Department of English

Faculty, Staff, & Graduate Assistants

Faculty
Mark Amos	David Anthony	Erin Anthony	Pinckney Benedict
Mary Bogumil	George Boulukos	Edward J. Brunner	Anne Chandler
Jane N. Cogie	K. K. Collins	Ronda L. Dively	Betsy Dougherty
Robert Elliot Fox	Michael Humphries	Anna Jackson	Rodney Jones
Judy Jordan	Allison E. Joseph	Elizabeth Klaver	Mary E. Lamb
Beth Lordan	Lisa McClure	Scott J. McEathron	Michael R. Molino
R. Gerald Nelms	Ryan Netzley	Alberta Skaggs	Jacinda Townsend
Jon Tribble	Christina Voss	Jeremy Wells	Dan M. Wiley
Tony Williams
Staff
Robin Adams	Fiscal Manager		453-6854
Joyce Schemonia	Secretary to the Director of Writing Studies		453-6811
Patty Norris	Secretary to the Director of Graduate Studies		453-6894
Jackie McFadden	Department Receptionist		453-5321
Graduate Assistants

Mark Amos, Associate Professor, Director Saluki First Year Program (PhD, Duke University)

Specialty: Middle English Literature

Office: Faner 2264

Phone: 618/453-6824, 618/453-1828, maamos@siu.edu

Saluki First Year: 618/453-1828, firstyr@siu.edu, SalukiFirstYear

Professor Amos's scholarship and publications focus on the relationship between late medieval cultures and their literatures. He has written on medieval reading practices and early book production, representations of class relations, and the viability of applying modern theoretical approaches to medieval texts. His current project examines representations of women in secular and sacred texts of the later Middle Ages in England and France. He is editing a collection of articles on the representations of Jews on the medieval and early modern stages, and is planning to edit a collection of primary texts of Middle English courtesy literature. The working title of his monograph is William Caxton's Corpus and the Forging of London's Urban Self, which explores the interplay between printing technology and the promulgation and construction of identity-producing institutions and paradigms in the fifteenth century.

David Anthony, Associate Professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies (PhD, University of Michigan) 

Specialty: Early American Literature 

Office: Faner 2376

Phone: 618/453-6845, davidant@siu.edu

David Anthony is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at SIUC. His research for the past ten years or so has revolved around the related representations of manhood and money in antebellum mass culture. He has published essays on this issue in journals such as American Literature (2004 and 1997), The Yale Journal of Criticism (1999) and Early American Literature (2005), and has received research fellowships for this work from the American Antiquarian Society (1997; 2000; 2005), the Library Company of Philadelphia (2000), and SIUC (2000). His book, Paper Money Men: Commerce, Manhood, and the Sensational Public Sphere in Antebellum America will be published by Ohio State University Press in the Fall of 2009. This book shows how a long trajectory of sensational-gothic narratives, from the literary (Irving, Hawthorne, Melville) to the pulpy (penny press newspapers and dime novels), reflects and helps shape the intricate relationship between masculine sensibility and commerce in early America at the very moment when the economic market was becoming increasingly unstable and panic-prone. A new project, tentatively entitled “The Sensational Jew in Early America,” is emerging from the above book. Here Anthony examines the many ways in which the Jew acted as the figure through which the white middle-class Gentile culture of the antebellum period sought to imagine its relationship to money, property, race, and sexuality. Chapters include studies of narratives about the “Jessica” character in American sensationalism (i.e. stories that reinvent Shylock’s daughter from Merchant of Venice); narratives about Jews and abducted or orphaned children (i.e. reinventions of Oliver Twist); and narratives about Jews, slavery, and the American South.

Erin Anthony, Lecturer

Specialty: Modern American Literature

Office: Faner 2276

Phone: 618/453-6814, edes@siu.edu

Pinckney Benedict, Professor (MFA, University of Iowa)

Office: Faner, 2244

Phone: 618/453-6826, pinckney@siu.edu

Pinckney Benedict has published two collections of stories — Town Smokes and The Wrecking Yard — and Dogs of God, a novel. His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Esquire, StoryQuarterly, Zoetrope: All-Story, Best New Stories from South, The O. Henry Award Collection, the Pushcart Prize series, and The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. His honors and awards include a Literature Fellowship in Fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts, Britain’s Steinbeck Prize, a PEN/Syndicated Fiction Award, the Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award, and a Michener Fellowship from the University of Iowa. He has taught on the creative writing faculties at Princeton University, Oberlin College, and in the low-residency MFA programs at Warren Wilson College and Queens University.

Mary Bogumil, Associate Professor (PhD, University of South Florida)

Specialty: Modern British and American Literature

Office: Faner, 2243

Phone: 618/453-6861, mbogumil@siu.edu

Professor Bogumil teaches modern British and American literature, with a particular interest in British, Irish and American drama and multicultural American writing, and works with student playwrights in the Theater Department. She is author of Understanding August Wilson (1999). Her articles have appeared in College English, American Journal of Semiotics, Theatre Journal, Massachusetts Studies in English, and the New Hibernia Review on writers such as: Harold Pinter, August Wilson, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and Jack Dunphy. She is the co-author of A Biography of Florida Union Organizer Frank E'Dalgo, has written essays on Clare Boylan and Magnus Mills for the Dictionary of Literary Biography: Twenty-first Century British and Irish Novelists, and on Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac for a volume on Booker Prize winners. Her current publications include an essay on August Wilson’s relationship to Black Theater for Cambridge University Press's Companion Series (2007) and the forthcoming second edition of Understanding August Wilson (2010) for the University of South Carolina Press. She is also the faculty advisor for the English Honor Society, Sigma Tau Delta. 

