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This web site is defunct. An updated version will be coming soon. Sorry for the inconvenience.
EBook: the English Department
Post:
The Department of English
C128 Bondurant Hall
University of Mississippi
University, MS 38677
Department Home Page:
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/
E-Mail:
engl@olemiss.edu
Who's Who in the English Department: The Chair of the Department is Dr. Joe Urgo. The office of the Chair is the place to come with any and all administrative problems, questions about how to apply for financial assistance, what classes are being offered, how to apply for graduation, and much much more. Mrs. Regina Jordan, the Department Secretary, holds the office just outside of Joe’s. Regina can set up an appointment for you, or she can often answer your questions herself. The following contact information applies to the office, not to Joe or Regina personally (the email address reaches both, for example).
The Director of Freshman English, a.k.a. the Director of Writing, is Dr. Steve Bellin. As DFE, Steve is responsible for developing the curriculum for Freshman English courses and overseeing the work of almost 50 English Graduate Instructors. Anyone interested in receiving a Teaching Assistantship should speak with Steve about the Freshman English Program and the role of Graduate Instructors in that program.
Electronic Mailing/Memo Lists: One of the most valuable tools available is email, which becomes more and more vital every year. Just a short time ago, all department communication was done on slips of photocopy, laboriously cut down and schlepped to everyone's mailbox (who had a mailbox--non-GI's were sometimes left out). Now, almost all department communication happens through three listservs (which are bulk mailing lists for email). These are English, Grapevine, and Engrad. There is also a general listserv for public literature matters, Sigmatd, run by the local chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honor Society. Instructions on joining each of these follows the brief descriptions given below. Remember, everyone at UM has a University-provided email account, so there's no reason not to get on board. See the section on the University for more information on your Olemiss email account and web space. The faculty's private list is English, or english@listserv.olemiss.edu. One must be at least a full-time instructor to be on this list, or perhaps even an associate professor. Graduates do not qualify for this list. It is the list that professors use to discuss matters of graduate studies which are sensitive and confidential, such as admissions, graduate seminar paper awards, or other department honors. The department's general business list is Grapevine or grapevine@listserv.olemiss.edu. It is open to all professors, instructors, or graduate students, as well as the department secretaries. It is the most vital list for graduates, as advising schedules, information on scholarships or grants, and employment opportunities all come through this channel. Graduate instructors and teaching assistants must be on this list, as job-related information comes almost exclusively through this forum--as mentioned before, the paper memo in the mailbox is largely extinct here. This list is used also for undergraduate teaching matters, such as plagiarism cases; therefore, undergraduates are not allowed on this list. Because it is restricted, all requests to join Grapevine are subject to approval. For this reason, the easiest way to get on the list is to write the moderator, at owner-grapevine@listserv.olemiss.edu, identifying yourself and requesting that your address be added to the list. The English graduate students' private list is Engrad, or engrad@listserv.olemiss.edu. Only English graduate students may be a member of Engrad. This is where we discuss (more or less openly) graduate classes, policies, and professors. It's a place to organize parties or just to bitch. Because it is restricted, all requests to join Engrad are subject to approval. For this reason, the easiest way to get on the list is to write the moderator, at owner-engrad@listserv.olemiss.edu, identifying yourself and requesting that your address be added to the list. The most general list, open to anyone with the desire to join, is sigmatd@listserv.olemiss.edu. Visit the local chapter Sigma Tau Delta web site, http://www.olemiss.edu/orgs/sigmatd/ to join. Local readings and chapter events are posted on this list. You may feel overwhelmed if you join all of the lists which your status allows, but be assured that it is worth it. Learn some automatic sorting rules, if your email program allows that, and don't fear the DEL key. Some chaff always accompanies the grain, but you will find some invaluable information in these lists which you won't get any other way. If you've got your email ready, join right now. Ole Miss has a relatively small department, with a high concentration of young, well-published, and productive scholars. You will find many of the faculty members very accessible and committed to fostering the development of graduate students' careers. Here, in their own words, are the graduate faculty introducing their teaching and research interests. (New faculty will be adding sections here soon.) Jack Barbera Office: Bondurant W209A | Phone: 915-7183 I teach Modern American Drama, Film, and 20th Century Poetry courses. My dissertation was on the American poet John Berryman, about whom I've published several essays. I have co-authored a biography of the English poet Stevie Smith and at present I am especially interested in the African-American poet, Robert Hayden. In American Drama, besides the major figures (O'Neill, Williams, Miller and Albee), I'm interested in such contemporary playwrights as David Mamet, Tina Howe, and August Wilson. I have written articles on Mamet and reviewed his plays. I'm also interested in the South African playwright Athol Fugard and I have guest edited a special issue of Twentieth Century Literature devoted to his work. My interest in film embraces directors from Hitchcock to Bergman to Spike Lee. I've published an essay on the film Tomorrow, and my Introduction to Film syllabus has been published in a book on selected college film syllabi. Office: Croft 114 | Phone: 915-7758
