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Kaveh Askari (2007) Assistant Professor & Academic Advisor: Film Studies Minor.
PhD, University of Chicago.
A specialist in cinema history, his research and teaching interests include silent film, 19th century visual culture, Iranian cinema, and experimental cinema. He has recently published articles on 1890's magic lantern performance and on Mesmerism in 1910's cinema. He is currently working on a study of the pictorial art tradition in American silent cinema and editing a special journal edition on early cinema in the Middle East.
Bruce Beasley (1992) Professor.
MFA, Columbia University; PhD, University of Virginia.
He is the author of six collections of poems: Spirituals (Wesleyan University Press); The Creation (winner of Ohio State University Press Award); Summer Mystagogia, winner of the Colorado Prize (selected by Charles Wright), from University Press of Colorado; Signs and Abominations (Wesleyan University Press); Lord Brain (winner of the University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series competition); and The Corpse Flower: New and Selected Poems (University of Washington Press). His poems have also appeared in such journals as Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and New American Writing. He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Artists Trust and three Pushcart prizes in poetry. He teaches courses in creative writing and American literature.
Michael Bell (2005) Senior Instructor.
MA, Western Washington University.
He teaches composition and literature. His specific inquiries concern emergent literary forms such as comics, multiform narratives, and games. His current work largely involves the development of a literary approach and pedagogy appropriate to the classroom study of massively multiplayer online environments.
Jordan Brewer (2008) Instructor.
MA in Linguistics, University of Arizona.
As a linguist, her research and teaching focuses on the structure and use of language. Her specialization is in the area of lexical access and production, including the role of orthography in mental representations of words.
Nicole R. Brown (2002) Associate Professor & Academic Advisor: Writing Studies Minor.
PhD, Purdue University
An advocate for writing for social change, her areas of specialization include rhetoric, technical writing, sustainability studies, visual rhetoric, community-based writing and internships. She has presented scholarly papers and published articles on place-based writing, internships and identity, visual rhetoric, and the social construction of community online.
Oliver de la Paz (2005) Associate Professor.
MFA, Arizona State University.
He is the author of three collections of poetry: Names Above Houses and Furious Lullaby published by Southern Illinois University Press, and Requiem for the Orchard published by the University of Akron Press. His work has appeared in journals such as Indiana Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, TinHouse, Quarterly West, North American Review, The Southern Review and elsewhere. He is the co-chair of the advisory board for Kundiman, a not-for-profit organization committed to the discovery and cultivation of emerging Asian American poets. He teaches courses in creative writing and Asian-American literature.
Kristin Denham (2000) Professor.
PhD, University of Washington.
Her teaching and research interests include grammatical structure; Native American language and literatures; dialect studies, including the use of dialect in literature; and applications of linguistics in K-12 education. She has published three books; Linguistics for Everyone: An Introduction (Cengage, 2010) (co-authored with Anne Lobeck), Language in the Schools: Integrating Linguistics into K-12 Education (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005), and Linguistics at School: Language Awareness in Primary and Secondary Education (Cambridge University Press, 2010) (both co-edited with Anne Lobeck), and has also authored numerous journal articles and book chapters.
Dawn Dietrich (1992) Associate Professor.
PhD, University of Michigan.
A specialist in cinema, media studies, and literature and technology, she has published articles in journals such as Word & Image: A Journal of Visual/Verbal Enquiry, Contemporary Literature, Film Quarterly, and Arena Journal.
Julie M. Dugger (2006) Senior Instructor.
PhD, University of Chicago.
Her teaching and research interests include British and Irish literature, politics, literature, narrative theory, genre theory, the novel, and historiography. She has published in journals including Dickens Studies Annual and Victorian Studies, and is currently researching the place of the Romantic poet-martyr in Victorian-era Irish poetry.
Geraldine E. Forsberg (2007) Instructor.
PhD, New York University.
