FALL Semester 2009
Secretary: Geri Pawelek, 888-2650, 916 in Churchill Tower
Full-Time Faculty:
Robert Butler, PhDOffice: Tower 904
Phone: 888-2658
Office Hours: MW 10-11:30 a.m. and 12:30-1:30 p.m., TR 8:30-11:30 a.m., and F 10-11:30 a.m.
Dr. Butler's book The Richard Wright Encyclopedia, co-authored with Jerry Ward of Dillard University, appeared this summer with Greenwood Press. Dr. Butler's recent publications include "Richard Wright and the Second Chicago Renaissance," in The Dictionary of Literary Biography, "The Loeb and Leopold Case: A Neglected Source for Richard Wright's Native Son" in African American Review, and "The Religious Vison of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird," included in Harper Lee: Essays and Reflections, edited by Alice Hall Petry. Literature and Belief recently published "Richard Wright's Use of his Southern Religious Background in Black Boy/American Hunger." In June 2008, Dr. Butler chaired a panel and delivered a paper at the Richard Wright Centennial Conference in Paris.
Dr. Butler's teaching interests include modern American literature, especially realism and naturalism, African-American literature and culture, 19th-century Russian literature, and such authors as Mark Twain, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Theodore Dresier, James T. Farrell, and Toni Morrison.
He is the inaugural recipient of the 2008 Honors Professor of the Year Award. The award recognizes a professor who has made exceptional contributions to the Canisius All-College Honors Program in teaching, scholarship and/or service. To learn more, click here.
Rita Capezzi, PhDOffice: Tower 1112
Phone: 888-2886
Office Hours: MW 2-2:50 p.m., R 9:30-11:30 a.m. and F 10-10:50 a.m.
Dr. Capezzi is currently the Director of the Core Curriculum, and she has served as Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences and Director of Academic Advising.
Recent courses include ENG 319: Reading Big Books, ENG 324: Reading and Writing in Early America, ENG 315: American Literature, ENG 300: Introduction to English Studies, ENG 210: Mothers in Literature and Film, ENG 207: Word and Image, and ENG 203: Culture and Identity. Among Dr. Capezzi's teaching interests are African-American women writers, women's studies, 19th- and early 20th-century American literature, the history of reading and writing instruction in early America, discourses of domesticity, verbal-visual texts and William Blake.
Dr. Capezzi has published on Melville's "Benito Cereno," and her works in progress include articles on Melville and periodical publications, readers of the Harper's Bazaar, 19th-century American domestic scrapbooks, and the discourse of domesticity in 19th-century American periodicals and literature.
Mick Cochrane, PhDOffice: Tower 901
Phone: 888-2662
Office hours: TWR 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. and by appointment
Dr. Cochrane is a Lowery Writer-in-Residence at Canisius and the Director of Creative Writing. His teaching interests are fiction writing, contemporary fiction, biography and autobiography, and 18th-century British literature. He is a recipient of a Peter Canisius Distinguished Teaching Professorship which he will use to continue his popular Contemporary Writers Series. The program was established in 1999 and was among the first Teaching Professorships awarded at Canisius. To learn more, click here.
Sandra Cookson, PhDChair of English Department
Office: Tower 909
Phone: 888-2653
ON SABBATICAL Fall 2009
Creative writing, poetry, British literature from medieval to modern, and women's literature and film are some of the fields in which Dr. Cookson teaches.
Jack D'Amico, PhDEnglish Department Chair
Office: CT 914
Phone: 888-2663
Office Hours: MWF 10 a.m.-12 noon and TR 1-2 p.m.
Dr. D'Amico's areas of interest, teaching, and publication include Shakespeare, English and Italian Renaissance drama and theater, Machiavelli, Byron, and swimming.
