Department of English

Faculty, Staff, & Graduate Assistants

Faculty
Mark Amos	David Anthony	Erin Anthony	Pinckney Benedict
Scott Blackwood	Mary Bogumil	George Boulukos	Edward J. Brunner
Anne Chandler	Jane N. Cogie	K. K. Collins	Ronda L. Dively
Betsy Dougherty	Robert Elliot Fox	Tara Hembrough	Michael Humphries
Anna Jackson	Judy Jordan	Allison E. Joseph	Elizabeth Klaver
Beth Lordan	Lisa McClure	Scott J. McEathron	Michael R. Molino
Ryan Netzley	Joe Shapiro	Alberta Skaggs	Jon Tribble
Christina Voss	Dan M. Wiley	Tony Williams
Staff
Joyce Schemonia	Secretary to the Director of Writing Studies		453-6811
Patty Norris	Secretary to the Director of Graduate Studies		453-6894
Kelly Spencer	Secretary to the Chair and Office Manager		453-2370
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, (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.  His book, Paper Money Men: Commerce, Manhood, and the Sensational Public Sphere in Antebellum America, was published by Ohio State University Press in the Fall of 2009.  He has also 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).

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.

Anthony is also the author of Something for Nothing, a novel forthcoming with Algonquin books in June, 2011.  Below is a blurb from Algonquin’s Spring 2011 catalog, in which the discerning reader will see links between Anthony’s critical work and his fiction: “Set in Northern California during the 1974 oil embargo, Something for Nothing traces the desperate efforts of Martin Anderson to save his failing small aircraft business—and with it an extravagant lifestyle that includes race horses, a deep-sea fishing boat, a cabin in Lake Tahoe, and an expensive suburban home—by flying heroin up from Mexico.  But things quickly unravel: a narcotics detective enters the picture, the people in the drug world prove less than trustworthy, and Anderson’s domestic life begins to break apart.  Longing for security and happiness even as he remains blind to the requirements for such rewards, Anderson thus becomes a figure for America’s own anxiety and denial during this period of economic downturn.”

Erin Anthony, Lecturer (ABD, University of Michigan)

Specialty: Modern American Literature

Office: Faner 2276

Phone: 618/453-6814, edes@siu.edu

Erin Anthony has taught various courses in the English department, including introductory and intermediate composition, early British literature and literary analysis. She currently teaches the courses “The Western Literary Tradition” and “Literary Perspectives on the Modern World.” Her primary interests are: Modern American poetry, particularly the poetry of Djuna Barnes and Gertrude Stein; colonial and postcolonial literature; literary theory; and contemporary philosophy, particularly the work of Wittgenstein, Agamben and Serres.

Pinckney Benedict, Professor (MFA, University of Iowa)

Specialty: Fiction Writing

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.

Scott Blackwood, Assistant Professor (MFA, Texas State University )

Specialty: Fiction Writing

Office: Faner, 2237

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

Professor Scott Blackwood is the recipient of the 2011 Whiting Writers’ Award given annually to emerging writers based on their accomplishments, exceptional talent and promise. He is the author of the novel We Agreed to Meet Just Here (2009) and the collection of short stories In the Shadow of Our House (2001).

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

Specialty: Modern British and Modern 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 revised second edition of Understanding August Wilson (2011) for the University of South Carolina Press. She is also the faculty advisor for the English Honor Society, Sigma Tau Delta. Professor Bogumil holds a dual appointment with SIU's Theatre Department.

