Bill Albertini Assistant Professor

PhD, University of Virginia

Research Interests: Twentieth-century American literature, narratives of contagion and infection in the contemporary United States, cultural studies, cultural theory, queer theory, gender studies, sexuality, and body studies

Teaching Interests: 20th-Century American Literature, Contemporary Literary & Cultural Studies, Queer Theory, and Sexuality

Recent Publications:

"So Wrong It's Right: The Guilty Pleasures of Reality Television." Iris 47 (Fall 2003)

Co-editor of “Is There Life After Identity Politics?” Special issue of New Literary History 31.4 (Autumn 2000)

Ellen Berry Professor

Co-Editor of Genders  1994-98 international biannual anthology of feminist cultural studies

Co-Editor and Founder of Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge  Rhizomes is a peer-reviewed online bi-annual journal of cultural studies with an international scholarly advisory board and registration with the Library of Congress as ISSN 1555-9998.  It has been in existence since May 2000. http://www.rhizomes.net

PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Research interests: Contemporary Critical Theories/21^st  Century Culture Studies (especially feminist theory, film theory, theories of the avant garde, theories of modernism and  postmodernism, transcultural studies, postcommunist cultural studies.)

Contemporary Fiction (especially women's writing, writing by sexual and ethnic minorities,  and experimental forms of writing), Narrative Forms (including modern and contemporary fiction, narrative theory, history of the novel and cultural narratives)

Teaching interests: Postmodern Literature and Culture. Courses aligned with the research interests above.

Publications:

Transcultural Experiments:  Russian and American  Models of Creative Communication, co-authored with Mikhail Epstein (St. Martin's Press, 1999)

Curved Thought and Textual Wandering: Gertrude Stein's Postmodernism (University of Michigan Press,  1992)  209 pages  Reviewed in American Literature, Novel, The Harvard Review, Modern Fiction Studies, The American Literature Annual, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, among others

The Gay Nineties:  Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Formations in Queer Studies, co-editor with Carol Siegel and Thomas Foster  (New York University Press, 1997

Sex Positives?:  The Cultural Politics of Dissident Sexualities,  co-editor with Carol Siegel and Thomas Foster (New York University Press, 1997)

On Your Left:  Historical Materialism in the 90s, co-editor with Carol Siegel and Thomas Foster  (New York University Press, 1996)

Bodies of Writing, Bodies in Performance, co-editor with Carol Siegel and Thomas Foster,  (New York University Press, 1996)

Re-Entering the Sign: Articulating New Russian Culture  co-editor with Anesa Miller-Pogacar (University of Michigan Press, 1995)  Reviewed in Semotika, Canadian-American Slavic Studies, The Slavic Review, among others

Postcommunism and the Body Politic, Editor, (New York University Press, 1995)  adopted as a required text in the History of Consciousness Program, UC-Santa Cruz and in the Program in Gender Studies at Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.

Work-in progress

Book in Progress: The Horrors of Power: Negative Aesthetics and Feminist Critique in Contemporary Women’s Writing

Article in Progress: “Verb-ing Feminist Theory”

Kimberly Coates Assistant Professor

PhD, University of Utah

Research Interests: Twentieth-Century British Literature and Culture, Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture, Transatlantic Modernism, Gender Studies, Psychoanalysis, and Trauma Studies.

Teaching Interests: Twentieth-Century British and American Literature, Late Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Women’s Studies (affiliate faculty member), American Culture Studies (affiliate faculty member)

Recent Publications:  Exposing the ‘Nerves of Language’:  Virginia Woolf, Charles Mauron, and the Affinity Between Aesthetics and Illness.”  Literature and Medicine 21, Number 2 (Fall 2002): 242-263.  Eds. Rita Charon and Maura Spiegel. Baltimore:  The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. 

Work-in-Progress:“Eros in the Sick Room: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Phosphorescent Form in D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers” [article-in-progress]

'Women Must Weep':  Virginia Woolf, War, and the Politics of Grief."  [article-in-progress]

Stephannie Gearhart Assistant Professor

PhD, Lehigh University

Research Interests: Age-Relations in Early Modern England, Cultural Studies

Teaching Interests: Early Modern British Literature, Restoration Literature, Contemporary British Literature

Recent Publications: ‘“Faint and imperfect stamps”: the problem with adaptations of Shakespeare for children.’ Alif: journal of comparative poetics, 27: The Child as Addressee 2007 (44-67).

James VI becomes king of Scotland” in Great Events from History: The Renaissance and Early Modern Era, 1454-1600.  Ed. Christina J. Moose. Pasadena: Salem Press,  February 2005. 709-10.

“Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester” in Great Lives from History: The Renaissance and Early Modern Era, 1454-1600. Ed. Christina Moose. Pasadena: Salem Press, April 2005. 553-4.

Book Review: The Reformation.  Arrowsmith, Joseph.  Eds. Juan A. Prieto Pablos, Maria José Mora, Manuel J. Gomez-Lara and Rafael Portillo.  Barcelona: Universitat De Barcelona, 2003. The Sixteenth Century Journal, XXXVI (no.2) Summer 2005. 621-2.

Book Review: Beyond the Spanish Tragedy: A study of the works of Thomas Kyd. Erne, Lukas. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001. The Sixteenth Century Journal, XXXIV (no. 3) Fall 2003. 877.