Dr. D'Amico's most recent publications and presentations include:
The Moor in English Renaissance Drama, University of South Florida Press, October, 1991, newly available on line; Review: Reiko Oya, Representing Shakespearean Tragedy: Garrick, the Kembles, and Kean. (New York: Cambridge University press, 2007), in Journal of British Studies, 48:1 (2009), 207-207; Excerpt from The Moor in English Renaissance Drama included in Literature Criticism from 1400-1800, ed. Schoenberg & Trudeau, vol. 137 (2007), 342-353; “Rehearsing Leander;Lord Byron and Swimming in the Long Eighteenth Century,” forthcoming in British Sporting Culture, ed. Sharon Harrow. Dr. D'Amico recently presented “Byron and the Carbonari of Ravenna” at the 25th International Byron Conference on “Lord Byron and History” held in Missolonghi Greece, September 2009.
Dr. D'Amico recently taught Honors Shakespeare, incorporating Machiavelli's "Mandragola" and Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus."
Jennifer Desiderio, PhDOffice: Tower 907
Phone: 888-2681
Office hours: T 9 a.m.-12 noon, F 9-10 a.m., and by appointment
Dr. Desiderio's major teaching area is early American literature,
throughout the 19th century, and particularly, the literature of the Early Republic. Her interests include the American novel, the profession of authorship in America, seduction and sentimental literature, and women's literature. Her recent classes have included English 319: American Renaissance, English 319: Captivity Narratives, and English 396: The Rise of the Early American Novel. She recently published an article on Judith Sargent Murray entitled "The Periodical as Monitorial and Interactive Space in Judith Sargent Murray's 'The Gleaner'" in American Periodicals. She is currently co-editing a collection of essays on Susanna Rowson, entitled Beyond Charlotte Temple: New Approaches on Susanna Rowson, and co-editing an edition of Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette and The Boarding School. She has delivered papers on topics ranging from gossip in the eighteenth century to Charles Brockden Brown's sentimental novels and Susanna Rowson's historical romance, Reuben and Rachel.
Judith Dompkowski, PhDOffice: HO 108A
Phone: 888-2656
Office Hours: MWF 8-8:50 a.m. and by appointment
Dr. Dompkowski's interests range from European literature (Great Britain, the Continent, and Eastern Europe) and Great Books to the novels of Willa Cather and Edith Wharton. Her courses often focus on the interplay between literature and art, as in a recent Honors Seminar on The Writer and the Visual Artist, and in The Renaissance in Literature and the Visual Arts.
Paul Dowling, PhDOffice: HO 110
Phone: 888-2647
Office Hours: MWF 10:30-10:50 a.m.
Dr. Dowling published two books recently: Polite Wisdom: Heathen Rhetoric in Milton's Areopagitica from Rowman and Littlefield and Melville's Battle-Pieces: Text and Essays in Criticism from Prometheus Press. In February 2005, his article "Robert E. Lee and Melville's Politics in Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War" was published in Melville Society Extracts. "Paradise Lost and Politics Gained: Milton Rewrites Scripture" also appeared in 2005 in Cithara: Essays in the Judeo-Christian Tradition.
Upper-division courses Dr. Dowling has taught include Shakespeare, Literary Criticism, Battle of the Books, and Abolishing Christianity.
Jane Fisher, PhDOffice: Tower 908
Phone: 888-2112
Office hours: M 3-4:30 p.m., T 10 a.m.-12 noon, R 12-2:30 p.m., and by appointment
Dr. Fisher's fields of interest include women writers from Jane Austen to Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison, the connections between the study of literature and community service, and literary criticism as ongoing debate. She is working on a longer manuscript focusing on women's literary narratives of the 1918 influenza pandemic.
Dr. Fisher is also the director of the Women's Studies Program.
Angela Fulk, PhDOffice: Tower 702
Phone: 888-2630
Dr. Fulk completed her Ph.D. in British medieval literature in 2008 with a dissertation entitled “On Angynne”: Anglo-Saxon Readings of the Book of Genesis. In 2001, she published four entries in The Late Medieval Age of Crisis and Renewal, 1300-1500: A Biographical Dictionary (Greenwood Press). A presentation that she delivered at the Prophecy 2007 conference in Toronto, entitled “‘In the Grand Tradition of Boarding School Homoeroticism’: An Academic and Fangirl Examines the Case for a Love Affair between Sirius Black and Remus Lupin” was recorded and is available on CD-ROM from Content Management Corp, Richmond Hill, Ontario. The abstract of another 2007 presentation, this one delivered at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, can be found at the Old English Newsletter Online at http://www.oenewsletter.org/OEN/abstracts/php. Her current scholarly project is a Chaucerian article entitled “The Skeleton in the Prioresse’s Wardrobe.”
