Graduate Faculty in English
Graduate English Faculty is a diverse group of professional educators and scholars. Our faculty includes nationally and internationally recognized writers and researchers, members of important editorial boards and academic collectives, holders of prestigious grants and fellowships, and award-winners for creative and scholarly publication. Browsing through the faculty biographies below should indicate the breadth and depth of graduate faculty accomplishments.
Equally important is the faculty's shared commitment to teaching excellence. Graduate faculty members have won the university's highest awards for teaching, and fifteen members of the department have been elected to the Academy of Outstanding Teachers.
Anson, Chris
Professor, Ph.D. Indiana University
English Language and Composition/Rhetoric
Chris Anson came to NC State in 1999 to direct the Campus Writing and Speaking Program, one of the first programs in the country to promote writing and speaking across the curriculum of a large university. In addition to directing the CWSP, Chris teaches courses in English language and literacy, writing, and composition theory. Chris is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 1996 State of Minnesota Higher Education Teahcing Excellence Award; the CLA Distinguished Teaching Award; the Lieber Teaching Award; and the Morse-Alumni Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education. A nationally respected scholar of writing, language, and literacy, Chris has published twelve books and 61 articles and book chapters, and has given over 200 papers, keynote addresses, and workshops. When he isn't writing, reading, teaching, or working with faculty across campus, he's delighting in the company of his two sons Ian and Graham and his wife Gean, whom he met in a philosophy class during his freshman year of college.
Baker, Anne
Associate Professor, Ph.D. Columbia University
American Literature
Anne Baker specializes in American literature and culture, with special interests in the nineteenth-century, book history, literature and the environment, and gender studies. She has published essays on Herman Melville, Margaret Fuller, and geography schoolbooks. Her book, Heartless Immensity: Literature, Culture and Geography in Antebellum America, was published by University of Michigan Press in 2006.
Balaban, John
Professor, Poet-in-Residence, A.M. Harvard University
Creative Writing
Prof. Balaban came to NC State in 1999 with a distinguished publication record in poetry and fiction, as well as translation of Vietnamese poetry. He is the author of twelve books of poetry and prose. His poetry has won two nominations for The National Book Award as well as The Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets, the National Poetry Series, and, with his Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New and Selected Poems, the William Carlos Williams Award. He has served as President of the American Literary Translators Association. In the graduate program, he teaches poetry and fiction workshops and special topics courses, such as his class on East Asian Literature. http://www.johnbalaban.com
Barnhardt, Wilton
Associate Professor
Director, MFA Program
Former reporter for Sports Illustrated Magazine; veteran of many nationally ranked MFA programs who joined the NCSU faculty Fall of 2002. Author of the novels Emma Who Saved My Life, Gospel, and Show World. Teaches fiction and screenwriting and directs theses. He is the Director of Creative Writing Programs, including the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.
Bennett, Barbara
Associate Professor, Ph.D. Arizona State University
American Literature
Director: LTN Program
Barbara Bennett specializes in American literature, Southern literature, women's literature, and environmental literature. Her books include Comic Visions, Female Voices: Contemporary Women Novelists and Southern Humor and Understanding Jill McCorkle. In addition to teaching courses on American literature, contemporary literature, and young adult literature, she is the coordinator for the LTN program.
Blackley, Brian
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. University of Kentucky
Assistant Head, Dept. of English
Renaissance Literature
Dr. Blackley is a specialist in 16th and 17th Century non-dramatic poetry and prose and teaches courses in British literature and Bible backgrounds. He has received Outstanding Teacher Awards from CHASS and Phi Alpha Phi. He is the Managing Editor for the John Donne Journal, a Contributing Editor for the ohn Donne Variorum, and a member of the editorial board for Windhover: A Journal of Christian Literature. He also serves as Assistant Head of the department, overseeing the scheduling of all classes and serving as Director of Summer Programs. His scholarship has appeared in the Dictionary of Literary Biography and The Critic. A former Navy Lieutenant, he has overarching interests in civilization and war. Currently he is writing a book on Donne's Metempsychosis.
Bolonyai, Agnes
Associate Professor, Ph.D. University of South Carolina
Linguistics
Agnes Bolonyai's research and teaching interests are in both the structural and social aspects of bilingual language use, including code-switching, language attrition and maintenance, and the relationship between language and identity in bilingual contact situations.
Charles, John
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. University of Virginia
African American Literature, American Literature since 1865, Contemporary Literary Theory
John Charles specializes in twentieth century African American literature, especially the novel, identity in American literature and culture, contemporary literary theory, and American Studies. He also teaches courses in the Africana studies program, where he is an Affiliated Faculty member. He has published essays on Alain Locke, the John Reed Clubs, Ann Petry, and Zora Neale Hurston, among others, and is currently working on a book manuscript investigating sympathy and privacy in the mid-twentieth century African American novel.