George Boulukos, Associate Professor (PhD, University of Texas at Austin) 

Specialty: Eighteenth-Century British Literature

Office: Faner, 2233

Phone: 618/453-6810, boulukos@siu.edu

Professor Boulukos’ primary research interests are in eighteenth-century British literature, race, sentimentality, and the history of the novel. His book, The Grateful Slave: The Emergence of Race in Eighteenth-Century British and American Culture, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2008. Articles from this project have been published in ELH, Eighteenth-Century Life, and Eighteenth-Century Novel. His next book project, Eighteenth-Century Incoherence, examines the distortions entailed by applying 19th and 20th century critical concepts—such as “the novel,” “imperialism,” and “the middle class”—to eighteenth-century texts. He is also editing the previously undiscovered Memoirs of the Life and Travels of Thomas Hammond, the riotous and revealing autobiography of the one-time stableboy who traveled throughout Europe supporting himself by performing horse riding tricks. His latest articles are “Olaudah Equiano and the Eighteenth-Century Debate on Africa,” Eighteenth-Century Studies (2007); “The Horror of Hybridity: Enlightenment, Anti-slavery and Disgust in Charlotte Smith’s ‘Story of Henrietta,’” in Essays and Studies (2007) in special volume on abolition and Romanticism; and “The Politics of Silence: Mansfield Park and the Amelioration of Slavery,” in Novel: a Forum on Fiction (Summer 2006).

Edward J. Brunner, Professor (PhD, University of Iowa) 

Specialty: Modern American Literature

Office: Faner, 2278

Phone: 618/453-6850, ebrunner@siu.edu

Edward Brunner teaches twentieth century American poetry, modernism, and popular culture. For several years he worked outside the university, first on the Rock Island Lines and then as a Deputy Auditor. He has published three book-length studies: Splendid Failure: Hart Crane and the Making of “The Bridge” (1985), The Writings of W. S. Merwin: The Labor and Privilege of Poetry (1991) and Cold War Poetry (2001, paperback 2004). His first book was awarded the MLA Independent Scholar prize, and his second book was finished with the aid of a year-long NEH fellowship. Recent essays on graphic novels, the history of the newspaper comic strip, and hoax-poetry have appeared in American Periodicals, MELUS, and the Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies. He has contributed articles on R. Crumb and on popular poetry to the MLA Approaches to Teaching series; his nonfiction has appeared in Trains magazine. He serves on the editorial board of Oxford’s Anthology of Modern American Poetry and organized several websites for the Modern American Poetry Site (MAPS). He offers courses in American literature, in modern and postmodern poetry, in the graphic novel and the comic strip, and in the contemporary long poem.

Anne Chandler, Associate Professor (PhD, Duke University)  

Specialty: Eighteenth-Century British Literature

Office: Faner, 2231

Phone: 618/453-6853, chandleran@aol.com

Professor Chandler studies late eighteenth-century British popular fiction, theories of gender, and experimental pedagogy. Her graduate seminars have dealt with Gothic fiction and with the relation of the sentimental movement to trends in philosophy and the natural sciences. Landscape aesthetics and the physiology of “Feeling” have been recurrent themes in these seminars. A new seminar focuses on the politics and fiction of Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, and Mary Shelley.  Professor Chandler has published an essay on the teaching of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and her other teaching interests at the 300 and 400 levels include the varieties of satire available in the works of Swift, Fielding, Sterne, and Burney, as well as the sorts of mystic lyricism to be seen in Blake, Coleridge, and Christina Rossetti. Her six published and forthcoming articles concern Wollstonecraft, Godwin, the children’s writer Thomas Day, and the Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe. Her book in progress considers these and other figures, including Maria Edgeworth, as influenced by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and as carrying out careful revisions of his ideas in their own influential theories of gender and pedagogy.

Jane N. Cogie, Associate Professor, Director of the Writing Center (PhD, University of Iowa)   

Specialty: Rhetoric & Composition

Office: Faner, 2283

Phone: 618/453-6846, jcogie@siu.edu

Writing Center: Morris Library, 236, 618/453-1231, Morris Writing Center

Jane Cogie, Associate Professor of English, directs the SIUC Writing Center, which offers one-to-one tutoring at three locations on the campus and in-class facilitation of peer group discussions of student writing for a variety of courses in composition as well as across the curriculum. The courses she teaches that relate to writing center work include English 489, One-to-One Teaching: Practice and Theory, and English 581, Problems in Teaching: The Intersection of Pedagogy, Administration, and Politics in Directing a Writing Center. Her articles on issues in writing center pedagogy and administration have appeared in The Writing Center Journal, WPA: Writing Program Administrator, and Writing Lab Newsletter as well as in essay anthologies. One of her more recent chapters in an anthology, “Peer Tutoring: Keeping the Contradictions Productive,” involves a discourse analysis of a specific writing center session and a subsequent discussion of the pedagogical and power issues at work within the tutor-student dynamic; it appears in Heineman: Boyton/Cook’s 2001 volume, The Politics of Writing Centers. Another book chapter, co-authored with a lecturer and two graduate assistants from the SIUC Writing Center and scheduled to be published in Summer 2007, focuses on a range of pedagogical and administrative issues related to carrying writing center collaboration beyond the walls of the Center. Her most recent article on English as a Second Language tutoring, “ESL Student Participation in Writing Center Sessions,” is forthcoming in the Writing Center Journal 26.2 (Fall 2006): 48-66. Also forthcoming, in the November issue of Writing Lab Newsletter, is a review of the 2005 volume, Centers of Learning: Centers and Libraries in Collaboration, edited by James K. Elmborg and Sheril Hook.

Since 1994, she has pursued these and other topics in over 20 conference papers, 16 of which were presented at national conferences, including the CCCC, the International Writing Center Association Conference, and the National Conference of Peer Tutors of Writing. She has also participated in projects and organizations aimed at fostering collaborations among individuals who work in writing centers. Having served on the Midwest Writing Center Association (MWCA) Board from 2001 to 2006, she is currently a member of the 2006 MWCA Conference Planning Committee and of the International Writing Center Association Membership Committee in addition to having served as the Coordinator for the Illinois Consortium of Writing Centers since 2001. 