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, a.chandler@siu.com

Professor Chandler studies eighteenth-century British fiction, poetry, educational theory, and political philosophy. Her recent research has dealt with feminist writings from the era of the French Revolution. In Spring 2010 she taught a graduate seminar on the early Romantic poet and novelist Charlotte Smith. Previous seminars have addressed the early history of Gothic fiction; linkages between literary Sentiment and the natural sciences; the Wollstonecraft-Godwin-Shelley circle; and 1790s fiction as influenced by Rousseau and Burke. Related interests include landscape aesthetics and satire. Professor Chandler’s six scholarly publications have focused on William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Ann Radcliffe, and Thomas Day. These articles have appeared in such venues as Studies in the Novel, Keats-Shelley Journal, Studies in Romanticism, and European Romantic Review. She has also published an essay on the teaching of Robinson Crusoe and a chapter in the Continuum Eighteenth-Century Literature Handbook (2009), introducing students to key primary texts in the field. Current projects concern Maria Edgeworth, Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Holcroft, Mary Leapor, and Charlotte Smith.

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. 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 an edited volume, George Eliot: Interviews and Recollections, will appear this fall from Palgrave/Macmillan. 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, (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, Associate Professor (PhD, Tufts University)  

Specialty: Irish Literature

Office: Faner, 2262

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

Jane Elizabeth Dougherty is an Assistant Professor specializing in Irish literature of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Her scholarship focuses on the social and political master narratives of Irish history and the ways in which these narratives enable and disable the production, form, style, and reception of Irish literary narratives. The author of articles on Anthony Trollope, Nuala O’Faolain, and Edna O’Brien, she is currently working on a book project, Joyce’s Sisters: National Maturation and Irish Women Writers of the 1990s, an exploration of gender and contemporary Irish coming-of-age narratives. Dr. Dougherty has held fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the Keough-Notre Dame Centre, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Midwest Modern Language Association and the Newberry Library, and the National University of Ireland-Galway. She regularly teaches Introduction to Literary Analysis and the second half of the Irish Literature Survey, as well as offering seminars on Irish women writers, Irish maturation narratives, Irish film, and Ireland in theory. Professor Dougherty holds a dual appointment in Women's Studies.

Dr. Dougherty’s most recent publication, “'Never tear the linnet from the leaf’: The Feminist Intertextuality of Edna O’Brien’s Down By The River,” can be accessed here: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/frontiers/toc/fro.31.3.html.

Dr. Dougherty’s academic social networking page can be accessed here: http://siu.academia.edu/JaneElizabethDougherty.

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.  Professor Fox holds a dual appointment with SIU's Africana Studies Department.

Tara Hembrough, Assistant Director of Writing Studies (PhD, Oklahoma State University)  

Office: Faner, 2378

Phone: 618/453-6852, t.hembrough@siu.edu

Tara Hembrough is the Assistant Director of Writing Studies in the Department of English at SIUC. Previously, she served as Assistant Director of the First-Year Composition Program at Oklahoma State University, where she received her Ph.D. in 2010. Her primary interests include composition and rhetoric; narratology; the construction of gender, particularly within relationships among women; the idea of place and location of “home”; and the quest narrative, especially in coming-of-age stories. Hembrough has pursued these and related ideas in the works of Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, D. H. Lawrence, Margaret Atwood, Jamaica Kincaid, and Cormac McCarthy. Hembrough has presented papers at the Midwest Modern Language Association, Southcentral Modern Language Association, Western Literature Association, and National Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, and she has been included in such publications as the Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities Conference Proceedings. Hembrough has also taken part in creative writing pedagogy panels at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference and in composition and rhetoric panels at Miami Dade College and Oklahoma City Community College. She has read from her novel in circulation, The Sisters and the Undertaker’s Son, at the East Central University Scissortail Festival and Skidmore College New York State Summer Writers Institute.

The Sisters and the Undertaker’s Son follows the journey of Shine, a girl who, after fifteen years, meets her long thought-to-be-dead sister, Rowena. The two battle to capture the affections of their mother, who threatens to leave at any moment, win the attention of the “Sunday-School girls,” a group of classmates that runs the school, and gain the love of the undertaker’s son, who shows himself alternatively amorous--going so far as to accept one of the sister’s hands in marriage to keep her from jumping from his moving hearse--and detached. Against the backdrop of a small-town Illinois culture, Shine must also face problems stemming from her family’s imminent loss of the farm, an assault by her first cousin, and the revelation that she may be pregnant. Hembrough’s second novel, Venus Fly Trap, is in progress.

