counterbalance to her busy and often stressful work responsibilities. Clint’s steady and patient devotion was the greatest gift she ever received. Susan is survived by her loving husband, Clint; her sister, Pam (Cosby) & David Ollie; niece, Olivia Ollie, great-niece, Sadie Lopez; cousins, Janie Brown & Bill Parrill, Polly & Ronnie Bills, Lisa & Bruce Nagy, Sheila Moschak, Carol Floyd, Randy Floyd and Lesley Serrano, Emily Bills, Michael Moschak, Brian Nagy and Andrew Nagy, among others. Susan was preceded in death by her parents, Tommy and Dana, her sister Karen, grandparents, and many aunts, uncles, and cousins. Funeral services will be held at 10:00 AM Monday June 8, 2026, at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Durant, Oklahoma. Reverend Joan Iker will officiate. Interment will follow in Highland Cemetery in Durant. The family will receive friends at the Funeral Home on Sunday afternoon from 3-5 PM. Any gifts in Susan’s memory can be donated to your local women’s center/domestic violence shelter or your local public library. Online condolences can be left at Browns Funeral Home www.brownsfuneralservice.com Arrangements are under the direction of Brown’s Durant Funeral and Cremation Service. https://www.tributeslides.com/tributes/show/ZCSJ2M799BS3929N

Susan Gail Cosby Ronnenberg

March 1, 1967 - June 3, 2026