K. K. Collins, Associate Professor, Distinguished Teacher (PhD, Vanderbilt University)   

Specialty: Nineteenth-Century English Literature

Office: Faner, 2274

Phone: 618/453-6839, kkcoll@siu.edu

Professor Collins specializes in Victorian British literature. His interests center in canonical novelists, especially Dickens and George Eliot and her circle, but he is also interested in the representation of writers' "print afterlives" in nineteenth-century newspapers and periodicals. Most recently he has published a monograph on the treatment of George Eliot's death in the London religious press (ELS, 2006), and at present he is preparing the volume on George Eliot for Palgrave/Macmillan's Interviews and Recollections series. His other publications include a bibliography of Dickens and essays on Dickens, Jane Austen, George Eliot, and G. H. Lewes in Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Modern Philology, Modern Language Review, and other journals. He regularly teaches undergraduate courses on the Victorians, especially the novelists, and his recent graduate seminars have been on pictorial realism in Romantic and Victorian painting and literature, the treatment of reading and books in Victorian fiction, George Eliot's late novels, and the Brontës.

Ronda L. Dively, Associate Professor, Director of Writing Studies (DA, Illinois State University)  

Specialty: Rhetoric & Composition

Office: Faner, 2390

Phone: 618/453-6811, rldively@siu.edu

Professor Ronda Leathers Dively received her B.A. in English (with teacher certification) and her M.A. in English (literature) from Eastern Illinois University . After gaining a few years of teaching experience in the secondary English classroom, she pursued her D.A. in English (Rhetoric and Composition) at Illinois State University , completing her degree in 1994 and accepting an assistant professorship in the English Department at SIUC that same year. Currently an associate professor, Dr. Dively serves as the Director of Writing Studies for the Department of English and teaches in the Rhetoric and Composition and English Education programs. Her areas of teaching specialization include intermediate and advanced composition, composition theory and pedagogy, empirical research methods in composition, secondary English methods, and adolescent literature. She has also enjoyed teaching special topics courses that explore intersections between creativity theory and compostion theory—upper level seminars growing from her primary research interest in the role of invention and incubation in a diversity of writing situations. More specifically, Professor Dively's scholarship investigates how intersections of creativity and composition theory may illuminate how individuals negotiate transitions between various academic composing contexts—from high school to college classrooms, from general education to discipline-specific writing courses, from status as undergraduate student to graduate student, from status as graduate student to professional. Such interests have recently generated a book length empirical study entitled Preludes to Insight: Creativity, Incubation and Expository Writing (Hampton Press, 2005), as well as various articles and conference presentations. Professor Dively has also published several articles on the nature of religious rhetoric and students' rights to religious expression in the secular academy. 

Jane Elizabeth Dougherty, Assistant Professor (PhD, Tufts University)  

Specialty: Irish Studies

Office: Faner, 2262

Phone: 618/453-5296, dohugany@siu.edu

Professor Dougherty is currently working on a book-length study of the discursive implications of the Anglo-Irish union, and on articles and conference presentations preliminary to a monograph on the Irish literary childhood. Her most recent publication is “An Angel in the House: The Act of Union and Anthony Trollope’s Irish Hero,” which appeared in Victorian Literature and Culture. Professor Dougherty has received fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the Keough-Notre Dame Center, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and her work has earned honors from the American Conference on Irish Studies and Bentley College. Prior to her appointment at SIU, she taught composition and rhetoric for twelve years, and also volunteered as a voting precinct captain, adult literacy tutor, and diversity workshop trainer. 

Robert Elliot Fox, Professor (PhD, SUNY at Buffalo)  

Specialty: Modern American Literature

Office: Faner, 2223

Phone: 618/453-6864, bfox@siu.edu

Professor Fox received his BA from Cornell University, did graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley in its countercultural heyday, and earned his PhD at the State University of New York at Buffalo, after a hiatus that included some troubadouring and working for the alternative press in San Francisco. Before joining the SIUC faculty in 1991, he taught at the University of Ife in Nigeria and at Suffolk University in Boston. In the Spring of 1992, Fox was a resident scholar at Harvard's W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research. Courses he has taught at SIUC include Black American Writers, Afrocentrism and Black Aesthetics, The African Novel, The Beat Generation, Science Fiction, and graduate seminars on contemporary American fiction. His current research primarily involves issues of postcoloniality, multiculturalism, black aesthetics, and "race." Fox is the author of two books: Conscientious Sorcerers (1987), a study of African American postmodernist fiction, and Masters of the Drum (1995), a collection of essays and interviews dealing with black writing. Among his more pertinent recent essays are "Afrocentrism and the X Factor" in Transition (issue 57), "Becoming Post-White" in Multi America, edited by Ishmael Reed, "Diasporacentrism and Black Aural Texts" in The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities, edited by Isidore Okpewho, et al., and two chapters in James Sallis's Ash of Stars: On the Writing of Samuel R. Delany. He also has articles in The Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History and The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Fox's fiction and poetry have appeared in Yardbird Reader, Okike, West Africa, and elsewhere. Works in progress include another collection of essays on black expressive cultures entitled Archaeologies of Soul and a personal memoir. He recently completed a volume of experimental writings called Mutation Word Box.