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

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. Sample syllabi: Distance Education ENGL 204 and Graduate Seminar in American literature

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, Alistair MacLeod, and William Trevor; she admires the work of contemporary fiction writers like J. M. Coetzee, Joanna Scott, Alice McDermott, David Long, Toni Morrison, and Alice Munro. Her short fiction has appeared in Farmers Market, Gettysburg Review, The Atlantic Monthly, O.Henry Prize Stories, and Best American Short Stories, and has earned awards from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She's currently working on more stories, and 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, 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, and New Hibernia Review. He is the editor of the Dictionary of Literary Biography: Twenty-first Century British and Irish Novelists and has written essays on Barnard MacLaverty, Hilary Mantel, James Hamilton-Paterson, Kent Haruf, and Ian McEwan's Booker Prize winning novel, Amsterdam. His most recent article focuses on narrative and trauma in Kazuo Ishiguro's novel A Pale View of Hill.

Ryan Netzley, Associate 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 and Milton, literature of the English Reformation, especially martyrologies and apocalypse commentaries, and queer and poststructuralist theory, particularly the work of Deleuze and Guattari.  His book on seventeenth-century devotional lyrics, Reading, Desire, and the Eucharist in Early Modern Religious Poetry (University of Toronto Press, 2011: http://www.utppublishing.com/Reading-Desire-and-the-Eucharist-in-Early-Modern-Religious-Poetry.html) examines the impact of sacramental presence on our understanding of desire, love, and reading in Renaissance religious verse: namely, how do we desire a god that we do not lack?  And in turn, what are we doing when we read a poem that in some sense contains God? Professor Netzley has also co-edited a collection of essays on John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and the impact of digital and print technologies on reading practice (University of Delaware Press, 2010: http://www2.lib.udel.edu/udpress/acts.htm).  The volume uses Foxe’s encyclopedic collection of martyrs’ deaths as a means of examining how readers read, in the sixteenth-century and today, and shows how Foxe’s book is already a hypertext, in 1583. He is currently at work on a study of the relationship between lyrics and events: What Happens in Lyric?: Poetry, Apocalypticism, and Events, 1588-1688.  This project explores how Renaissance lyrics, often imagined as a genre of immediacy and presence, respond to catastrophic, even apocalyptic turning points—The Armada, The Gunpowder Plot, The Regicide, The Restoration, The Great Fire, The Glorious Revolution—during a century pivotal for the rise of modernity. In short, it uses lyric to examine what it means for something to happen.  Professor Netzley has also published articles in ELH, Criticism, and Milton Studies, and on Richard Crashaw, George Herbert, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Milton’s Samson Agonistes and Paradise Regained, and Taylor Hackford’s film, The Devil’s Advocate.

Joe Shapiro, Assistant Professor (PhD, Stanford University)

Specialty: 18th and 19th Century American Liteature

Office: Faner 2241

Phone: 618/453-6858

Joe Shapiro is a past Mellon Foundation Dissertation Fellow at Stanford University. He is a specialist in North American literature from the colonial era to the Civil War. His dissertation, "The Early American Exception: Class and the Rise of the U.S. Novel, 1789-1846," uncovers the decisive impact of economic inequality on the first half century of U.S. fiction.

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. In 2011, Alberta published "Pavlov's Dog" in Fifth Wednesday Journa. 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.She is the faculty advisor to the student literary journal, Grassroots. 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.

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, 300 (her favorite, a pure grammar course), and 485A. 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.