My areas of interest include feminist criticisms and nineteenth and twentieth-century American literature. More specifically I am currently working on issues of aesthetics in the fiction of nineteenth-century American women writers. I focus on novels that feature a woman artist as heroine. Other areas that I pursue are African-American literature, Southern women writers and detective fiction. Office: Ventress 208 | Phone: 915-7177
I am interested in British and American literature of the twentieth century. I have taught courses at Ole Miss on Henry James and Philip Larkin; in addition, I have regularly taught a course called "Contemporary Literature" that concentrates on British and American poetry, fiction, and drama of the period 1945 to the present. I have been involved with various programs sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, and I have taught on occasion a course for the English Department on "Images of the Southern Plantation in American Literature." At Ole Miss I have directed theses and dissertations on literary figures such as Edwin Muir, Barbara Pym, Anne Tyler, Wendell Berry, W.S. Merwin, John Updike, and James Hanley. Office: Bondurant 207W | Phone: 915-7914
My primary field of interest is modern and contemporary poetry, with gender studies and creative nonfiction as strong secondary interests. My training as a reader involved a study of all of the major periods of English and American verse, and my on-going training as a writer still leads me back to a wide range of writers, though contemporary female poets are those I turn to, and teach, most frequently. Office: Bondurant C130 | Phone: 915-7672
My interests, as reflected in teaching (including theses and dissertations) and research-publication since the 1960s, center in nineteenth-century studies, although I feel comfortable teaching American literature from the beginnings to the 1940s. My particular specialties are fiction, American drama to 1900, Gothicism, realism, and naturalism. I'm also interested in Victorian-Edwardian literature, chiefly the poets and fictionists, with concentrations in Tennyson, Meredith, the Pre-Raphaelites, the 1890s, the Housmans, and the short story at the turn of the century. I also work repeatedly with detective-mystery-crime writers and with bibliographical and textual studies. Regarding individual figures: Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, the Transcendentalists, Louisa May Alcott, Frank Norris, Mary N. Murfree, Mary E.W. Freeman, Sarah Orne Jewett, Edith Wharton, Amelia Edwards, George Egerton, Ella D'Arcy, Hubert Crackanthorpe, Frederick I. Anderson. Short-story and poetic theory, literary periodicals, and nineteenth-century humor are also priorities. Office: Bondurant C212 | Phone: 915-5929
My primary fields of interest are twentieth-century American literature, British and American women writers, feminist theory, Modernism, American poetry, and creative writing (poetry). My first book is on William Carlos Williams; my second will be on Willa Cather; and I have published essays on Williams, Cather, Anita Brookner, Louise Gluck, and Linda Gregg. I also write and publish poetry and am at present working to expand our offerings in creative writing and in the study of twentieth-century American poetry. Office: Bondurant C134 | Phone: 915-7674
I'm an associate professor specializing in 20th-century British literature and creative writing. I've published numerous essays on British Modernists such as Joyce, Woolf, Forster, Conrad, and T.S. Eliot, as well as a book on character theory. In addition, I've written a children's book, a novel, popular essays, and over sixty short stories in a wide range of periodicals. Office: Barnard 302 | Phone: 915-7145
I am a medievalist and (still better) a traditionalist. My principal research areas are Old English Poetry, especially religious verse, and the history of Old English scholarship. For the past twenty years I have reviewed scholarship devoted to Old English verse for "The Year's Work in Old English Studies," published by the Old English Newsletter. Among my present research projects are an edition of Georg Blaettermann's letter to Thomas Jefferson, written in 1824 (on teaching Old English and other languages at the University of Virginia), and a study of early scholars and the Beowulf manuscript. The courses I have recently taught include advanced English grammar, a survey of English literature from the Old English period through Samuel Johnson, a survey of Old English and Middle English literature, Chaucer, and Old English grammar and readings. Office: Bondurant W205A | Phone: 915-6949