Michael L. Humphries, Associate Professor (PhD, Claremont Graduate University)  

Specialty: Classical and Early Christian Literature, Literary Theory

Office: Faner, 4344

Phone: 618/453-5837, mhumphri@siu.edu

Professor Humphries received his Ph.D. in Early Christian Literature from the Claremont Graduate University (1990). He taught Jewish and Christian Origins for two years at Mount St. Mary's College and the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, and three years in the Department of Religious Studies at Southern Illinois University. He transferred to the Department of English at SIUC in 1993 where he is now Associate Professor of Classical and Comparative Literature. His courses include: ENGL 332: Folklore and Mythology, ENGL 445: Cultural Backgrounds of Western Literature, ENGL 495: Literary Theory, and graduate seminars on Michel Foucault and Literature. Dr. Humphries' primary field of research is Cultural Studies and Literary Theory with a focus on mythology and early Christian literature. He is a fellow of the Jesus Seminar and member of the International Q Project, whose work on the reconstruction of the early Christian Gospel designated "Q" ("Quelle"=Source) is being published in a series of several volumes by Peeters Press of the University of Leuven. His published works include articles in journals such as Forum and Arethusa, and a book entitled Christian Origins and the Language of the Kingdom of God published by Southern Illinois University Press, 1999. Professor Humphries is currently engaged in a book length study on the theme of Memento Mori in texts from late antiquity and the early modern period.

Anna Jackson, Lecturer

Specialty: Multicultural American Literature, English Education 

Office: Faner, 2268

Phone: 618/453-6834, abjackson22@aol.com

Rodney Jones, Professor of English, Distinguished Scholar (MFA, University of North Carolina at Greensboro)

Specialty: Poetry Writing 

Office: Faner, 2225

Phone: 618/453-6841, rodjones@siu.edu

Professor Jones is the author of six books of poetry: The Story They Told Us of Light (Alabama, 1980), The Unborn (Atlantic Monthly, 1985), Transparent Gestures (Houghton Mifflin, 1989), Apocalyptic Narrative (Houghton Mifflin, 1993), Things That Happen Once (Houghton Mifflin, 1996), and Elegy for the Southern Drawl (Houghton Mifflin, 1999). His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lavan Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Jean Stein Award of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and the 1989 National Book Critics Circle Award.  You can hear him read Two Poems at the Atlantic Monthly. 

Judy Jordan, Associate Professor (MFA in Poetry, University of Virginia; MFA in Fiction, University of Utah)

Specialty: Poetry Writing 

Office: Faner 3202A

Phone: 618/453-6835, puglove@siu.edu

Professor Jordan’s first book of poetry, Carolina Ghost Woods, won the 1999 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, the 2000 National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as the Utah Book of the Year Award, the OAY Award from the Poetry Council of North Carolina, and the Thomas Wolfe Literary Award. Her second book of poetry, Sixty Cent Coffee and a Quarter to Dance, was recently published by LSU press. This past year she has completed two full-length plays and is currently working on a memoir and a third book of poetry. Professor Jordan is building her own environmentally friendly house out of cob and cordwood, is the founder of SIPRAW, which rescues dogs out of the puppy mills, and practices kundalini yoga.

Allison Joseph, Associate Professor (MFA, Indiana University)   

Specialty: Poetry Writing 

Office: Faner 2221

Phone: 618/453-6813, aljoseph@siu.edu

Professor Joseph is the author of What Keeps Us Here (Ampersand, 1992), Soul Train (Carnegie Mellon, 1997), In Every Seam (Pittsburgh, 1997), Imitation of Life (Carnegie Mellon, 2003) and Worldly Pleasures (Word Press, 2004). Her honors include the John C. Zacharis First Book Prize, fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers Conferences, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Poetry. She is editor and poetry editor of Crab Orchard Review and director of the Young Writers Workshop, an annual summer residential creative writing workshop for high school writers. She holds the Judge Williams Holmes Cook Endowed Professorship. As Director of the SIUC MFA Program in Creative Writing, Professor Joseph maintains a blog about the graduate creative writing program at http://mfacarbondale.blogspot.com.

Elizabeth Klaver, Professor (PhD, University of California at Riverside)

Specialty: Modern American Literature

Office: Faner 2280

Phone: 618/453-6866, etklaver@siu.edu

Professor Klaver has published two books, Sites of Autopsy in Contemporary Culture (SUNY Press 2005) and Performing Television: Contemporary Drama and the Media Culture (University of Wisconsin, Popular Press (2000) as well as edited two books The Body in Medical Culture (SUNY Press 2009) and Images of the Corpse from the Renaissance to Cyberspace (University of Wisconsin Press 2004). She has published widely in drama and performance, television, and cultural studies. Her current work investigates theories of the body, particularly the intersection of cultural studies and medical science. Apart from her regularly offered courses in modern drama, she teaches graduate seminars in cultural studies, postmodernism, and theory.

Mary Ellen Lamb, Professor (PhD, Columbia University)

Specialty: Renaissance Literature

Office: Faner 2237

Phone: 618/453-6862, marylamb@siu.edu

Mary Ellen Lamb received her Ph.D from Columbia University. Her primary interests include Renaissance literature, especially Shakespeare and women writers. Her book Gender and Authorship in the Sidney Circle (Wisconsin, 1990) analyses representations of women writers in Sidney’s Arcadia and then representations of themselves as writers by Mary Sidney, Mary Wroth, and an anonymous female poet of holograph poems in a Sidney manuscript. Mary Ellen Lamb has published widely, in Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Survey, English Literary Renaissance, Review of English Studies, Spenser Studies, Criticism, Critical Survey. Her recently completed book, Productions of Popular Culture by Shakespeare, Spenser, and Jonson, under contract with Routledge, explores Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and Merry Wives of Windsor, episodes from Spenser’s Faerie Queene, and Jonson’s Oberon and Sad Shepherd as they present figures of the popular—fairies, old wives (who tell tales), and hobbyhorses—as forwarding and resisting the self-narratives of early modern elite and middling sorts in a period of economic and social fragmentation. In the academic year 2005-6, she was a fellow at the Renaissance Center of the University of Massaschusetts in Amherst. She is currently editor of the Sidney Circle Journal.