Crosbie, Christopher
Assistant Professor, Ph.D., Rutgers University
Shakespeare, Renaissance Drama, Classical and Early Modern Philosophy
Christopher Crosbie specializes in both Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean Renaissance drama with a particular interest in intellectual history. The recipient of the Shakespeare Association of America"s J. Leeds Barroll Dissertation Prize for 2007, Dr. Crosbie has published articles on Shakespeare and his contemporaries in journals such as Shakespeare Quarterly, English Literary Renaissance, Renaissance Papers, and Arthuriana. His current book project, tentatively entitled Philosophies of Retribution: Noumena to Phenomena, examines early modern revenge tragedies against philosophical traditions not commonly associated with them. This wide-ranging study reveals the influence of Aristotelian faculty psychology on The Spanish Tragedy, the Aristotelian ethical mean on Titus Andronicus, Lucretian atomism on Hamlet, Baconian fabulism on The Duchess of Malfi, and Galenic and Stoic theories of pneumatic flow on Antonio"s Revenge. At the heart of these studies lies the conviction that revenge tragedy operated as an integral mechanism for examining the nexus between the noetic and phenomenological in early modern culture. An avid theatergoer, Dr. Crosbie focuses his classes in equal measure on the philosophical contexts and performative possibilities of early modern drama.
Dodsworth, Robin
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. Ohio State University
Linguistics
Since joining the linguistics program in 2007, Dr. Robin Dodsworth has taught courses in general linguistics, syntax, and sociolinguistics, including Language and Gender and the Language Variation Research seminar. Her primary research focus is the social patterning of linguistic variation, particularly as it correlates with socioeconomic class; sociophonetics; and the intersection of variationist sociolinguistics with social theory. Her current research involves the changing vowel systems in Raleigh, including the processes through which the Southern Vowel Shift is gradually disappearing. Recent and forthcoming articles can be found in the Journal of Sociolinguistics, Language Variation and Change, The Sage Handbook of Sociolinguistics, and Language and Linguistics Compass.
Dudley, Marc
Assistant Professor, Ph.D., University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
American Literature, African American Literature
While Dr. Marc Dudley's specialization is Twentieth Century American literature, with particular emphasis on Modern fiction and American culture (fiction and cultural studies of the 1910s-1950s), he splits his literary devotion to the "standard" canon with African American literature. And his interests include the writings of contemporary novelists as well, including those of Philip Roth, Caryl Philips, and Paule Marshall. Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ralph Ellison, Cormac McCarthy, Richard Wright, Charles Chesnutt, Flannery O'Connor, Ishmael Reed, and Zora Neal Hurston are also among his favorites, Modern and contemporary. Dr. Dudley's primary scholarly concerns are issues of race and identity as they relate to notions of Americana. His research interests also include narrative construction as it relates to ontology in African American fiction, the intersection (of narrative technique) in film and literature, and American history and popular culture of the 1920s and 1930s especially. He is currently at work on a book-length manuscript examining Hemingway's romance of Africa. Other general interests include music (jazz, blues and hip-hop culture in particular), film studies, and American cultural studies.
Gelley, Ora
Assistant Professor, Ph.D., University of Chicago
Film Studies
Ora Gelley joined the NCSU English Department faculty in the fall of 2008, after teaching at UC-Irvine, Dartmouth College, Tulane University, and Bilkent University, Ankara. Her teaching interests include American, Italian, German, French, and Dutch Cinema; Stardom in Hollywood and Europe; Film Theory; Women and Film; Trauma and Representation; and Film and Literature. Her work has been published in Film Studies, Critical Inquiry, Film Criticism, and Cinema Journal. She is currently completing a book manuscript on Roberto Rossellini, focusing in particular on his collaboration with Ingrid Bergman between 1949-1954.
Grimwood, Michael
Professor, Ph.D. Princeton University
American Literature
Dr. Grimwood is currently co-chair of the World Literature Committee, which is responsible for the graduate concentration in World Literature. His research interests have focused on William Faulkner and on other aspects of Southern Literature. He is the author of Heart in Conflict: Faulkner's Struggles with Vocation, for which he received a research award from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. He is currently writing about American literature during the Civil War. He has received departmental, college, and university awards for outstanding teaching.
Gross, Charlotte
Professor, Ph.D. Columbia University
Medieval Literature
Charlotte Gross specializes in medieval studies, teaching graduate courses in Middle English Literature, Arthurian Literature, and Chaucer. She hopes to offer a graduate seminar in Medieval Women Writers in the near future. Working with graduate students at NC State -- who have explored a range of topics, from chivalry in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to gender relations in the romances of Chrétien de Troyes to Dante's vision of humanity in the afterlife -- is one of her favorite pastimes. She has published studies of the Middle Ages in several disciplines, including English, romance languages, and philosophy, and is the author of essays on Augustine, Chaucer, Middle English verse, the troubadour love lyric, and medieval theories of time. Originally from New York City, she now lives on the Neuse River.