Work- in- progress A Difficult Age: drama and the politics of generational conflict in early modern England [book manuscript in progress]

"Familial/r Contracts: Young Adults and the Early Modern English Theatre"  [article- in progress]

Erin Labbie Associate Professor

PhD, University of Minnesota

Research Interests: Medieval Studies, Middle English, Chaucer studies, Anglo-Norman and Anglo-Saxon studies, Old French, Hagiography, Translation studies, Critical Theory, Psychoanalysis, Historiography, Marxism, Deconstruction, Feminism and Queer Theory, Post-colonial studies, Meta-criticism, Intellectual History, Disciplinarity

Teaching Interests:  British Literature Survey, Introduction to Theory, Seminars in:
Medieval literature and studies, Topics in Theory

Recent Publications: Lacan's Medievalism. University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

"Lear to the Letter: Derrida Before Lacan, Poe Before Shakespeare," co-authored with Autumn Beechler (Undergraduate student). Accepted and forthcoming in Shakespeare Yearbook, Fall 2006/Winter 2007.

"Zizek Avec Lacan: Splitting the Dialectics of Desire," Slovene Studies, Volume 25, numbers 1-2, 2003 [published February 2005]: 23-46.

"Battle Rage and Civility in Beowulf", Co-authored with Tom Wymer. The Heroic Age.
Issue 7, Spring 2004, Fifth Anniversary Issue.

"Third Time, Third Being," A translation of Bernard Stiegler's "Tiers-temps, tiers-étant,"
Forthcoming Rhizomes Issue 8, Spring 2005.

Simon Morgan-Russell Professor

Associate Dean, College of Arts & Sciences 

PhD, Lehigh University

Research Interests: Studies in Comedy, Comic Performance and History

Teaching Interests: Early modern British literature, particularly Shakespeare and other dramatists; contemporary British film and television studies; British Cultural Studies, British Comedy

Recent Publications:

Jimmy Perry & David Croft (“The Television Series” Manchester University Press, 2004)

"A Local Shop for Local People: Imbrication and Alienation in British Situation Comedy" (forthcoming in the Journal of British Cinema and Television 4.1 Fall 2007)

Piya Pal-Lapinski Associate Professor Associate Chair/ Graduate Coordinator

PhD, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Research interests: Byron and Poststructuralist theory, theorizing violence, the Romantic and Victorian novel, courtesans and the culture of capitalism, discourses of terror, fashion theory, Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, opera

Teaching Interests: Byron and British/Continental Romanticism, The British and European Gothic, Vampires, Topics in Critical Theory, Postcolonial Theory, Terrorism and Aesthetics, The Victorian Novel with a special emphasis on issues of sensation/empire/orientalism, Libertine Culture in 18^th and 19^th century Britain

Recent publications:

The Exotic Woman in Nineteenth Century British Fiction and Culture: A Reconsideration (University of New England Press, 2005) Reviewed in Victorian Studies, Journal of Victorian Culture, CHOICE

"A Night with La Draculetta": Designing/Desiring Romanian Diva Angela Gheorghiu in

Vampirettes, Wretches and Amazons, ed. Valentina Glajar and Domnica Radulescu, Columbia University Press, 2005.

Work-in-progress:

“Byron Avec Sade: Material and Spectral Violence in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,Canto IV” in Byron’s Ghosts, ed. Gavin Hopps, (forthcoming)

Book manuscript in progress: Byronic Violence: Erotics, Aesthetics, Politics

Byron and the Politics of Freedom and Terror, edited collection, co-edited with Dr. Matt Green, University of Nottingham, UK.

“Byronic Terror, Death and Impossible Exchange” From Byron’s Werner to Baudrillard’s “The Spirit of Terrorism” [article –in-progress]

Jolie Sheffer Assistant Professor

PhD, University of Virginia

Research Interests: Twentieth-Century American Literature & Culture, Race & Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality, Psychoanalysis

Teaching Interests: Ethnic literature, theories of race and identity, American Studies, critical theory

Recent Publications: Essays on Onoto Watanna, Ruth Ozeki, and the novel My Year of Meats in the Encyclopedia of Asian American Popular Culture, ed. Felicia Campbell (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008).

"Standing on Top of the World: Masculinity and Imperialism on Everest." Sport, Rhetoric, Gender, and Globalization: Historical Perspectives and Media Representations, ed. Linda K. Fuller. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, (forthcoming).

Essay on The Promised Land by Mary Antin, Facts on File Companion to the American Novel, ed. Abby H. P. Werlock. New York: Facts on File, 2006.Book review. Left of the Color Line: Race, Radicalism, and Twentieth-Century Literature of the United States, ed. Bill V. Mullen and James Smethurst (2003). Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 2004.

Book review. 3 Asian American Writers Speak Out on Feminism. Iris: A Journal About Women, Fall 2003.

Work-in-Progress: “Recollecting, Repeating and Walking Through: Immigration, Trauma, and Spatiality in Mary Antin’s The Promised Land “(under consideration)

Maisha Wester Assistant Professor

PhD, University of Florida

Research Interests:  Constructions and representations of "Blackness" in American popular culture; American gothic literature; representations of otherness and marginalization in contemporary horror films; African-American culture and literature after 1800; womanist theory and literature; postmodernist theories of narrative and identity

Teaching Interests: Undergrad courses--Film and literature, African American Literature, Cultural Pluralism in the U.S., 19th Century American Literature; Graduate courses--seminars in race, gender and sexuality and/ in popular culture and lit.

Publications: “A Review of Donal Moriarty’s The Art of Brian Coffey,” Nua: Studies in Contemporary Irish Writing 3.1-2 (Spring 2001), 207- 212

Work-in-Progress: (under review)--"A Haunting and Haunted

Queerness," "The Gothic Slave's Narrative", (under construction)-

-"Skeleton Keys and Hurricanes," "Horrible Heroines & Lascivious Lesbians"