Beth Lordan, Professor (MFA, Cornell University)    

Specialty: Fiction Writing

Office: Faner 2284

Phone: 618/453-6849, lordan@siu.edu

Lordan received her BA and MFA from Cornell University, and has been at SIUC since 1991. She teaches fiction workshops and forms courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and currently directs Irish and Irish Immigration Studies. She is the author of three books: August Heat, a novel (Harper & Row 1987); And Both Shall Row, stories (Picador, 1998); and But Come Ye Back, a novel in stories (William Morrow, 2004). Her literary heroes are Virginia Woolf, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, James Agee; she admires the work of contemporary fiction writers like James Kelman, Joanna Scott, Alice McDermott, David Long, and Toni Morrison. Her short fiction has appeared in Farmers Market, Gettysburg Review, The Atlantic Monthly, O.Henry Prize Stories, and Best American Short Stories, and has won prizes from the New York State Council on the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council. She's currently working on more stories, and thinking about writing a book on form.

Lisa J. McClure, Associate Professor (DA, University of Michigan)

Specialty: Rhetoric & Composition

Office: Faner 2390

Phone: 618/453-6811, lisam@siu.edu

Professor McClure came to SIUC from the University of Michigan via Ohio State University. Having completed her coursework at UM in 1984, she taught four years in the basic writing program at OSU, serving for three years as Assistant Director of the program. She completed her doctoral degree in 1988, three days before the start of her tenure as an Assistant Professor at SIUC in August of 1988. Since coming to SIUC, Dr. McClure has been instrumental in developing and directing the first-year composition program, and is now completing her six-year stint as Director of First-Year Composition. She also serves as Area Head for Rhetoric & Composition, a program which she and Dr. Bruce C. Appleby (Professor Emeritus) expanded to include a Ph.D. concentration in 1988. As Director of First-Year Composition, Dr. McClure initiated changes in the curriculum to bring SIUC's program in line with current research, theory, and practice in the teaching of writing. She also developed, directed, and conducted the annual Pre-Semester Workshop for New and Returning Graduate Assistants. Much of the work she has done with the FYC program has been to upgrade the training of graduate assistants who teach in the program and to provide them with a professional atmosphere in which to work. Dr. McClure has been recognized by the Women's Studies Program and the Graduate and Professional Student Council for her contributions to the education and professional experiences of graduate students at SIUC. Dr. McClure teaches a variety of courses dealing with both theory and praxis of composition studies. Among her favorite theory courses are Composition Theory (ENGL 597), a course which she developed, and Reader Response Theory. In the Fall of 1997, she will introduce a new course: Intersections of Theory, an exploration of the intersections between composition theory and literary theory. She also teaches practical courses such as Teaching College Composition (ENGL 502), Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Teaching Basic Writing, and The Politics of Teaching Composition. She has taught both of the English Education courses (ENGL 485 and 481) in the department; she has also taught all levels of writing courses, including ENGL 101, 290, 390, and 490. Dr. McClure's research represents a variety of interests and concerns. Most of those interests fall under three headings: feminism, composition theory and practice, and reading theory. Her current focus is the creation of an innovative first-year composition textbook entitled The Subject of Writing is Writing: A Rhetoric for Teaching and Learning Writing for the National Textbook Company. Other projects include a theory book on the teaching of writing, a research project on the interaction of readers and writers about texts in different contexts, and a longitudinal study of how new instructors are taught to evaluate writing. Dr. McClure has published chapters or articles in several books and journals. She has presented her work at national and international conferences. In addition to serving as Director of First-Year Composition and Area Head of Rhetoric & Composition, Dr. McClure chairs the First-Year Composition Committee and serves on the Department's Policy Committee. At the university-level, she serves as a Core Curriculum Advisory Representative for the University's Core Curriculum program, and on the College of Liberal Art's Writing-Across-the-Curriculum Committee. She is the Rhetoric & Composition program's representative on the Consortium of Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric and Composition for whom she has developed the program's website. She is a member of the CCCC's Committee on Assessment for whom she has also designed a website. 

Scott J. McEathron, Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies (PhD, Duke University)     

Specialty: Nineteenth-Century English Literature

Office: Faner 2390

Phone: 618/453-6894, mceath@aol.com

Professor McEathron specializes in British Romanticism. His interests include the canonical Romantic poets and essayists, especially Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Lamb, and Hazlitt, as well as several non-canonical figures associated with the labouring-class poetic tradition. His edition English Labouring-Class Poetry, 1800-1830 (Pickering & Chatto, 2006) includes discussions of Robert Bloomfield, John Clare, James Hogg, and about twenty others.  A recent essay on Bloomfield appeared in Robert Bloomfield: Lyric, Class, and the Romantic Canon (Bucknell University Press, 2006). His other publications include the book Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Sourcebook (Routledge, 2005) and articles in Keats-Shelley Journal, Victorians Institute Journal, The Charles Lamb Bulletin, and Nineteenth-Century Literature.

Michael R. Molino, Associate Professor, Chair (PhD, Marquette University)

Specialty: Modern British Literature

Office: Faner 2370

Phone: 618/453-6854, mmolino@siu.edu

Professor Molino is a specialist in Modern British literature, with interests in Irish literature, contemporary British literature, Anglophone postcolonial literature, and political fiction of the Third World. The author of Questioning Tradition, Language, and Myth: The Poetry of Seamus Heaney (1994), Professor Molino has chaired and delivered papers at various conferences and guest edited a section on Postcolonial Criticism and Irish literature in The Comparatist, a comparative literature journal.  His articles have appeared in The Journal of Irish Literature, College English, Modern Philology, The American Journal of Semiotics, The Comparatist, Semiotics '91, and New Hibernia Review. He is the editor of the Dictionary of Literary Biography: Twenty-first Century British and Irish Novelists and has written DLB essays on Barnard MacLaverty, Hilary Mantel, James Hamilton-Paterson, Kent Haruf, and Ian McEwan's Booker Prize winning novel, Amsterdam.