Halpern, Nick
Associate Professor, Ph.D. Harvard University
American Literature, Poetry
Nick Halpern is the author of Everyday and Prophetic: The Poetry of Lowell, Ammons, Merrill, and Rich (University of Wisconsin Press). His interests include Modernism, Postmodernism, Literature of the Holocaust, Rilke, Pynchon, and DeLillo (among many others). His essays, poetry and fiction have appeared in The Centennial Review, Contemporary Literature, Epoch, Southwest Review, American Short Fiction, Shenandoah, Chelsea, American Poetry Review, and The Gettysburg Review. He is the winner of a CHASS Outstanding Teaching Award. He is married to the photographer Elizabeth Kunreuther, and they have two children, William and Paula.
Harrison, Antony H.
Department Head
Professor, Ph.D. University of Chicago
19th Century English Poetry, Literary Theory, Women's Studies
Tony Harrison's professional interests include textual editing, gender studies, critical theory (especially historicist), nineteenth-century English poetry, and the history of the book. He has recently finished editing the Letters of Christina Rossetti (4 print volumes; also available online) and published two wide-ranging studies of Victorian poetry: Victorian Poets and the Politics of Culture: Discourse and Ideology, and Victorian Poets and Romantic Poems: Intertextuality and Ideology. He is also co-editor of The Blackwell Companion to Victorian Poetry, The Culture of Christina Rossetti, and Gender and Discourse in Victorian Literature and Art. In the 1980s he published books on Christina Rossetti and A. C. Swinburne (both now available in online editions). He is on the editorial boards of The Dante Rossetti Hyertext Archive, Victorian Poetry, the Victorians Institute Journal, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies (online), and The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Studies. He has held grants from the National Endowment for the humanities (three times) as well as the ACLS, and he has been a fellow at the National Humanities Center. Harrison enjoys working with students toward publication of their work. When not choking on the dust of nineteenth-century texts, he plays very happily with his young son. http://www4.ncsu.edu/~engahh
Hester, M. Thomas
Professor, Ph.D. University of Florida
Renaissance Literature
M. Thomas Hester is Alumni Distinguished Professor of English. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Renaissance poetry and drama. Founder and co-editor of the John Donne Journal, and author/editor of 8 books and numerous articles on Renaissance literature, he is also a charter member of the editorial board of the Ben Jonson Journal. He has been honored with numerous regional and university awards for research and teaching, including Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society's Southeast Region Scholar for 1999-2001, the Holladay medal for outstanding teaching and research, the UNC Outstanding Teacher award, the SAMLA Outstanding Teacher Award, the Alumni Distinguished Teaching and the Alumni Distinguished Research Awards, and the Donne Society's Distinguished Research Award (twice). Recipient of research fellowships from the ACLS, the American Philosophical Society, and the NEH (four times), he is editing the prose letters of Donne, a volume of the Donne Variorum, and (with R. V. Young) a selection of Donne's prose works, while completing a book on the "wit and wonder" of Donne's epigrams, elegies, lyrics, and holy sonnets. Visit the John Donne Journal at http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/jdj/.
Hooker, Deborah
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. University of Florida
Assistant Head, Dept. of English
20th Century Literature, Literary Theory
A former professional choreographer and dance critic, Deborah Hooker specializes in twentieth-century literature, literary theory, and cultural studies, with a special interest in how literacy and communication technologies inflect ideas of gender and race. Her work may be found in The Southern Literary Journal and the South Atlantic Quarterly, among other venues. Active in the Women's Studies program at NC State, she also currently serves as Assistant Head of the department, overseeing its various instructional technology investments and websites.
Laux, Dorianne
Professor, BA, Mills College
Creative Writing
A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Dorianne Laux's fourth book of poems, Facts about the Moon (W.W. Norton), is the recipient of the Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux is also author of Awake (1990) What We Carry (1994) Smoke (2000) and Superman: The Chapbook (2008). Co-author of The Poet's Companion, she's the recipient of two Best American Poetry Prizes, a Best American Erotic Poems Prize, a Pushcart Prize, two fellowships from The NEA and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work has appeared in the Best of APR, The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, and many others. She lives in Five Points with her husband, poet Joseph Millar.
Kellner, Hans
Professor, Ph.D. University of Rochester
Critical and Rhetorical Theory
Hans Kellner writes on historical and rhetorical theory and history of rhetoric. He has taught in English, Humanities, and History departments and directed a Rhetoric Ph.D program. He likes opera and roots for the Steelers. http://www4.ncsu.edu/~hdkellne/
Kessel, John J.