She is a specialist in media ecology, media theory, media and cultural studies. Her writings look at the ways media influence our thinking, communication, values, beliefs, and behavior. She is also interested in developing theoretical and practical approaches to critical thinking in a technological society. Her publications include a dissertation which later became a book, Critical Thinking in an Image World: Alfred Korzybski’s Theoretical Principles Extended to Critical Television Evaluation. She has published numerous scholarly articles and reviews in the Journal of Communication and Religion and Explorations in Media Ecology. She teaches courses in technical and professional writing as well as technology and culture.
Margaret Fox (2006) Instructor.
MA, Western Washington University.
A writer and editor, she teaches technical and professional writing. Besides offering professional writing workshops for a wide range of organizations, she specializes in writing and editing materials for nonprofits. She's also edited articles and books of professors at Western Washington University. More than a hundred of her essays and articles have appeared in regional newspapers and magazines, including the Chicago Sun Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Marc Geisler (1992) Chair & Associate Professor.
PhD, University of California-Irvine.
As a specialist in British Renaissance literature and critical theory, he has published articles on John Milton, William Shakespeare, and early modern English culture. He is currently completing a book on the interplay between nationalism, popular protest, and seventeenth-century English literature. He teaches courses in contemporary critical and cultural theory, Milton and nonconformist literature, early modern feminism, early modern patronage and popular culture, Shakespeare, Spenser, politics and literature, and cultural studies.
Allison Giffen (2001) Associate Professor.
PhD, Columbia University.
A specialist in Early and Nineteenth-Century American literature, her research focuses on women writers, particularly American women poets. She has published articles in such journals as Women's Studies, American Transcendental Quarterly, and Early American Literature. She has edited a collection, Jewish First Wife, Divorced: The Correspondence of Ethel Gross and Harry Hopkins and is currently at work on a study of Nineteenth-Century Popular literature.
Bruce Goebel (1996) Professor & Academic Advisor: Literature Emphasis with Secondary Education Interest.
PhD, University of Iowa.
A specialist in American literature, postmodern literature, and English education, his current research focuses on humor in American culture. He is the author of Reading Native American Literature, an editor of Teaching a New Canon, and the author of articles appearing in English Journal, Philological Quarterly, Journal of American Culture, and others.
Carol Guess (1998) Associate Professor.
MA English, MFA Poetry, Indiana University.
A specialist in Creative Writing and Queer Studies, she is the author of seven books: Seeing Dell (Cleis Press), Switch (Calyx Books), Gaslight (Odd Girls Press), Femme's Dictionary (Calyx Books), Tinderbox Lawn (Rose Metal Press), Love Is A Map I Must Not Set On Fire (VRZHU Press), and Homeschooling (PS Publishing). Forthcoming books include Doll Studies: Forensics (Black Lawrence Press), Darling Endangered (Brooklyn Arts Press), My Father In Water (Shearsman Books), and Willful Machine (PS Publishing). She teaches writing workshops in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and hybrid genres, as well as courses in Queer Studies. Particular areas of interest include compressed creative arts such as prose poetry and flash fiction; hybrid genres; collaboration; and written responses to dance, music, and visual art.
Lee Gulyas (2006) Senior Instructor.
MFA, University of British Columbia.
She teaches Creative Writing, specializing in creative nonfiction and multigenre classes. Her nonfiction and poetry have appeared in journals including Creative Nonfiction, Clackamas Literary Review, Fugue, Event, The Malahat Review and Isotope. She is currently at work on a collection of essays as well as a poetry manuscript based on Pliny’s Natural Histories.
Pam Hardman (1993) Senior Instructor & Academic Advisor: English Elementary Education.
ABD, Brown University & MA, University of Toronto.
Teaching and research interests include 19th and 20th century American literatures and cultures, women’s studies, and critical theory.
Kelly Helms (2010) Instructor.
MA, Western Washington University.
Nancy J. Johnson (1994) Professor.