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

Specialty: Irish Literature

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. Educated at Manchester and Warwick Universities, he is also a Life Member of AIZEN (Associaton International for Multidisciplinary Approaches and Comparative Studies related to Emile Zola..) and has authored and/or co-authored the following books: Italian Western: The Opera of Violence (1975): Jack London: The Movies (1992); Vietnam War Films (1994/2011); Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film (1996); Larry Cohen: The Radical Allegories of an American Filmmaker (1997); Jack London's The Sea Wolf: A Screenplay by Robert Rossen (1998); Video Versions: Film Adaptations on Plays on Video (2000); Structures of Desire: British Cinema, 1939-1955 (2000); The Cinema of George A. Romero: Knight of the Living Dead (2003); Body and Soul: The Cinematic Vision of Robert Aldrich (2004); Horror International (2005); John Woo's Bullet in the Head (2009); and George A. Romero: Interviews (2011). Articles have appeared in Asian Cinema, cineACTION, Cinema Journal, Excavatio, Film Criticism, Film History, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Movie, Postscript, Vietnam Generation, Wide Angle, as well as www.sensesofcinema.com. He is currently co-editing an collection of essays on Hong Kong Neo-Noir and another on the Hong Kong independent film director Evans Chan for Hong Kong University Press.

Staff

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'.

Kelly Spencer, Secretary to the Chair and Office Manager

Office: Faner 2370

Phone: 618/453-2370, kspencer@siu.edu

Kelly works closely with the Department chair on fiscal and operational matters. If Patty or Joyce are not the ones to help you, Kelly undoubtedly will.