Professor, Ph.D. University of Kansas
Creative Writing, American Literature
Director of Creative Writing
John Kessel has taught fiction writing and literature at NCSU, including courses in science fiction and fantasy, since 1982. His novella "Another Orphan" received the Nebula Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America, and his short story "Buffalo" won the Theodore Sturgeon Award and the Locus Poll. His books include the novels Good News from Outer Space and Corrupting Dr. Nice and the story collections Meeting in Infinity and The Pure Product. His play Faustfeathers won the 1994 Paul Green Playwrights' Competition. http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi
Lisk, Tom
Professor, Ph.D. Rice University
Creative Writing, American Literature
Thomas David Lisk's recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Massachusetts Review, Hotel Amerika, Bat City Review, Borderlands, Free Verse, LIT, and Amarillo Bay. His poem, "Balloons at the Louvre," first published in Arts and Letters, appeared on the Poetry Daily website. He has published more than a hundred individual poems and more than twenty-five works of short fiction in literary magazines and newspapers. His stories were chosen five times for publication in the SC Fiction Project sponsored by the SC Arts Committee and the State newspaper. Editors have nominated his work five times for Pushcart Prizes, as well as for inclusion in E-scene: the Best of the Net. His published books are A Short History of Pens Since the French Revolution (Apalachee Press) and Aroma Terrapin (Edwin Mellen). These Beautiful Limits (Parlor Press) was published in 2006.
May, Leila S.
Associate Professor, Ph.D. University of California - Berkeley
Victorian Novel, Gender Studies
Dr. May's principal area of interest is the nineteenth-century British novel and culture, with a particular focus on gender issues, and women's roles and representations. She has published articles on eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and American literature in a number of academic journals such as ELH, Philological Quarterly, SEL, Modern Language Review and Philosophy and Literature, as well as a book entitled Disorderly Sisters: Sibling Relations and Sororal Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Literature that focuses on the pivotal role of the sister figure in nineteenth-century literary representations. She is also active in the Women's Studies program and in securing speakers for the department. She and her husband, Don Palmer, live in Raleigh.
McCorkle, Jill
Professor, M.A., Hollins College
Creative Writing
Jill McCorkle, a native of Lumberton, North Carolina, graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill and received her M.A. in Creative Writing from Hollins University. She is the author of five novels: The Cheer Leader, July 7th, Tending to Virginia, Ferris Beach and Carolina Moon and three short story collections. Her new collection, Going Away Shoes, is forthcoming Fall 2009. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Ploughshares, American Scholar, Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South and the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, among other publications. The recipient of the New England Book Award, the John Dos Passos Prize and the North Carolina Award for Literature, she has taught creative writing at UNC-Chapel Hill, Tufts, Harvard, Brandeis and Bennington College.
Miller, Carolyn
SAS Institute Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric and Technical Communication,
Ph.D., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Rhetoric and Professional Writing
Carolyn Miller has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in rhetoric and technical communication at NC State since 1973. She received her Ph.D. in Communication and Rhetoric from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1980. The goal of Dr. Miller's research is to understand how values, interests, and prior knowledge affect the ways that individuals and groups interpret and respond to communication. Her current research applies these interests to risk communication and online communication; she is also studying the role of novelty and tradition in scientific rhetoric. Dr. Miller has published articles in many academic journals and scholarly books, is a co-editor of the award-winning book, New Essays in Technical and Scientific Communication, and has given invited papers at many universities and national and international conferences. She was named an Outstanding Teacher in 1984, a Fellow of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing in 1995, and Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professor at NC State in 1999. In 2003, she was named the College of Humanities and Social Sciences recipient of the Board of Governor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. She was instrumental in helping to design and implement the MS in Technical Communication and served as its first director, 1988 to 1995.
Miller, Jason
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. Washington State University
Teacher Education, American & African-American Literature
Jason Miller's research interests include an attentiveness to culture and place consciousness in twentieth-century American Literature. He has published articles on Langston Hughes and William Faulkner as well as contributed entries on blues lyrics, gospel music, and Langston Hughes to the most recent volume of The New Anthology of American Poetry. He currently holds a position as an executive committee member in the National Council of Teachers of English's Assembly on American Literature. He has served as the Charles Blackburn Teaching Fellow at Washington State University.
Miller-Cochran, Susan
Associate Professor, Ph.D. Arizona State University
Composition, Rhetoric, Technology
Susan Miller-Cochran teaches courses on writing, rhetoric, and technology, and she also directs the First-Year Writing Program at NC State. Her research focuses on the uses of technology in teaching writing, especially with second language writers. She is especially interested in the ways that different technologies can facilitate writing, research, and collaboration both in a classroom and at a distance. Her research has appeared in the journals Composition Studies, Computers and Composition, The International Journal of Applied Linguistics and Teaching English in the Two-Year College, and she is also an editor of Rhetorically Rethinking Usability (Hampton Press, 2009), Strategies for Teaching First-Year Composition (National Council of Teachers of English, 2002), and a co-author of The Wadsworth Guide to Research (Cengage Learning, 2009). She has served on the Executive Committee of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) and the Executive Board of the Council of Writing Program Administrators.
Morillo, John D.