PhD, Michigan State University.
A specialist in children's literature and English/language arts education, she has taught elementary and high school students. She is co-author of The Wonder of it All: When Literature and Literacy Intersect, Literature Circles Resource Guide, Getting Started with Literature Circles and co-editor of Literature Circles and Response. She served on the 2003 Newbery Award selection committee and that same year was awarded the Arbuthnot Award by the International Reading Association for teaching and advocacy of children’s literature. An active member of NCTE, IRA, and ALA, she works with teachers and students and in schools locally, nationally, and internationally (currently on leave teaching in Singapore). In addition, she coordinates Western Washington University’s annual children’s literature conference. Research interests include children’s/young adult literature and diverse forms of reader response. She also advises English majors concentrating in elementary education.
Laura Laffrado (1993) Professor.
PhD, State University of New York-Buffalo.
A specialist in early US literatures and cultures, she is author of Hawthorne's Literature for Children and Uncommon Women: Gender and Representation in Nineteenth-Century US Women's Writing. Her essays on gender and genre have appeared in a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, ESQ, Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture,and other journals and collections.
Mark Lester (2004) Senior Instructor.
PhD, University of Washington
He has taught classes in literature, literary theory and criticism, and writing at the University of Washington, Seattle University, and Western Washington University. His translation of Gilles Deleuze’s Ligique du Sens (The Logic of Sense) was published by Columbia University Press in 1990. His interests include twentieth-century literature, intersections of literature and philosophy, writing about literature, art, science, and philosophy, and professional writing.
Anne Lobeck (1990) Professor.
PhD, University of Washington
A linguist, her area of expertise is syntactic theory, in particular the syntax of “ellipsis” across languages, and she is also nationally recognized for her work in linguistics and education. She teaches courses in introductory linguistics, English grammar, syntactic theory, language variation, the English language, and linguistics and education. Her publications include journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, as well as several books: Ellipsis: Functional Categories, Licensing and Identification, Oxford University Press 1995; Discovering Grammar: An Introduction to English Sentence Structure, Oxford University Press, 2000; Language in the Schools: Integrating Linguistic Knowledge into K-12 Teaching (co-editor with Kristin Denham), Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc. 2005; Linguistics for Everyone (co-authored with Kristin Denham) Cengage, 2009; Linguistics at School: Language Awareness in Primary and Secondary Education (co-editor with Kristin Denham), Cambridge University Press 2010.
Kathleen Lundeen (1991) Professor.
PhD, University of California-Santa Barbara.
A specialist in British Romantic literature, she has published on Blake, Hemans, Wordsworth, Keats, Austen, literature and science, intermedial art, and film, and she is the author of Knight of the Living Dead: William Blake and the Problem of Ontology. She teaches courses in British Romanticism, biblical literature, critical and cultural theory, literature and science, prophetic literature, epic poetry, and intermedial theory and art.
William Lyne (1995) Professor.
PhD, University of Virginia.
A specialist in American and African American Literature, he is the editor of Walking the Talk: An Anthology of African American Studies. His articles have appeared in PMLA, Arizona Quarterly, African American Review, Science and Society, and other journals and collections. He teaches courses in American literature, African American literature, and cultural studies.
Kelly Magee (2008) Assistant Professor and Academic Advisor: English-Creative Writing Emphasis major.
MFA, Ohio State University.
She is the author of Body Language (University of North Texas Press), a story collection which won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize. Her stories have appeared in Ninth Letter, Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, Cream City Review, and Quarterly West, among others, and her writing has won awards from Hotel Amerika, the Taos Summer Writers Conference, and AWP. She teaches creative writing (fiction and creative nonfiction) and literature.
Kristin Mahoney (2007) Assistant Professor & Academic Advisor: English-Literature Emphasis major.
PhD, University of Notre Dame.
