SPRING 2008 Semester
Office Staff, Churchill Tower, Rm. 916 Secretary: Geri Pawelek, 888-2650
Robert Butler, PhDOffice: Tower 904
Phone: 888-2658
Office Hours: MWF 1-3:30 p.m.; T 2:30-4 p.m; R 9:30-11:30 a.m.
Dr. Butler's book The Richard Wright Encyclopedia, co-authored with Jerry Ward of Dillard University, will appear 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 will be publishing "Richard Wright's Use of his Southern Religious Background in Black Boy/American Hunger" in June 2008. Also in June, Dr. Butler will be chairing a panel and delivering 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
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 and 19th-century American domestic scrapbooks, and the discourse of domesticity in 19th-century American women's periodicals.
Recent courses include ENG 324: Reading and Writing in Early America, ENG 315: American Literature, ENG 300: Introduction to English Studies, ENG 203: Identity and Culture, and ENG 207: Word and Image. African-American women writers, women's studies, 19th- and early 20th-century American literature, the history of reading and writing instruction in early America, and verbal-visual texts are some of Dr. Capezzi's teaching interests.
Hamilton "Mick" Cochrane, PhDOffice: Tower 901
Phone: 888-2662
Office hours: M-F 10-11 a.m. and by appointment
Dr. Cochrane is Canisius' Writer-in-Residence. 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
Office hours: MWF 9-11 a.m.; TR 12-2 p.m. & by appointment
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, PhDOffice: Tower 910
Phone: 888-2663
MTWR 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. and by appointment
Dr. D'Amico's most recent research includes the forthcoming "'Where the devil should he learn our language?'--Travel and Translation in Shakespeare's 'The Tempest'" which will appear in Travel and Translation in the Early Modern Period, edited by C. DiBiase. "Byron and the 'Liberty Boys'," an article on Byron and the early Italian revolution will be appearing in the Italian Quarterly. Dr. D'Amico is currently working on an essay on Byron and swmming, perhaps part of a long awaited book on literary aquatics. His latest work is La Famiglia, a book about the life of his grandparents in Santa Croce di Magliano in southern Italy.
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 10 a.m.-12 p.m.; W 12:30-1:30 p.m.; and by appointment
Dr. Desiderio has recently delivered papers on Charles Brockden Brown, Judith Sargent Murray, and Susanna Rowson, as well as a paper on gossip in the late eighteenth century. Currently, she is working on an article on Judith Sargent Murray's The Gleaner.
Her major teaching area is early American literature, throughout the 19th century, and particularly the literature of the Early Republic. Some of her interests are sentimental and sensational literature, authorship in America, women's literature, epistolarity, and the novel in 18th- and 19th-century America.
Judith Dompkowski, PhDOffice: Tower 907
Phone: 888-2656
Dr. Dompkowski's interests range from European literature (Great Britain, the Continent, and Eastern Europe) and Great Books to the novels of Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, and women in literature.
Paul Dowling, PhD
Office: Tower 705
Phone: 888-2647
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: MWF 9:30-10:15 a.m.; T 1-3 p.m.; and by appointment
Dr. Fisher's fields of interest include women writers from Jane Austen to Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison, the intersections between literature and film, the connections between the study of literature and community service, and literary criticism as ongoing debate.
Eric Gansworth, PhDOffice: Tower 902
Phone: 888-2113
Office hours: M 4-5 p.m.; T 1-5 p.m.; and by appointment
Professor Gansworth is the Lowery Writer-in-Residence at Canisius. His interests range from authors including William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Louise Erdrich, Joy Harjo, and Patricia Smith to contemporary Native American literaure, the Beat Generation, film adaptations of literature, and contemporary fiction and poetry.
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.
David Greenman, PhDOffice: Bosch 105D
Phone: 888-2648
Dr. Greenman's recent publications include two articles in Shakespeare and Renaissance Association of West Virginia Selected Papers: "Montaigne's Experiments With Story, Within the Experimental Essays" in 2003 and "Shakespeare Improved--a Little: Shaw's Cymbeline Refinished" in 2001. He also published an article in Dickens Quarterly titled "Alcohol, Comedy, and Ghosts in Dicken's Early Short Fiction." Dr. Greenman just completed an essay "Men in Motion, Miles to G Michel De Montaigne's Travel Journal, Charles Dickens' American Notes, and William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways."
