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Kaveh Askari (2007) Associate Professor & Academic Advisor: Film Studies Minor.
PhD, University of Chicago.
A specialist in cinema history, his research and teaching interests include silent film, nineteenth century visual culture, Iranian cinema, and global Hollywood. His work has appeared in Film History, Screen, Early Popular Visual Culture;, and several edited collections. He edited a special issue of Early Popular Visual Culture on the Middle East and North Africa in 2008, and he is currently working on a study of picture craft and art education in American silent cinema.
Bruce Beasley (1992) Professor.
MFA, Columbia University; PhD, University of Virginia.
He is the author of seven 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), and Theophobia (BOA Editions, 2012). 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.
PhD, 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, Furious Lullaby, and Requiem for the Orchard. His work has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Virginia Quarterly Review, Tinhouse, The Southern Review, and Asian-American Poetry: The Next Generation. He is the co-chair of the advisory board for Kundiman.org, a non-profit arts organization dedicated to the discovery and promotion of Asian American poets and poetry. He teaches 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 four books; Linguistics for Everyone: An Introduction (Cengage/Wadsworth, 2010) and Navigating English Grammar (Blackwell 2013) (both 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 research and teaching interests include narrative, genre, and historiographical theory; writing; adaptation; politics and literature; media and publication history; British and Irish literature; postcolonial approaches to literature; and utopianism.
Lee Einhorn (2012)
MA, Columbia University; PhD forthcoming from University of Washington in 2013.
New to WWU, his interests focus on the intersections of poetry, composition, politics, and education. He has written extensively about the history and evolution of English language poetry, with an emphasis on its pedagogical and political value, though his current work is more focused on writing studies and pedagogy, as well as larger, administrative and logistical issues in public education. This year he will be teaching Engl 201, 301, 302, 442, and 510.
Geraldine E. Forsberg (2007) Senior 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, humor, and English education, he is the author of Humor Writing, 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) Professor.
MA English, MFA Poetry, Indiana University.
She is the author of three novels: Seeing Dell, Switch, and Homeschooling; four poetry collections, Femme's Dictionary, Tinderbox Lawn, Love Is A Map I Must Not Set On Fire, and Doll Studies: Forensics; two essay collections, Gaslight and My Father In Water; and a flash fiction collection, Darling Endangered. Gaslight, Femme's Dictionary, and Homeschooling were Lambda Literary Award finalists. Forthcoming titles include a collaboration with Daniela Olszewska, How To Feel Confident With Your Special Talents, and a flash fiction chapbook, Index Of Placebo Effects. She teaches courses in Creative Writing (with an emphasis on artistic experimentation and hybrid forms) and Queer Studies.
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 such as Barn Owl Review, Creative Nonfiction, Clackamas Literary Review, Fugue, Event, The Malahat Review, Cirque, Isotope, and Geist. She reviews books for Contrary Magazine. Areas of interest include: literary journalism, modes of nonfiction, Hungarian poetry, Arab feminist writing, science writing, and Canadian Literature.
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 and Assistant Director of Composition.
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.
Kristiana Kahakauwila (2012), Assistant Professor.
MFA, University of Michigan.
She is the author of the forthcoming collection of short stories This is Paradise (Hogarth Press, 2013) and a founding editor of Raiding the Larder: A Journal at the Junction of Art and Food. She teaches fiction, editing and magazine publishing, and her interests include translation, literature of the Pacific, and Hawaiian studies.
Laura Laffrado (1993) Professor.
PhD, SUNY/Buffalo.
A specialist in early US literatures and cultures, her most recent book is 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, Legacy, LEAR: Literature in the Early Republic, 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 and linguistics and education, and her courses include introductory linguistics, English grammar, syntactic theory, American dialects, the history of the English language, and linguistics and education. Among her publications are the following 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; Navigating English Grammar, (with Kristin Denham), Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.
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) Associate 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, Decadence, the nineteenth-century novel, and Victorian poetry. She has published articles on Vernon Lee, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and the national politics of collecting in Criticism, Victorian Studies, and Victorian Periodicals Review, 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 two full-length plays, Philip of Macedon and Pushkin.
Catherine McDonald (2003) Senior Instructor.
PhD, University of Washington.
Areas of specialization include rhetorical genre studies, language and discourse, and writing studies. Teaches classes in linguistics, rhetoric-composition, film representations of disability, new media literacy. Cathy served as assistant director of composition from 2003-2012. Her scholarship theorizes questions of transferability of writing instruction, a rhetoric-based approach to teacher-training, and new media literacy.
Simon McGuire (2008) Senior 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.
Her latest book is The Pen and the Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World (Skinner House Books, 2012). She teaches creative nonfiction and multi-genre creative writing, as well as literature classes in autobiography, memoir, and the personal essay. She has received six Pushcart Prizes for her work, and her personal essays have appeared in such periodicals as The Georgia Review, Brevity, The Sun, Creative Nonfiction, and Fourth Genre. She is the author of Listening Against the Stone (Skinner House Books, 2011), Blessing of the Animals (EWU Press, 2009), and Season of the Body (Sarabande Books, 2002). 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 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. A Mind Apart: Travels in a Neurodiverse World, was published in 2005 by Penguin and also received numerous awards, including an Oprah’s Bookshelf pick. She is currently working on a book of nonfiction concerning the subject of adoption, forthcoming from Norton. Her last book of poetry, The Lives of the Saints, 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 as well as a Pushcart prize.
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.
Christopher Patton (2011) Instructor.
PhD, University of Utah.
He is a poet, translator, and essayist with three published books: Ox, a volume of poetry (Signal Editions), Curious Masonry: Three Translations from the Anglo-Saxon (Gaspereau), and Jack Pine (Groundwood), a story in verse for children. His work has earned the long poem prize from The Paris Review and two Pushcart nominations, and has appeared in FIELD, The Kenyon Review, Western Humanities Review, and other journals. He received his PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Utah in 2011 and now teaches courses in creative writing (poetry, creative non-fiction, and multi-genre) and literature (with an emphasis on avant-garde twentieth century American poetry).
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 numerous articles on other Indian writers. He edited the collection of essays The Legacy of D’Arcy McNickle and Nothing But the Truth: an Anthology of Native American Literature. He also edited the quarterly journals, Studies in American Indian Literature and American Review of Canadian Studies. 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 during the Fall of 1993 at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. He has also had short-term Fulbrights in Montpellier, France and Canterbury, Great Britain. During the summers of 1993, 1995, 2002, and 2012 he directed summer seminars for schoolteachers, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which studied Native American novels. His newest scholarly book is Writing Indian, Native Conversations, but he also publishes fiction and poetry. His novel, Riding Shotgun into the Promised Land was published in 2011..
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, Aztlán: Journal of Chicano Studies, and Science Fiction 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. She is also an editor for Femspec, an interdisciplinary and peer-reviewed journal devoted to the study of speculative fiction within feminist contexts.
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) Senior 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.
He teaches Comparative Literature. His research interests include Incompetence, Non-Literature, Inductive Pedagogies, the Socratic Method, Non-Thetic Composition, the Question of the Question, Heterophobia and the Sexual Harassment Industry (SHI), Civil Liberties, Free Critical Inquiry, the Liberal Arts and University Autonomy.
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 à 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.