A specialist in Victorian literature, her teaching and research interests include British aestheticism, aesthetic theory, the nineteenth-century novel, and Victorian poetry. She has published articles on Vernon Lee and Dante Gabriel Rossetti in Criticism and Victorian Studies, and her scholarly edition of Baron Corvo's Hubert's Arthur was published by Valancourt Books. She is currently working on a project on the afterlife of late-Victorian aestheticism in the early-twentieth century.
Nicholas Margaritis (1989) Senior Instructor.
PhD, University of Virginia.
His areas of specialty include Greek and Roman Literature, Medieval Literature, Shakespeare, and Comparative Literature (with special interest in 19th and 20th century French and Russian Literature). He has published articles and translations of Cavafy and presented scholarly papers on Aeschylus, Dante, Chaucer, Proust, Joyce. Additionally he authored of two full-length plays, Philip of Macedon and Pushkin.
Carlos Martinez (2002) Senior Instructor.
MFA, Antioch University.
He teaches introductory American literature, Latino literature, and a variety of creative writing and creative writing-related courses, mostly poetry. He has been published in local and national literary magazines, including Cranky, Crab Creek Review, Palabra and Poet Lore, as well as anthologies including Pontoon and The Sound Close In and An Eye for an Eye Leaves the Whole World Blind: Poets on 9/11. He has been a featured reader at local and national venues, including the 2004 and 2006 Skagit River Poetry Festivals, and has had four poetry chapbooks published.
Catherine McDonald (2003) Senior Instructor & Assistant Director of Composition.
PhD, University of Washington.
A specialist in genre studies, rhetoric-composition, and discourse analysis, her scholarship addresses questions of the transferability of writing instruction, self-sponsored digital literacy, and new media studies. As Assistant Director of Composition, Cathy works with graduate students who teach in our writing program, and teaches classes in writing studies, rhetoric, and language use.
Simon McGuire (2008) Instructor.
MFA, University of Washington & Certificate in Technical & Professional Editing, Bellevue Community College.
He specializes in contemporary poetics and traditions and theories of the avant-garde. His work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ New Voices: University and College Prizes, 1989-1998 (selected by Heather McHugh). He currently teaches courses in technical writing.
Mary Janell Metzger (1995) Professor.
PhD, University of Iowa.
A specialist in early modern drama, critical theory, contemporary women's literature and the teaching of English literature, she is the author of Shakespeare Without Fear: Teaching for Understanding (Heinemann 2004) and has published articles in journals and edited volumes such as Genre, Feminist Teacher, PMLA, and Historical Formalism. She teaches courses in critical theory, women's literature, Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and English Studies methodologies.
Brenda Miller (1999) Professor and Director of Graduate Studies.
PhD, University of Utah, MFA, University of Montana.
She teaches creative nonfiction and multi-genre creative writing, as well as literature classes in autobiography, memoir, and the personal essay. She has received five Pushcart Prizes for her work, and her personal essays have appeared in periodicals such as The Georgia Review, Brevity, The Sun, Creative Nonfiction, and Fourth Genre. Her latest collection of essays, Blessing of the Animals, was published by Eastern Washington University Press in 2009. She is also the author of Season of the Body (Sarabande Books, 2002), and she co-authored Tell it Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction (McGraw-Hill, 2003), with her colleague Suzanne Paola. She serves as the editor-in-chief of the Bellingham Review.
Nancy Pagh (1995) Senior Instructor.
PhD, University of British Columbia
She teaches a wide range of courses in creative writing, literature, and cultural studies. No Sweeter Fat, her first collection of poems, was published by Autumn House Press in 2007. Her chapbook, After, followed in 2008, and other work appears in Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Poetry Northwest, Crab Creek Review, the Bellingham Review, the Fourth River, and other journals. She has received an Artist Trust Fellowship and was the 2008 D. H. Lawrence Fellow at the Taos Summer Writers Conference. Her dissertation examined the language of women travel writers at sea and was published as At Home Afloat in 2001.