Associate Professor, Ph.D. University of Chicago
Eighteenth-Century Literature, British Romanticism
Dr. Morillo has published Uneasy Feelings: Literature, the Passions, and Class from Neoclassicism to Romanticism (New York: AMS Press, 2001); his articles have appeared in Eighteenth-Century Life, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Studies in the Novel, and the Keats-Shelley Journal. He has recently contributed the entry on "poetic enthusiasm" to the Blackwell Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry (2006), and a book chapter entitled "Enthusiasm in Translation: Reading a at the Limits of the Neoclassical Text," solicited by the editors of Enthusiasm: Culture at the Limits of Politeness, 1700-1830. From 1996-2000 he was a co-editor of the on-line journal Romantic Circles Praxis Series. In addition to teaching courses in literature, including Eighteenth-Century English Novel, Eighteenth-Century English Literature, and English Romantic Period, Dr. Morillo also teaches in the Freshman Inquiry and University Honors undergraduate programs. He served as Director of Graduate Studies from 2002-5, and now represents the college on the Administrative Board of the Graduate School. His hobbies include playing music and fly-fishing. http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/users/m/morillo/public/index.htm
Nfah-Abbenyi, Juliana Makuchi
Professor, Doctorate University of Yaounde, Ph.D. McGill University African Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Gender Studies
Juliana Nfah-Abbenyi is author of Gender in African Women"s Writing: Identity, Sexuality, and Difference (Indiana University Press); The Sacred Door and Other Stories: Cameroon Folktales of the Beba and Your Madness, Not Mine: Stories of Cameroon (Ohio University Press). She writes fiction under the pen name Makuchi. Some of her work has been reprinted in such anthologies as The Anchor Book of Modern African Stories, Canadian Woman Studies: An Introductory Reader, African Gender Studies: A Reader, The Rienner Anthology of African Literature, African Literature: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory. Her fiction has appeared in magazines and journals such as Callaloo: A Journal of African-American and African Arts and Letters, The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad, Crab Orchard Review, Thamyris, Worldview, Asian Women and Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art and Thought.
Orgeron, Devin
Associate Professor, Ph.D. University of Maryland
Film Studies
Dr. Devin Orgeron is an Assistant Professor of Film Studies. He teaches courses on Cinematic Realism, The Documentary, International Cinema in the 1970s, The French New Wave, and American Cinema since the 1990s. His book-in-progress, Motion Studies, traces the cinema's longstanding interest in the subject of automobility. Dr. Orgeron's additional research interests include cinematic representations of masculinity, "B" and exploitation films, and contemporary Iranian cinema. His writing has appeared in CineAction, COIL, Film Quarterly, Journal of Film and Video, College Literature, and Post Script. He also collects, shows, and writes about home movies from the 1940s-1970s.
Orgeron, Marsha
Associate Professor, Ph.D. University of Maryland
Film Studies
Since joining the film studies faculty in 2002 [http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/film/], Dr. Marsha Orgeron has taught courses in The Musical, Studio Era Hollywood, Warner Bros., History of Film to 1940, African American Film, International Crime Film, Introduction to Film, and Film & Literature. Her research interests include movie fan culture through the studio era; the birth and decline of the Hollywood studio system; early film and the culture (print, exhibition, advertising, legal, etc.) surrounding it; Sam Fuller, Ida Lupino, and other independent filmmakers of the 1940s and 1950s; amateur and educational film; and the intersections between film and other art forms, such as literature. Her recent articles can be found in Cinema Journal, American Literature, Quarterly Review of Film & Video, College Literature, COIL, Canadian Review of American Studies, and Enculturation. http://www4.ncsu.edu/~mgorgero/
Orr, Elaine
Professor, Ph.D. Emory University
American Literature, Women's Studies, Autobiography
Elaine Orr's professional interests include women's writing (including feminist theory and criticism), contemporary world literature, American prose, and creative non-fiction. She is the author of three books: Tillie Olsen and a Feminist Spiritual Vision (University of Mississippi Press, 1987), Subject to Negotiation: Reading Feminist Criticism and American Women's Fictions (University of Virginia Press, 1997), and Gods of Noonday: A White Girl's African Life (University of Virginia Press, 2003), a memoir. In addition, she has contributed scholarly and creative essays and poetry to Studies in American Fiction, Modern Language Quarterly, South Atlantic Review, Southern Cultures, Kalliope, The Louisville Review, and The Missouri Review. Her essays appear in the collections High Horse, The Yoruba in Transition, and Women on the Edge. Orr has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the North Carolina Arts Council. An award-winning teacher, she teaches a variety of courses in contemporary literature, world literature, American prose, and creative nonfiction, especially memoir. Whenever possible, she brings African literature into her syllabi. Presently, she is writing a novel set in nineteenth century Yoruba land (present day Nigeria). She and her husband, Andy, live in Raleigh. Their son is Joel Orr. http://elaineneilorr.com
Penrose, Nancy
Professor, Ph.D. Carnegie-Mellon University
Rhetoric & Composition
Director: First-Year Writing Program
Nancy Penrose studies writing processes, the teaching of writing, and the development of academic and professional literacies and identities. She teaches undergraduate courses in rhetoric and scientific writing and offers graduate seminars in writing theory, empirical research methods, scientific writing, and composition pedagogy. Dr. Penrose's work has appeared in College Composition and Communication, Written Communication, Research in the Teaching of English, and other journals. She and Steve Katz recently completed a third edition of Writing in the Sciences: Exploring Conventions of Scientific Discourse (Pearson/Longman 2010).