Dr. Greenman teaches classes on Shakespeare, Renaissance literature and drama, Arthurian literature, epic and romance, gothic and detective literature, and individual authors such as Montaigne, Dickens, and Tolkien.
Joseph Grossi, PhDOffice: Tower 914
Phone: 888-2657
ON LEAVE
A medievalist by training, Dr. Grossi has recently published
two articles, "John Capgrave's 'Smal Pypying': Marveling at Rome in _Ye Solace of Pilgrimes_, in _Medievalia et Humanistica_, New Series, vol. 30 (2004), pp. 55-83; and "Imagining Genoa in Late Medieval England," in _Viator_, vol. 35 (2004), pp. 387-434. Another article, "'Wher Ioye Is Ay Lastyng': John Lydgate's _Contemptus Mundi_ in British Library MS Harley 2255," is forthcoming in _Leeds Studies in English_. Dr. Grossi is also planning a book on the effects of papal political influence on English literary identity in the period c. 1370-1540.
Recent and current courses include Honors 101; team-learning and solo-taught versions of English 102; English 255: Poetry; English 303: Medieval Literature; and English 372: Major Figures (Chaucer). An Area Studies III, non-major version of the Medieval Literature course has recently been approved for inclusion in the new Catholic Studies Minor.
Mark Hodin, PhDOffice: Tower 905
Room: 888-2659
ON SABBATICAL Spring 2008
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.
Robert Lopez, PhDOffice: Tower 702
Phone: 888-2630
Office hours: MW 11:30 a.m.-12:20 p.m and 1:30-2:20 p.m.; F 1:30-2:30 p.m
Robert Oscar Lopez has degrees in Political Science, Classics, and English. He stresses multidisciplinary, multicultural, and multimedia approaches to literature, both as a teacher and scholar. He has published and presented on William Blake, Henry David Thoreau, Martin Delany, William Wells Brown, Phillis Wheatley, WEB DuBois and Walt Whitman, as well as on Juvenal, Latin American artists, and the role of Christianity in modern rhetoric. His book, Multicultural Conversations between the Ancients and the Moderns, currently being considered for publication by various presses, argues that classicism and multiculturalism are not enemies but rather partners in an important dialogue about human values.
Rev. James Pribek, S.J.Office: Tower 913
Phone: 888-3725
Office hours: MTWR 3-5 p.m. and by appointment
Fr. Pribek is a native of Wisconsin. He holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a baccalaureate in Philosophy and a master's in English from Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA, and two graduate theology degrees from Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, MA. He earned an MA and PhD in Anglo-Irish literature and drama at University College Dublin, where his
dissertation traced Cardinal Newman’s influence on James Joyce. He has been a Jesuit for 20 years and a priest for eight years.
Thomas C. Reber, PhDOffice: Tower 911
Phone: 888-2629
Office hours: MW 2:45-4 p.m.; TR 10-11:15 a.m.; and by appointment
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 Schroeder, PhDOffice: Tower 915
Phone: 888-2646
Office hours: MWF 9:30-10:20 a.m.; MW 1:30-2:30 p.m.; TR 3-4 p.m.; and by appointment
Dr. 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.
Ken Sroka, PhDOffice: Tower 912
Phone: 888-2661
Office hours: MW 11 a.m.-12 p.m.; TR 1-2 p.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 recently had two articles accepted for publication in the Brigham Young University journal Literature and Belief. “Reviving Spirit: ‘Illth’ and Health in Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit" appeared in Vol. 26.2, 2006, 71-104. Another article of Sroka’s, entitled, “Beauties, Beasts, and Myth in Frankenstein (1818) and The Time Machine (1895),” will be published in a future edition of Literature and Belief.
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.
Eric Stenclik, PhD
Office: Tower 713
Phone: 888-2836
Office hours: MW 1:30-4 p.m.; R 1-2 p.m.; and by appointment
E. Roger Stephenson, PhDOffice: Tower 906
Phone: 888-2655
Office hours: MW 10:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.; TR 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m.; and by appointment
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: WF 10 a.m.-12 p.m. and by appointment
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. 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.