Dr. Fulk is a visiting professor, here while Dr. Grossi is on leave. In the Fall of 2008, she is teaching English Seminar I and Chaucer courses. Her other teaching interests include Biblical and classical literature, history of the English language, nineteenth-century British literature, and children’s literature.
Eric GansworthOffice: Tower 902
Phone: 888-2113
Office hours: MT 2-5 p.m. and by appointment
Professor Gansworth is a Lowery Writer-in-Residence at Canisius. His interests range from authors including William S. Burroughs, Louise Erdrich, George Saunders, Lynda Barry, George Singleton, Raymond Carver, Joy Harjo, and Patricia Smith to graphic novels, contemporary Native American literaure, memoir, film adaptations of literature, interdisciplinary studies, and fiction, poetry and memoir writing.
His novel Mending Skins won the 2006 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Award in the novel category. National in scope, the PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Awards honor excellence in multicultural literature. His latest works are: Breathing the Monster Alive (2006) Bright Hill Press, a collection of poems, stories and artwork, and Sovereign Bones (2007), an anthology of new Native American Writing. A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function (2008), a collection of poems and paintings by Gansworth, was voted number three on the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Spring 2008 “Good Reads” List. Professor Gansworth exhibited paintings from the collection at the college. In November 2008, his play, "Re-creation Story," was part of the four-day Native Theater Festival at the Public Theater in New York City.
Rachel Greenberg, PhDOffice: Tower 910
Phone: 888-2473
Office Hours: MW 3-4 p.m., TR 2:30-3:30 p.m., and by appointment
Dr. Greenberg received her Ph.D. from the University at Buffalo in 2008. Her area of specialization is in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature with a focus on intersections of gender and class. Her primary teaching and research interests lie in the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Shakespeare and film, Renaissance women’s writing, as well as commonwealth literature.
Current and future courses include Shakespeare I and II, and English Seminars I and II.
David Greenman, PhDOffice: Bosch 105D
Phone: 888-2648
Office Hours: by appointment via phone or email
Dr. Greenman recently gave presentations on Shakespeare's The Tempest, on Charles Dickens' Christmas stories, and on the travel writings of Michel de Montaigne, Dickens, and William Least Heat-Moon. He has published articles on Shakespeare and Renaissance drama, Montaigne, Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, and J.R.R. Tolkien. He is also interested in medieval and modern literature of King Arthur.
His most recent courses include Shakespeare, Children's Fantasy Literature, The Journey in Literature, and English Seminars I (composition) and II (literature).
Mark Hodin, PhDOffice: Tower 905
Room: 888-2659
Office Hours: MTWRF 1-2 p.m. and by appointment
Mark Hodin studies twentieth-century American theater, especially where questions of literary value intersect with cultural performance. He has published articles on vaudeville, theater reviewing, and university pedagogy. His “The Disavowal of Ethnicity: Legitimate Theater and the Social Construction of Literary Value in Turn of the Century America” (Theatre Journal 52.2 (May 2000) was awarded the 2001 Gerald Kahan Scholar’s Prize by the American Society for Theatre Research. His most recent article “’It Did Not Sound Like a Professor’s Speech’: George Pierce Baker and the Market for Academic Rhetoric” was published in Theatre Survey (46:2 November 2005.) Critical works in progress include an article on Naturalism and ethnic performance and a project on Lorraine Hansberry and the avant-garde.
Dr. Hodin teaches survey and topics courses in drama; Freshman Seminar I and II; Introduction to English Studies; American Realism and Naturalism; and Cultural Studies and the American Cold War.