Suzanne Paola (1994) Professor.
MFA, University of Virginia.
She teaches creative writing, Women’s Studies, and literature courses. Her book of nonfiction, Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir, was published in 2001 by Counterpoint and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the year, also winning an American Book Award and placing in Amazon’s list of top ten memoirs. Her newest work of published nonfiction, A Mind Apart: Travels in a Neurodiverse World, was published in 2005 by Penguin also received numerous awards. She is currently working on a book of nonfiction concerning the subject of adoption, contracted by Norton. Her last book of poetry, The Lives of the Saints, was published by the University of Washington Press in 2002 and was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Award for the best book of poems published that year, awarded by the Academy of American Poets. Other books include Bardo, winner of the Brittingham Prize for poetry, and Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction, a textbook published by McGraw-Hill. Individual pieces have appeared in The New York Times, Orion, The Wall Street Journal, Kenyon Review and many other journals and magazines. She has received other writing grants and awards including a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a grant from the state Artists Trust.
Douglas Park (1979) Professor.
PhD, Cornell University.
His teaching interests are cinema studies, cyberculture, science fiction, and eighteenth-century literature, particularly women’s writing of the period. He has published essays in PMLA, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, College English, and Film Quarterly, as well as other journals.
Pam Pottle (2010) Instructor.
MA, Western Washington University.
She is a classroom teacher of twenty-six years. She is educated in the area of literacy through her BA and MA from Western Washington University. She also is trained as an instructional coach for teachers grades K-8. Her interest lies in the area of writing instruction. Numerous presentations for the International Reading Association, Washington Organization for Reading Development and the North Sound Reading Council include Honing the Art of Demonstration, Components for Effective Writing Instruction, A Look at how First Graders and their Teacher Evaluate Writing and Modeled Writing and Publishing with Emergent Writers. She currently teaches first grade at Roosevelt Elementary for the Bellingham School District.
Tony Prichard (2005) Senior Instructor.
ABD, European Graduate School & MA, Western Washington University.
His interests include continental aesthetics, critical theory, visual culture, science fiction, cinema and televisual studies, science fiction, contemporary fiction, and Afrofuturism.
John Purdy (1991) Professor.
PhD, Arizona State University.
A specialist in Native American Literatures, he is the author of Word Ways: The Novels of D’Arcy McNickle and of several articles and works of fiction and poetry. He edited the collection of essays The Legacy of D’Arcy McNickle and Nothing But the Truth: an Anthology of Native American Literature. He developed the university’s Native American Studies minor. He served as a Fulbright Lecturer at Universtät Mannheim in 1989, and again in 2000, and was on a Fulbright for Fall 1993 in New Zealand. During the summers of 1993, 1995 and 2002 he directed summer seminars for school teachers, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which studied Native American novels. His newest book is Writing Indian, Native Conversations.
Donna Qualley (1994) Professor and Director of Composition.
PhD, University of New Hampshire.
A specialist in theories and practices of teaching and learning, she teaches courses in composition, composition theory, pedagogy, literacy studies, ethnographic writing and inquiry, and young adult literature. She is the author of Turns of Thought: Teaching Composition as Reflexive Inquiry and is the co-editor of Pedagogy in the Age of Politics, a collection of essays about the politics of reading and writing in the academy. She is also the author of essays on critical reading, collaborative writing, feminist theory, and writing program administration.
Lysa M. Rivera (2007) Assistant Professor.
PhD, University of Washington.
She teaches courses in Chicano/a and African American literature and culture. Her current research project explores the science fiction of multicultural America, specifically as it emerges within Chicano/a and African American contexts. Her work has appeared in MELUS: Journal for the Study of Multiethnic Literature and Aztlán: Journal of Chicano Studies. She is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled Far Out: The Science Fiction of Black America, which traces the history of African American science fiction from post-Reconstruction to the present. The manuscript is under contract with the University Press of Mississippi.