Graduate Assistants

Last Name	First Name	Office (Faner unless noted)	Phone	Email
Allen	Erin	2265	453-6812	erin.allen@siu.edu
Apking	Ryan	2230	453-6820	Apking@siu.edu
Bearden-White	Roy	2236	453-6825	roywhite@siu.edu
Bell	Katrina	2281	453-6863	kweber880@siu.edu
Bishop	Cassandra	2240	453-6838	clb2i@siu.edu
Bleakly-Ritchie	Jesse	2281	453-6863	jbritchie@siu.edu
Bonner	Lauren	2236	453-6825	lmbonner@siu.edu
Bontrager	Joshua	2228	453-6832	jbontrager@siu.edu
Bucciaglia	Nicolette	2230	453-6820	nbuccia@siu.edu
Buring	Marie Krista	2275	453-6822	marie.buring@siu.edu
Calton	Robert	2281	453-6863	rcalton@siu.edu
Campbell	Ellen	2275	453-6822	ellen.campbell@siu.edu
Cheang	Joseph	2275	453-6822	joecheang@siu.edu
Colcord	Daniel	2275	453-6822	colcord@siu.edu
Cook	Brian	Northwest Annex, Room 119	453-2367	bscook2@siu.edu
Crawford	Ryan	2230	453-6820	crawford@siu.edu
Culver	Erika	2261	453-6815	ericulver@siu.edu
Curtis	Sarah	2269	453-6823	sarcurt@siu.edu
Davenport	Jennifer	2281	453-6863	jdavenport@siu.edu
Davis	Christopher	2261	453-6815	cbdavis@siu.edu
Douglas	Christopher	2242	453-6818	cdouglas@siu.edu
Doyle	Lesley	2232	453-6867	lesley.doyle@siu.edu
Easto	Jessica	2232	453-6867	jeasto@siu.edu
Eslinger	Jessica	2240	453-6838	eslinger@siu.edu
Estes	Bryan	2269	453-6823	bryanestes@siu.edu
Evans	Victoria	2261	453-6815	vevans@siu.edu
Farsi	Jasmin	2275	453-6822	jfarsi@siu.edu
Field	Chris	2240	453-6838	cfield@siu.edu
Flack	Jennifer	2234	453-6855	jlflack@siu.edu
Flannery	Mary Kate	2234	453-6855	mkflannery@siu.edu
Foster	Elise	2234	453-6855	EliseFoster@siu.edu
Gaffney	Brett	2228	453-6832	mbgaffney@siu.edu
Graber	Margaret	2228	453-6832	mgraber@siu.edu
Gray	Joshua	2234	453-6855	jkgray@siu.edu
Griffiths	Marsha	2242	453-6818	marshalgriffiths@siu.edu
Harnish	Andrew	2232	453-6867	andrew.harnish@siu.edu
Harvey	Audrey	2261	453-6815	aharvey@siu.edu
Heinemann	Karen	2269	453-6823	kheinemann@siu.edu
Hewerdine	Jennifer	2261	453-6815	jennifer.hewerdine@siu.edu
Huggins	Paul	2240	453-6838	paulhuggins003@yahoo.com
Hunnings	Kelly	2275	453-6822	kellyhunnings@siu.edu
Johnson	Brenda	2230	453-6820	brenda.m.johnson@siu.edu
Johnson	Marshall	2240	453-6838	marshall@siu.edu
Jordan	Jerrica	2281	453-6863	jerrica.ryan@siu.edu
Kelly	David	2242	453-6818	dgkelly@siu.edu
Kerley	Erin	2265	453-6812	ekerley@siu.edu
Kilic	Duygu	2242	453-6818	kilic@siu.edu
Kirker	Jason	2281	453-6863	jasonkirker@siu.edu
Kodra	Austin	2228	453-6832	akodra@siu.edu
Lucas	Peter	2232	453-6867	caspuhlt@siu.edu
Maass	Alexandra	2269	453-6823	amaass@siu.edu
Macholz	Zachary	2228	453-6832	zmacholz@siu.edu
Manzoor	Sohana	2242	453-6818	s.manzoor21@siu.edu
Martin	Philip	2238	453-6819	pjm7033@siu.edu
Matzker	Faith	2265	453-6812	matzker@siu.edu
McNierney	James	2261	453-6815	jkmcnierney@siu.edu
McSorley	Andrew	2238	453-6819	andrew.mcsorley@siu.edu
Meadows	Lucien	2238	453-6815	glassonion@siu.edu
Miller	Anthony	2269	453-6823	anthony.miller@siu.edu
Munchow	Sarah	2269	453-6823	smunchow@siu.edu
Nagamatsu	Jeremy	2230	453-6820	nagamatsu@siu.edu
Neer	Christine	2281	453-6863	Christine629@siu.edu
Norris	Kaley	2275	453-6822	k.norris@siu.edu
Parrott	Robert	2238	453-6819	treefingers@siu.edu
Patterson	Jonathan	2265	453-6812	jonathan.patterson@siu.edu
Paul	Daniel	2232	453-6867	daniel.paul@siu.edu
Paulus	Andrea	2275	453-6822	andreapaulus@siu.edu
Rude	Alexandra	2265	453-6812	arude@siu.edu
Ruffino	Laura	2238	453-6819	laruffin@siu.edu
Schleicher	Max	2238	453-6819	maxs@siu.edu
Schoenfeld	Staci	2228	453-6832	staci.schoenfeld@siu.edu
Schwem	Andrew	2230	453-6820	ajschwem@siu.edu
Shaw	Bailey	2236	453-6825	bshaw@siu.edu
Sigmon	Ashley	2234	453-6855	asigmon@siu.edu
Simons	Jay	2281	453-6863	jsimons@siu.edu
Sorrell	Steven	2265	453-6812	corwin9@siu.edu
Stapel	Richard	2286	453-6843	rstapel@siu.edu
Steinbach	Brian	2265	453-6812	bsteinbach@siu.edu
Stone	Brian	2240	453-6838	bstone@siu.edu
Tegethoff	Max	2230	453-6820	mtegetho@gmail.com
Thompson	Marie	2236	453-6863	marie17@siu.edu
Vallowe	Megan	2261	453-6815	megan.vallowe@siu.edu
Vinci	Tony	Northwest Annex, Room 119	453-2367	tvinci@siu.edu
Vu	Lan	2236	453-6825	vulan@siu.edu
Wagner	Andrea	2269	453-6823	ae.wagner@siu.edu
Willhoff	Andreas	2232	453-6867	andreas.willhoff@siu.edu
Zimmerman	Elizabeth	2281	453-6863	ezimmerman@siu.edu