Pramaggiore, Maria
Professor, Ph.D. Emory University
Film Studies, Feminist Theory
Maria Pramaggiore directs the film program at NC State and teaches courses in screenwriting, film theory, feminist film studies, the horror film, and Irish cinema. Her books include Film: A Critical Introduction (2005), with Tom Wallis, and Irish and African-American Cinema: Identifying Others and Performing Identities, 1980-2000 (SUNY Press, 2007) and her articles have appeared in Screen and Cinema Journal. She is currently completing a book on Irish director Neil Jordan for the University of Illinois Press and co-authoring a book on documentary film with Tom Wallis. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to spend the spring semester of 2007 at University College, Cork in Ireland.
Prioli, Carmine
Professor, Ph.D. SUNY-Stony Brook
American Literature, Folklore
Director of Graduate Programs in English
Dr. Prioli specializes in Colonial American Literature and American Cultural Studies. His publications include a critical edition of General George S. Patton's poetry (Lines of Fire, 1992), and essays in American Heritage, North Carolina Historical Review, North Carolina Folklore Journal, American Heritage of Invention and Technology, and Journal of American Culture. Dr. Prioli also has published a book (Hope for a Good Season, 1998) on the distinctive lifestyle and folkways of Harkers Island, North Carolina, and has co-edited a collection of essays (Life at the Edge of the Sea, 2002) on coastal ecology and culture. His book, The Wild Horses of Shackleford Banks, was published in the spring of 2007. Dr. Prioli is the former editor of the North Carolina Folklore Journal and he has won awards for teaching and extension service.
Reaser, Jeffrey
Assistant Professor, Ph.D., Duke University
Linguistics, English Education
Jeff Reaser works with both the Linguistics and Secondary English Education programs and coordinated the Licensure Only program in Secondary English. He has worked extensively developing materials that help teachers explore dialect and language diversity with their middle and high school classes. He was the lead developer for the national /Do You Speak American? /Secondary School Curriculum (http://www.pbs.org/speak/education/). He has also collaborated with Walt Wolfram to develop a self-contained, teacher taught, 2-week long dialect awareness curriculum for 8^th graders in North Carolina (http://www.ncsu.edu/linguistics/research_dialecteducation.php): the first such product of its kind anywhere. He has conducted over a dozen workshops on language for teachers at local, state, and national venues. He has also been involved with the creation of museum exhibits on language and life in North Carolina.
Reavis, Dick
Assistant Professor, M.A., University of Texas at Austin
Journalism
Dick J. Reavis is the author of several nonfiction works, including The Ashes of Waco and If White Kids Die. He is a former Mexico correspondent and senior editor of Texas Monthly magazine. His chief interest is long-form nonfiction, especially magazine feature stories. He is a Nieman Fellow (1990), and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. His work has been reviewed by the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, the FBI, the CIA, the Mexican Federal Security Directorate, the Senate Internal Security Committee, the House Judiciary Committee and lately, by You-Tube.
Rieder, David M.
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. UT-Arlington
Rhetoric and Composition
David teaches courses in rhetoric, composition, and technical communication. His research interests include rhetorical theory, composition theory and pedagogy, network culture, grammatological writing, and critical/postmodern theory. He was the co-founding editor of Enculturation: A Journal for Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture, for which he continues to work as an assistant editor. Some of his recent work can be found at The Writing Instructor. http://www4.ncsu.edu/~dmrieder
Setzer, Sharon M.
Professor, Ph.D. Duke University
Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Literature
Director: Undergraduate Programs in English
Dr. Setzer teaches British Romanticism and other courses in British literature. Her research focuses on Mary Robinson and other British women writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Her most recent publications include essays on Robinson in Criticism and Philological Quarterly and a Broadview edition of Robinson's Letter to the Women of England and The Natural Daughter. She is Associate Head of the Department and Director of Undergraduate Studies.
Severin, Laura
Professor, Ph. D. Indiana University
Contemporary British Poetry, Women's Literature
Laura Severin is currently the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Interdisciplinary Programs in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. She is the author of Stevie Smith's Resistant Antics (U of Wisconsin P, 1997) and Poetry off the Page: Twentieth-Century British Women Poets in Performance (Ashgate, 2004). She is currently at work on a book that focuses on contemporary Scottish women poets, multimedia art, and national identity. In the graduate program, she teaches twentieth-century British poetry and prose. As the former Director of Women's and Gender Studies, she continues to be active in the WGS program.