Rev. James Pribek, S.J.Office: Tower 913
Phone: 888-3725
Office hours: MTWR 11 a.m.-1 p.m. and by appointment
Fr. James Pribek holds degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Onsager University, Weston Jesuit School of Theology, and University College Dublin. A specialist in Irish Literature, his dissertation traced the influence on Cardinal John Henry Newman on James Joyce. More recent research has focused on Fr. Joseph Darlington, a Jesuit converted by Newman who served alongside Hopkins and eventually became the teacher of James Joyce. He has also examined Newman’s influence on a number of twentieth-century writers in Ireland and the U.S. His courses include English Seminar I, Honors Literature II, and Introduction to English Studies, Irish Literature, Modern Irish Drama, Joyce’s Ulysses, and Nineteenth-Century British Literature.
Thomas C. Reber, PhDOffice: Tower 911
Phone: 888-2629
ON SABBATICAL Fall 2009
Dr. Reber's main interests are in rhetoric and composition, science fiction, and the Core Curriculum. He advises students in the English Department's Writing Minor. In 2005, he completed a three-year term as Director of the Core Curriculum, where he initiated a new process for assessing the quality of the Core.
His recent research on the debate about what kind of new Peace Bridge should be built has led him to investigate the history of the bridge. Currently, he is researching and writing a biographical article on Alonzo C. Mather, who tried in the 1890's to get government approval for an electricity-producing bridge at the site of the current Peace Bridge.
Earlier research has included a paper on the Peace Bridge debate of the 1990's and an article on the use of electronic discussion in literature courses.
Mel SchroederOffice: Tower 915
Phone: 888-2646
Office hours: TR 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. and T 1:15-2:15 p.m.
Professor Schroeder's interests include 20th-century literature: American, English, and some Continental; writing, drama, and writers such as W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Saul Bellow, as well as a recent interest in comedy and humor and a course offered relevant to that.
Ken Sroka, PhDOffice: Tower 912
Phone: 888-2661
Office hours: TR 10-11 a.m. and by appointment
Ninteenth century British literature, especially Charles Dickens and the novel, drama, and myth and literature are some of Dr. Sroka's interests.
He has published a number of articles on teaching, Walter Scott, Dickens, and other 19th-Century Literature. Most recently, an article entitled, “Beauties, Beasts, and Myth in Frankenstein (1818) and The Time Machine (1895),” was published in Literature and Belief (Brigham Young University).
Dr. Sroka is also the co-creator, with E. Roger Stephenson, Phd, of the Urban Leadership Learning Community at Canisius. The cooperative learning program was recently recognized for excellence in diversity in education by the University of San Francisco Jesuit Network for Equitable Excellence in Higher Education (JNEE). To read more about it, click here. He has also received awards from the Buffalo Board of Education (2008, 2009) and the Minority Bar Association of Western New York (2009) for Achievements in Education.
Roger Stephenson, PhDOffice: Tower 906
Phone: 888-2655
Office hours: W 10 a.m.-1 p.m. and TR 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m
Dr. Stephenson is interested in American literature, the Civil War in art and literature, playwriting, and Hemingway and Fitzgerald and the Twenties.
Dr. Stephenson is also the co-creator, with Ken Sroka, Phd, of the Urban Leadership Learning Community at Canisius. The cooperative learning program was recently recognized for excellence in diversity in education by the University of San Francisco Jesuit Network for Equitable Excellence in Higher Education (JNEE). To read more about it, click here.
Amy Wolf, PhDOffice: Tower 903
Phone: 888-2627
Office Hours: MW 10 a.m.-12 noon
Recent publications by Dr. Wolf in the history of the English novel include “Bernard Mandeville, Fielding’s Amelia, and the Necessities of Plot”in The Eighteenth-Century Novel and “Epistolarity, Narrative, and the Fallen Woman in Mansfield Park” which appeared last year in Eighteenth-Century Fiction. She has also published short biographical pieces on the late 17th-/early 18th-century writers Delarivier Manley, Anne Finch, and Mary Chudleigh in The Age of Milton from Greenwood Press, as well as an article on Shakespeare's King Lear in Studies in English Literature.
Dr. Wolf teaches classes in the field of eighteenth-century British literature and first-year composition and literature. Recent courses include Women Writers, Introduction to Literary Studies, History of the Novel I, and The Coffeehouse Culture of Eighteenth-Century England, for which she won an award for innovative course design from the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.