R. Gerald Nelms, Associate Professor (PhD, Ohio State University)

Specialty: Rhetoric & Composition

Office: Faner 2235

Phone: 618/453-6848,  gnelms@siu.edu;gnelms@verizon.net

Professor Nelms has a BA in English (1973) and MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (1981) as well as a PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from Ohio State (1990).  Professor Nelms began his career in Rhetoric and Composition as an historian, focusing on the use of oral history methods to study developments in 20th-Century Composition theory and pedagogy. His early publications include, among others, “The Rise of Classical Rhetoric in Modern Composition Studies,” which won the Edward P. J. Corbett Award for the best article in Focuses; “Reassessing Janet Emig’s The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders: An Historical Perspective” in Rhetoric Review, “The Revival of Classical Rhetoric for Modern Composition Studies: A Survey” (with Maureen Daly Goggin) in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and “Linda Flower” (with Ronda Leathers Dively) in Twentieth-Century Rhetorics and Rhetoricians.  He has also reported on a longitudinal study of Janet Emig’s famous case study subject “Lynn” and research on the University of Chicago composition program of the 1940s and 1950s.  Professor Nelms also has presented research on historiography, promoting oral history methods and exploring the nature of objectivity; writing assessment; and writing across the curriculum.  More recently, Professor Nelms has conducted research into the transfer of composition knowledge from first-year composition courses to major courses. He is at work on a book presenting a unified curriculum for teaching writing at every level of higher education.  He has regularly conducted workshops on writing across the curriculum and active learning.  Professor Nelms’ primary academic interests at present include Communication Across the Curriculum, cognitive and rhetorical aspects of writing, and active learning.  Professor Nelms has held various administrative posts, including Director of SIUC’s Communication Across the Curriculum program; Acting Chair of the English Department; Writing Studies Director; and Undergraduate Studies Director in English.

Ryan Netzley, Assistant Professor (PhD, The Pennsylvania State University)

Specialty: Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Literature

Office: Faner 2227

Phone: 618/453-6830, rnetzley@siu.edu

Professor Netzley’s research interests include Renaissance literature, particularly seventeenth-century poetry, literature of the English Reformation, especially martyrologies and apocalypse commentaries, and queer and poststructuralist theory, particularly the work of Deleuze and Guattari. He also, of course, dabbles in Shakespeare. Professor Netzley is currently at work on a manuscript, Reading, Desire, and the Eucharist in Early Modern Religious Poetry, that examines the impact of sacramental presence on our understanding of desire and reading in seventeenth-century devotional lyrics: namely, how do we desire a god that we do not lack and how do we read poems when they no longer lack their meaning? Professor Netzley has also co-edited a collection of essays on Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, forthcoming from the University of Delaware Press. He has published articles in ELH, Criticism, and Milton Studies, and on Richard Crashaw, George Herbert, John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, John Milton’s Samson Agonistes and Paradise Regained, and Taylor Hackford’s film, The Devil’s Advocate.

Alberta Skaggs, Lecturer (MFA SIUC)

Specialty: Creative Writing

Office: Faner 2239

Phone: 618/453-6842, askaggs@siu.edu

In the eight years Alberta has been lecturer in the English Department she has taught a variety of courses: basic composition, Shakespeare, poetry (both beginning and intermediate), fiction (both beginning and intermediate), and currently directs independent studies for undergraduate students. Their projects have encompassed a variety of genre: documentary scripts, fantasy novels, poetry collections, and humorous and quirky fiction. She also designed and is teaching English 210, a course devoted to the talents of past and present SIUC creative writing instructors, specifically fiction. Alberta earned an MFA from SIUC, writing a novel entitled Vy's Place. In the Winter Issue 2003, the poem "Brothers" was published in The Drunken Boat. The short story "Pleasing Papa" was a finalist in CUTTHROAT: A Literary Journal of the Arts, and in 2005 earned the distinguished university award: Term Faculty of the Year. In 2006-2007 she served as editor for Scraps: Odd Bits and Pieces of a Family's Heritage. She has written a novel in verse, Catering an Affair, and is currently working on a collection of short stories about the lives of adolescent boys in the 70s titled It's in the Water. Last year, she and Teresa McKinley established a poetry club for elementary students at the Erma Hayes Center, the first community project representing their organization The Writer's House, which inspired her to write a number of children's stories. When she's not teaching, Alberta participates in two writing groups, designs and weaves baskets. In the summer, you'll find her out back digging around in the garden.

Jacinda Townsend, Assistant Professor (MFA, University of Iowa)

Office: Faner 2241

Phone: 618/453-6858

Jacinda Townsend, the 2003-04 Carol Houck Smith fiction fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing and a 2002 Hurston Wright Award finalist, has published in numerous literary magazines such as African Voices, Carve Magazine, The Maryland Review, Moon City Review, Obsidian II, Passages North, Phoebe, Struggle and Xavier Review. Her work has been anthologized in O.Henry Festival Stories 2000 and Telling Stories: Fiction by Kentucky Feminists. A former Fulbright fellow to Cote d'Ivoire and graduate of both Harvard University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Jon Tribble, Managing Editor of Crab Orchard Review (MFA)

Specialty: Creative Writing

Office: Faner 2222

Phone: 618/453-6833, jtribble@siu.edu

 Jon Tribble is the managing editor of Crab Orchard Review and the series editor of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry published by Southern Illinois University Press. He is the recipient of a 2003 Artist Fellowship Award in Poetry from the Illinois Arts Council and his poems have appeared in journals and anthologies, including Ploughshares. Poetry, Crazyhorse, Quarterly West, and The Jazz Poetry Anthology. His work was selected as the 2001 winner of the Campbell Corner Poetry Prize from Sarah Lawrence College. He teaches creative writing and literature, and directs undergraduate and graduate students in internships and independent study in editing and literary publishing for the Department of English at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Christina Voss, Lecturer (PhD Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany)