Smith-McKoy, Sheila
Associate Professor, Ph.D. Duke University
American Literature, African-American Literature
Sheila Smith McKoy, a North Carolina native, received her BA from North Carolina State University in 1989, her MA from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1991, and her Ph.D. from Duke University in 1994. She was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Duke's Department of English. From 1994 – 2002, Smith McKoy was on faculty at Vanderbilt University. She was tenured there in 2001, becoming only the second African American woman to receive tenure at the university. Since 2002, Smith McKoy has been an associate professor at North Carolina State University. Her publications include When Whites Riot: Writing Race and Violence in American and South African Cultures and numerous articles. Smith McKoy's research interests lie in the African Diaspora, particularly in the cultural and literary relationships among Diasporans and Diaspora spaces.
Stein, Allen
Professor, Ph.D. Duke University
American Literature
Professor Stein is a specialist in both American Romanticism and American Realism and Naturalism. He has published books on Kate Chopin, on marriage in the works of the American Realists, and on Cornelius Mathews, an impassioned literary nationalist in the Romantic period. He has also published articles on Melville, Hawthorne, and Henry James, among others. His current research interest is Henry James's short fiction. Robert Frost once said that he never felt quite so much at home in America as when he was at a baseball game. Stein agrees with this sentiment.
Stinson, Timothy L.
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. University of Virginia
Medieval Studies, History of the Book, Digital Humanities
Tim Stinson's research and teaching interests include medieval poetry, the transmission and materiality of texts, and the impact of technologies on literature. His research has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Council on Library and Information Resources. He is currently working on a hypertext edition and electronic archive of the 14th-century alliterative poem The Siege of Jerusalem, which is being supported by an NEH Digital Humanities Fellowship and is under contract for publication through the Society for Early English and Norse Electronic Texts and the Medieval Academy of America. He serves on the advisory board of the Roman de la Rose Digital Library, a joint project of the Bibliothèque nationale de France and The Eisenhower Libraries at Johns Hopkins University, and as a member of the Medieval Academy's Committee on Electronic Resources. In addition to his own publications, Dr. Stinson's research has been featured by numerous magazines, news organizations, and radio news programs, including The Chronicle of Higher Education, National Geographic, Scientific American, and Voice of America.
Thomas, Erik R.
Associate Professor, Ph.D. University of Texas-Austin
Linguistics
A native of Ohio, Erik Thomas has taught at NC State University since 1995. He teaches a variety of linguistics courses. His research involves sociolinguistics, mainly phonetic variation, and he has been working recently on applications of experimental phonetic techniques to sociolinguistics. He has been involved in the North Carolina Language and Life Project, which has interviewed subjects in communities throughout North Carolina, but he has also been involved in sociolinguistics projects in Ohio and Texas. Among his current projects are a book covering vowel variations in dialects throughout the Western Hemisphere; a sociolinguistic investigation of the speech of Hyde County NC; and experiments investigating what perceptual cues listeners use to distinguish African-American voices from European-American voices. He lives with his wife and their two children in Benson NC, where he enjoys birding, landscaping his yard, reading non-fiction, and hiking with his kids. More information about the linguistics program at NC State can be found at http://www.ncsu.edu/linguistics
Thomson, Jon F.
Professor, Ph.D. Louisiana State University
20th Century Literature, Poetry, Theory
Jon Thompson teaches twentieth-century English and American literature, pre-twentieth-century American literature, cultural theory and poetry. He is the author, most recently, of The Book of the Floating World (2004), a collection of poems based on photographs of Japan during the American Occupation. His poetry has been published in The Iowa Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Quarterly West, Hotel Amerika, Shearsman Magazine (U.K.), Stride Magazine (U.K.), CrossConnect, Faultline, Typo and elsewhere.
His first critical book was Fiction, Crime and Empire (University of Illinois Press, 1993) and has other essays in Genre, Literature and History, The Massachusetts Review , Fascicle, Kiosk and Works and Days. His next critical book-- on William Bradford, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Michael Herr--is currently under review at a university press; it is entitled After Paradise: Essays on the Fate of American Writing.
Thompson is the founding editor of the international journal, Free Verse: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry & Poetics, and is the editor of Parlor Press's new poetry series, Free Verse Editions. At the graduate level, Thompson regularly teaches seminars in modernism and postmodernism, 20th-c. American prose and poetry, 20th-c. British prose and poetry and critical theory. http://www4.ncsu.edu/~jont/
Thuente, Mary Helen
Professor, Ph.D. University of Kansas
Irish Literature & Culture, Modern British Literature
Mary Helen Thuente, past President of the American Conference for Irish Studies, specializes in Irish literary and cultural studies. She is the author of numerous essays and several books, including W. B. Yeats and Irish Folklore and The Harp Re-Strung: The United Irishmen and the Rise of Irish Literary Nationalism. She is currently working on a book about images of women and harps in the visual iconography of Irish identity. She also teaches courses in Young Adult Literature.
Wall, John N.