Sara Stamey (2003) Senior Instructor.
MA, Western Washington University.
She is the author of four published novels, the latest being ISLANDS, which was a finalist for the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards for independent and university presses. She has been a fiction judge for the Philip K. Dick Award and the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference, and received a scholarship to attend the Publishers Marketing Association Publishing University after establishing the regional press Tarragon Books. As a freelance editor, she edited the memoirs of Raymond Carver's first wife, What It Used to Be Like by Maryann B.Carver. She specializes in teaching creative writing, primarily fiction, as well as editing and publishing.
Sylvia Tag (2010) Associate Professor.
MLIS, University of Iowa.
As a librarian, her teaching and research focus is on student learning and information literacy in academic libraries. She has published articles in the Journal of Academic Librarianship and Public Services Quarterly, and she is on the editorial board of Reference Services Review. She also coordinates the Children’s Literature Interdisciplinary Collection (CLIC). Her research specialization is early twentieth-century children’s literature authors and illustrators.
Kathryn Trueblood (2002) Associate Professor.
MFA, University of Washington.
Her novel, The Baby Lottery, was selected as a Book Sense Pick by the American Booksellers Association in 2007, and the paperback edition appeared in 2008 (The Permanent Press). Her recent articles about literary culture in the West have appeared in Poets & Writers Magazine. Her first book of fiction, The Sperm Donor’s Daughter, received a Special Mention for the Pushcart Prize 2000. She has co-edited two anthologies of contemporary multicultural literature, The Before Columbus Foundation Fiction Anthology: Selections from the American Book Awards (W.W. Norton 1992); and Home Ground, which won the Jurors' Choice Award at Bumbershoot. A graduate of the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Program, she has worked in editorial for both mainstream and small press publishers. She teaches creative writing, editing and publishing, and1960s literature.
Steven L. VanderStaay (1996) Professor & Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education.
PhD, University of Iowa.
An English Education specialist, he teaches courses in English methods, creative nonfiction, literature and linguistics. His publications include Street Lives: An Oral History of Homeless Americans and a broad range of articles and essays on English methods, teacher education, writing, narrative analysis, and urban affairs.
Kathryn Vulić (2004) Associate Professor and Associate Chair.
PhD, University of California-Berkeley.
A specialist in medieval literature, her teaching and research interests include devotional literature, manuscript studies, Chaucer and other Middle English poets, and vernacular writing. She has published and presented numerous papers on the audiences and circumstances of composition of late medieval writings, and the influence of prayer and meditative habits on the forms and content of Middle English texts.
Kami Westhoff (2007) Instructor.
MFA Fiction, University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Her fiction and poetry have appeared in such journals as Meridian, Phoebe, Third Coast, River City, and The Madison Review. Her short story, “The Ways You Are Gone,” received the 2007 Editor’s Prize from Carve Magazine. She teaches fiction and poetry writing and literature.
Christopher Wise (1996) Professor.
PhD, University of California-Riverside.
Interests include comparative literature, critical and cultural theory.
Jeanne Yeasting (2002) Senior Instructor.
PhD, University of Washington & MFA Columbia University.
She teaches creative writing (poetry, creative nonfiction, fiction), as well as literature courses. A specialist in Romantic, Victorian, and Post-Colonial literature, her research interests include contemporary literature from India, Gothic literature, and conduct literature. Her poems and nonfiction have appeared in various national and international journals and anthologies. In 2007, she was awarded a writing residency at Moulin ŕ Nef in Auvillar France. She is currently working on a book of ekphrastic poetry related to the women and children of the Medici circle. She is committed to presenting her poetry in multimedia and collaborative performances.
Ning Yu (1993) Associate Professor.
PhD, University of Connecticut.
He is a specialist in nineteenth-century American literature with a focus on Thoreau, American nature writing, and ecocriticism. He is also interested in the study of the transformation of Asian myths in the works of Asian American authors.
