Faculty

Meet the English Literature Faculty

Nick Regiacorte, Chair
Associate Professor of English
M.F.A., University of Iowa, 1998
"Is it too much to ask for an instant of faith in Cilacchiatt's power to fly? In reading, writing, and teaching it strikes me as indispensable."

Laura L. Behling
Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College
Ph.D., The Claremont Graduate School

Lori Schroeder
Professor of English and Associate Dean of the College
Ph.D., University of Denver, 1990
"I am now researching and writing on the representation of children and children's voices on Shakespeare's stage."

Robin Metz
Philip Sidney Post Professor of English
M.F.A., University of Iowa, 1967
"Young writers in my classes are continually encouraged to explore the artistic and natural world around them as a way of discovering and articulating the intricacies of selfhood."

Natania Rosenfeld
Professor of English
Ph.D., Princeton University, 1992
"Some current projects of mine include: A collection of memoir essays in which a vision is formed through errancy and movement. The book is autobiographical in exploring the formation of my own mind through travel, books, art and, especially, the clash and combination of several languages."

Robert Smith
John and Elaine Fellowes Distinguished Chair in English
Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, 1992
"I am also working on a number of inter-related short stories about artists in Washington, D.C."

Emily Anderson
Associate Professor of English
Ph.D., University of California-Berkeley, 2003
"I work on the implications of a narrator's point of view, the way reliability or unreliability shapes a narrative, and the interplay between forms and genres."

Monica Berlin
Associate Professor of English
M.F.A., Vermont College, 2002
"I've found myself fascinated by edges-the edges of everything-particularly the threshold of language or that moment where utterance edges toward something new, something different."

Gina Franco
Associate Professor of English
Ph.D., Cornell University, 2004
"I'm also working on superstition in nineteenth-century British Romanticism, a project that has led me to look at the tragic dramas of William Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley."

Chad Simpson
Associate Professor of English
M.F.A., Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, 2005
"I began writing stories mostly because the works of other writers moved me-and because I wanted to be able to similarly move some potential reader who might find something I'd written in her hands."

Barbara Tannert-Smith
Associate Professor of English
M.F.A., University of Massachusetts, 1992.

Cyn Kitchen
Assistant Professor of English
M.F.A., Spalding University, 2005
"I'm writing a memoir which has me thinking about the stories that our lives write. Memoir crams the writer into close proximity with their own experience, but the act of writing forces a distance that helps makes sense of it all."

Alan Grostephan
Visiting Assistant Professor of English
M.F.A., University of California-Irvine, 2009

Kimberly Huth
Visiting Assistant Professor of English
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2009
"I am interested in the intersections of personal experience and social life, the private and the public."

Katya Reno
Visiting Assistant Professor of English
M.F.A., Texas State University-San Marcos, 2008
"I am currently working on a book-length prose poem and a historical novel about a silver miner's wife who lived in Colorado in the late 1800s."

Valerie C. Billing
Visiting Assistant Professor of English
Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, Davis

Sherwood Kiraly
Visiting Instructor in English and Theatre and Writer-in-Residence
B.A., Knox College, 2007
"Good writing, on page, stage or screen, has provoked, consoled, delighted, moved and inspired me all my life, so creating it -- or helping someone else do so -- is the best way I can think of to justify myself."

Distinguished Writer-in-Residence

Robert Hellenga
George Appleton Lawrence Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of English
Ph.D., Princeton University, 1969
"I'm very interested in the nature of literary experience, which is affective as well as interpretative."

Distinguished Affiliated Scholar

Alex Kuo
Distinguished Affiliated Scholar in English
M.F.A., University of Iowa, 1963.

Cooperating faculty from other programs

Neil Blackadder
Professor and Chair of Theatre
Ph.D., Princeton University, 1994
"I continue to pursue research as a theatre historian, particularly in the area addressed by my 2003 book - the composition and behavior of theatre audiences."

Elizabeth Carlin Metz
Smith V. Brand Endowed Chair in Theatre Arts
MFA, Temple University,1983
"I seek to integrate physical theatre techniques with more traditional Western theatre practices so as to discover new levels of expressiveness and meaning in theatre of all styles and genres and, thus, in the world."

John Haslem
Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning
Ph.D., University of Dever,1990

Frederick Hord
Professor of Black Studies
Ph.D., Union Graduate School, 1987
"My most immediate projects are in the areas of Black Studies theory, African American literary criticism, Black psychology traditions, and the status of Blacks in Latin America."

Paul Marasa
Writing Coordinator,Educational Development Program
M.A, Indiana University

Magali Roy-Féquière
Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies
Ph.D., Standford University,1993
"My aim is to further interrogate nationalism by addressing its silences."

Emeritus Faculty

Michael Gardner Crowell
Professor Emeritus of English

Robert Riner Hellenga
George Appleton Lawrence Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of English

John McCall
Professor Emeritus of English, President Emeritus

Edward Lee Niehus
Professor Emeritus of English

Marilyn Webb
Distinguished Professor Emerita of Journalism

Robert Whitlach
Robert M. & Katherine Arnold Seeley Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Theatre

Douglas Lawson Wilson
George Appleton Distinguished Service Professor of English