Professor, Ph.D. Harvard University
Renaissance Literature
Dr. Wall teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Shakespeare, Milton, non-dramatic literature of the Renaissance, and the Bible; his research interests and publications center on religion and literature in the early modern period. His publications include Transformations of the Word: Spenser, Herbert, Vaughan (Georgia, 1988), an edition of the English works of George Herbert (Paulist Press, 1981), and A Dictionary for Episcopalians (Cowley, 2000), as well as numerous articles and reviews. He is currently engaged chiefly in research for a project concerning John Donne?s career as Dean of St. Paul?s Cathedral in London. In addition to his scholarly pursuits, Dr. Wall has chaired NC State?s reaccreditation Self-Study, co-chaired the committee that established a Phi Beta Kappa chapter at NC State, and served as Founding Director of the University Honors Program. He was awarded the Alexander Quarles Holladay Medal for Excellence by the Board of Trustees in 2003.
Walsh, Rebecca
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison
Modernism; Postcolonial and Feminist Theory; Cultural Studies
Rebecca Walsh's research and teaching focuses on transnational modernism and world literature, with specializations in diaspora studies and postcolonial theory; feminist theory; and cultural studies--particularly the intersections between geography and literature. She is completing a book manuscript about modernist geographic epistemologies, transnationalism, and experimental poetics entitled Modernism's Geopoetics: The Cultural Politics of the Near and Far. Recent work includes a chapter she has contributed on H.D. and race to MLA's forthcoming Guide to Teaching H.D. and an essay (co-written) on historicity, space, and Native American erasure in M. Night Shaymalan's The Village (PMLA 2008). In addition to the special issue, "Global Diasporas," that she guest-edited for the postcolonial journal Interventions, she has published work on feminist locational theory, women's writing, and cosmopolitanism.
Welch, Milton
Assistant Professor, Ph.D., University of Virginia
Milton Welch is completing a manuscript on lynching as a subject in U.S. modernist poetry entitled Tortured Shadows. His research interests are in modern and contemporary poetry, African American literature, specifically the variety of ways poetry engages both intellectual and social history. He teaches courses in world literature, American literature, and Africana Studies. His essays on Ezra Pound and Harold Bloom have appeared in collections on these authors. Ongoing projects include a selected volume of Jean Toomer's uncollected later writings, and a book length study of how contemporary poets regularly engage vision and visual culture in their work. Mont, as he is known, reviews of poetry for several publications, and is active on the subject of advanced literacy in higher education. He dedicates his spare time to pursuits in electronic music.
Wolfram, Walt
William C. Friday Distinguished Professor
Ph.D. Hartford Seminary Foundation
Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Dialectology
Walt Wolfram is an internationally recognized pioneer in sociolinguistics and dialect study. The William C. Friday Distinguished Professor and Director of the North Carolina Language and Life Project, Walt's work concerns social and ethnic dialects (for example, African American English, Puerto Rican English, Vietnamese English, Native American English). His recent work has focused on historically isolated dialect communities in North Carolina and the Bahamas. Uniting his various projects is a commitment to applying academic research to understand and help solve social and educational problems; his public dissemination efforts include the production of several award-winning TV documentaries, museum exhibits, and dialect awareness curricula. Under his leadership, the Linguistics Program at NC State University has grown to be one of the leading research programs in the country. Walt Wolfram has received the Alumni Association Outstanding Research Award, the Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professor Award, and the North Carolina Museum Council's Volunteer Service Award; he has served as President of the Linguistic Society of America, the American Dialect Society, and the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics. To learn more about Linguistics at NC State, visit http://www.ncsu.edu/linguistics.
Young, Robert V.
Professor, Ph.D. Yale University
R.V. Young joined the English Department at North Carolina State University in 1972. He has served as Director of Graduate Programs for the English Department and has also taught and served as department chairman at Christendom College and Franciscan University of Steubenville. With his colleague M. Thomas Hester he founded and continues to edit the John Donne Journal. He serves on the editorial board of the Ben Jonson Journal, Modern Age, and Faith & Reason and is a contributing editor to Touchstone magazine. Professor Young has also served at the President of the John Donne Society as well as on its Board of Directors and the Board of Directors of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. He has twice been a Fulbright Fellow at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and he has also held an ACLS fellowship and a fellowship with the Southeastern Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. For many years he has been an active participant in the activities of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
Professor Young's books and monographs include Richard Crashaw and the Spanish Golden Age (Yale, 1982), Principles of Letter-Writing: A Bilingual Edition of Justus Lipsius' Epistolica Institutio (with M.T. Hester, Southern Illinois, 1996), At War with the Word: Liberal Education and Literary Theory (ISI, 1999), A Student's Guide to Literature (ISI, 2000), and Doctrine & Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Poetry: Studies in Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, and Vaughan (D.S. Brewer, 2000), which was named the outstanding contribution to Donne studies by the John Donne Society. In addition to numerous essays in scholarly books and journals on subjects ranging from Renaissance literature to literary theory to modern poetry, Professor Young has also published in such general interest magazines as First Things, Crisis, The Weekly Standard, Touchstone, and National Review.