Specialty: Linguistics and Grammar, English Education

Office: Faner 3202B

Phone: 618/453-6865, christina.voss@gmail.com

Dr. Christina Linda Voss received her M.A. in translation (German/English/French; technology; 1998) and her Ph.D. in English (2003) from Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germersheim, Germany. After finishing her Master of Arts in Teaching program (K12; German; endorsements French and English) at SIUC in 2007, she has been working as a graduate assistant and lecturer in the English department. Her teaching experience includes ENG101, 102, 290, and 300, her favorite being the latter, a pure grammar course. She also assumed new responsibilities as the NCATE co-coordinator for the English department. Dr. Voss served one year in the Writing Center as a tutor and administrative assistant, which has influenced her teaching strategy greatly with regard to peer-editing workshops. She is presently working on a doctorate in Curriculum & Instruction, and her dissertation focuses on a case study about struggling writers. Her first dissertation titled The "Universal Language" of Freemasonry analyzed various components of a "secret" language (including gestures, grips, steps, positions, passwords) in a comparison of Masonic and other fraternal orders' rituals of different countries with regard to the claim of universality. She published a conference paper in 2005, "Universal und Geheim: Die Sprache der Freimaurer als Weltweiter Kommunikationsweg." Rituals are still her passion, especially African rituals and their appearance in modern African drama and fiction, for example in Wole Soyinka's plays and novels. Recently, Dr. Voss focuses more on student behavior and learning disabilities. In 2007, she published a chapter in an anniversary volume for her previous committee chair, Prof. Dr. Stoll, "'I definitely do not seat and stair': Stilblueten meiner Amerikanischen High-School Kids als Geburtstagsstrauss" in reminiscence of her student teaching experience at a local high school. Dr. Voss' most recent research topics include dyslexia, dysgraphia, graphomotor issues, perfectionism, and help-seeking behavior in K12 language arts students.

Jeremy Wells, Assistant Professor (PhD, University of Michigan)

Specialty: Early American Literature

Office: Faner 2282

Phone: 618/453-6844, jerwells@siu.edu

Professor Wells specializes in post-Civil War American literature and culture. His research and teaching interests include southern literature, African-American literature, literature and empire, and cultural studies. His current book project, White Men's Burdens: Empire and the Culture of the Plantation Romance , examines the relationship between stories about plantations and discourses surrounding U.S. imperialism from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. He has also published on such figures as Booker T. Washington and Jimi Hendrix. Before coming to SIU, Dr. Wells taught at Indiana University, where he was a Woodrow Wilson Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities. He has also received fellowships from the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the Jacob K. Javits Foundation.

Dan M. Wiley, Assistant Professor (PhD, Harvard University)

Specialty: Irish and Irish immigration Studies

Office: Faner 2044

Phone: 618/453-6851, danwiley@siu.edu

Dan M. Wiley is assistant professor of Irish and Irish immigration studies. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University with a specialization in the medieval languages and literatures of the British Isles. His primary research interests include early Irish saga literature, Gaelic paleography, and textual criticism. He is the editor of Essays on the Early Irish King Tales (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008) and the author of articles on various aspects of medieval Irish literature, including ‘Níall Frossach’s True Judgment’ (Eriu 2005) and ‘The Maledictory Psalms’ (Peritia 2001). Currently, he is working on an edition and translation of both recensions of the Middle Irish saga Aided Díarmata meic Cerbaill ‘The Violent Death of Díarmait mac Cerbaill’, which he hopes to complete in 2009.

Tony Williams, Professor (PhD, University of Manchester)

Specialty: Film Studies

Office: Faner 2266

Phone: 618/453-6836, tonyw@siu.edu

Professor Williams's research interests include: Representations of Viet Nam in Literature and Cinema, Film and Literature, Classical Hollywood Cinema, The Writings of Jack London and James Jones, Hong Kong Cinema, Film Genres, and Naturalism and Cinema.

Staff

Robin Adams, Fiscal Manager

Office: Faner 2370

Phone: 618/453-6854, english@siu.edu

Robin handles all financial transactions for the Department and, working with the chair, monitors and resolves purchases and expenditures. She also acts as the chair's secretary. If you have a question about fiscal matters or want a meeting with the chair, contact Robin.

Joyce Schemonia, Secretary to the Director of Writing Studies

Office: Faner 2390

Phone: 618/453-6811, jschemon@siu.edu

Joyce arranges class scheduling and book orders for all English Department classes and works closely with the Director of Writing Studies on Core Curriculum composition classes. If you have a problem with your course schedule for English 100, 101, 102, 119, 120H, 204, 290, or 291, then Joyce will know how to solve it.

Patty Norris, Secretary to the Director of Graduate Studies

Office: Faner 2390

Phone: 618/453-6894, norris@siu.edu

Patty works closely with the Director of Graduate Studies on all matters related to graduate applications, registration, and graduation. Applicants and students can trust her to help them through the paperwork and procedures required for each step of their graduate education. If she is not helping graduate students, she's probably off fishin'.

Jackie McFadden, Department Receptionist

Office: Faner 2380

Phone: 618/453-5321, jmcfaddn@siu.edu

Jackie keeps the central English office running, overseeing our student workers and directing visitors to their destination. She also keeps the Department workroom well supplied and running smoothly. If you need to know where to go, Jackie will tell you.

Graduate Assistants

Last Name	First Name	Office	Phone	Email
Adams	Leslie	2238	453-6819	leslieadams@siu.edu
Angle	Richard	2265	453-6812	richang@siu.edu
Awad	Ruth	2234	453-6855	ruthawad@siu.edu
Baillie	Brian	2265	453-6812	bbaillie@siu.edu
Bazzell	Jenna	2232	453-6867	bazzell@siu.edu
Bearden-White	Roy	2236	453-6825	roywhite@siu.edu
Beitzel	Connie	2269	453-6823	beitzel@siu.edu
Bishop	Cassandra	2261	453-6815	clb2i@siu.edu
Blair	Danielle	2275	453-6822	dblair@siu.edu
Blasdel	Janelle	2230	453-6820	janelle.blasdel@gmail.edu
Bloom	Carl	2240	453-6838	cbloom@siu.edu
Bonner	Lauren	2236	453-6825	lmbonner@siu.edu
Brewin	Mark	2234	453-6855	mbrewin@siu.edu
Brower	Bryan	2232	453-6867	bryanbrower@siu.edu
Capriotti	Tatjana	2236	453-6825	capriota@siu.edu
Chae	Jung Hae	2238	453-6819	jchae@siu.edu
Chang	Tzu-Shan	2242	453-6818	tzushan@siu.edu
Cook	Brian	2269	453-6823	bscook2@siu.edu
Danmole	Azizat	2230	453-6820	adanmole@siu.edu
Darby	Katherine	2230	453-6820	kwdarby@siu.edu
Davenport	Jennifer	2281	453-6863	jdavenport@siu.com
Donica	Joseph	2261	453-6815	jdonica@siu.edu
Douglas	Christopher	2269	453-6823	cdouglas@siu.edu
Duman	Onur	2236	453-6825	onur@siu.edu
Eslinger	Jessica	2269	453-6823	eslinger@siu.com
Farrell	Lance	2240	453-6838	farrell@siu.edu
Field	Chris	2240	453-6838	cfield@siu.edu
Flavin	Chris	4336	453-6816	cflavin@siu.edu
Foster	Ben	2261	453-6815	btfoster@siu.edu
Fowler	Rebekah	2242	453-6818	rmfowler@siu.edu
Fullman	Joshua	2281	453-6863	jfullman@siu.com
Fulton	Anthony	2242	453-6818	antfulto@siu.edu
Griffiths	Marsha	2275	453-6822	marshalgriffiths@siu.edu
Hamper	Margaret	2269	453-6823	mbhamper@siu.edu
Hawley	Rachel	2240	453-6838	rhawley@siu.edu
Huggins	Paul	2261	453-6815	paulhuggins003@yahoo.com
Itokazu	Naomi	2275	453-6822	nitokazu@siu.edu
Johnson	Marshall	2269	453-6823	marshall@siu.edu
Johnson	Stephen	4029	453-5327	gidkath@siu.edu
Jones	Daniel	2265	453-6812	dpjones@siu.edu
Jost	Levi	2281	453-6863	ljost@siu.edu
Justice	Jennifer	2265	453-6812	justjen@siu.edu
Kareska	Lane	2228	453-6832	Lane.Kareska@gmail.com
Karosick	David	4029	453-5327	dkarosick@siu.edu
Kelly	David	2242	453-6818	dgkelly@siu.edu
Kilic	Duygu	2281	453-6863	kilic@siu.edu
Kirker	Jason	2281	453-6863	jasonkirker@siu.com
Krueger	Guy	2242	453-6818	gkrueger@siu.edu
Leek	Kelly	2265	453-6812	kconley618@yahoo.com
Leitner	Dave	2240	453-6838	davidleitner@gmail.com
Lemieux	Brenna	2234	453-6855	brenna.lemieux@gmail.com
Lemmink	Charlie	2228	453-6832	lemminkc@siu.edu
Lorino	JT	2265	453-6812	jtlorino@siu.edu
Manzoor	Sohana	2281	453-6863	s.manzoor21@siu.com
McCarthy	Rebecca	2275	453-6822	estar@siu.edu
McCartt	Sarah	2234	453-6855	blugrass@siu.edu
McQuillan	Emily	2265	453-6812	emcquill@siu.edu
Mitchell	Shawn	2232	453-6867	sam35@siu.com
Morris	Alisa	2275	453-6822	alisam9@siu.edu
Mossotti	Travis	2232	453-6867	mossotti@siu.edu
Nejezchleb	Amy	4029	453-5327	dvinci@siu.edu
New	Hannah	2232	453-6867	hknew@siu.edu
Noyes	Heidi	2242	453-6818	hnoyes@siu.edu
Oliver	Veronica	2261	453-6815	vjoliver@siu.edu
Ostdick	Nick	2228	453-6832	nostdick@siu.edu
Oster	Alanna	2269	453-6823	aoster@siu.edu
Owen	John	2238	453-6819	johnowen@siu.edu
Patton	Naarah	2275	453-6822	npatton@siu.edu
Pechous	Richard	2228	453-6832	rk-pechous@wiu.edu
Reese	Tyler	2275	453-6822	treese12@siu.edu
Rexroat	Brooks	2228	453-6832	brexroat@siu.edu
Rivera	Adrienne	2230	453-6820	alrivera@siu.edu
Scholes Young	Melissa	2238	453-6819	msyoung@siu.com
Scoles	James	2230	453-6820	jscoles@siu.edu
Siewert	Lia	2236	453-6825	lsiewert@siu.edu
Simons	Jay	2281	453-6863
Stone	Brian	4336	453-6816	bstone@siu.edu
Thompson	AK	2228	453-6832	akt1982@siu.edu
Thompson	Iva	2281	453-6863	marie17@siu.edu
Vargas	Reggie	2230	453-6820	avargi@siu.edu
Weber	Ludwig	2261	453-6815	lweber@siu.edu
Weedman	Chris	2236	453-6825	cweedman@siu.edu
Wheeler	Belinda	2261	453-6815	bwheeler@siu.edu
Whittemore	Amie	2232	453-6867	amiew@siu.edu
Woods	Ian	4336	453-6816	lwoods@siu.edu
Wright	Derand	2234	453-6855	derand57@gmail.com
Zapoluch	Katie	2234	453-6855	zapoluch@siu.edu