I am always looking for prose of adventurous dimension, to be collected in a forthcoming anthology. I read, most avidly, prose fiction from all students in this effort to make of Ole Miss a signally unique writing environment and showcase. My own ventures in fiction continue apace, with barely a let-up for thirty years now. Office: Bondurant C213 | Phone: 915-7333
I study and teach literature of the English Renaissance, especially the drama and poetry. Since I believe that Renaissance literature was part of a much broader cultural field--that included the other arts, politics, historiography, patronage, propaganda, etc.--I always try to determine its meaning in historical context. At the same time I am influenced by current critical concerns about questions of gender, class, and ideology. Hence, my teaching and research reflect an effort to arrive at a sensible mix between a respect for history as well as contemporary issues. Office: Bondurant W209B | Phone: 915-5793
The bulk of my graduate work was in American Literature, from the beginnings to the present, both of which have expanded in the 30 years since I received my Ph.D. Still, I consider myself primarily an Americanist, with a strong emphasis on 20th-century fiction and poetry, reasonable strength in 19th-century, and steadily diminishing acquaintance with Colonial and pre-. For purposes of working with graduate students with the hope of bringing them more or less abreast of current critical practice, I am a Modernist: American and British literature, some European, theory and intellectual history, from the Romantic period through the first half of the 20th century. While Faulkner has been a central research concern, I have always tried to see him in the context of, and to bring to bear upon my study him, the major Modernist writers and thinkers: Nietzsche, Bergson, Freud, Wordsworth, James, Conrad, Joyce, Lawrence, Woolf, Kafka, Mann, and as much of the whole American tradition as I can grasp, from Puritan theology to Hawkes, DeLillo, Erdrich, Hannah, etc. Office: Bondurant C214B | Phone: 915-7050
I have specialized training in eighteenth-century studies with an emphasis on "Samuel Johnson and His Circle," drama, satire, biography and autobiography. I have published extensively on James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, and William Hogarth. Interested in drama of all periods, I have specific training and publications in the area of modern drama, serving as co-editor of a leading journal in modern American drama (published by Ohio State University Press) and having produced a two-volume reference work on theatre companies of the world (published by Greenwood Press). Another of my interests is popular culture, humor, and satire, areas in which I am also a published scholar. During the 1980's I acquired specialized training in the area of composition and rhetoric by taking the "Martha's Vineyard Summer Workshop on Teaching Composition," Purdue University's "Rhetoric Seminar," Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's "Technical Writing Institute," and the University of Michigan's "Technical Writing and Professional Communication Program." Researching various aspects of the writing process, I have also published articles and given a number of presentations on this field at CCCC, NCTE, Kansas Association of Teachers of English, and Mississippi Council of Teachers of English. Office: Bondurant W210 | Phone: 915-5500
As professor of English and holder of the Ottilie Schilling Chair of English Composition, I both study composition as an interdisciplinary field and direct the university's writing program. I teach writing to undergraduate students and writing theories and teaching practices to graduate students. My publications include two composition textbooks and two editions on composition theory and practice, as well as journal articles and chapters contributed to collections. I am especially interested in issues involved in teaching composition, such as the authority of knowledge in a writing classroom, collaborative learning, the relation of reading to writing, and assessment of writing. Office: Bondurant C129 | Phone: 915-7161
I study and teach American Literature before 1900 and Southern literature of all periods. I have a joint appointment between the English Department and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, which allows me to teach both traditional literature courses and interdisciplinary classes, often team-taught with other Southern Studies faculty members. I am particularly interested in Southern women writers. My current project examines the use of humor in the work of Southern female writers between 1875 and 1910 and establishes a tradition of humorous writing by Southern women. I have published articles about Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ellery Channing, Kaye Gibbons, and Josephine Humphreys. Office: Bondurant C133 | Phone: 915-7049
I write on the construction of gender in early modern literature: I look at the various discourses--legal, philosophical, political, medical--which attempt to describe gender in conjunction with material practices that govern how gender differences can be expressed, complicated, or redefined. My most recent work has combined this approach with an analysis of the formal constraints of literary genre in the closet dramas of Mary Sidney, Elizabeth Cary, Margaret Cavendish and their male contemporaries Samuel Daniel, Samuel Brandon, Fulke Grecille, and Thomas Killigrew. I tend to look at how texts written by women and those written by men create a dialogic exchange on the subject of gender, but I am also interested in the ways in which gender and class categories are appropriated and transformed by writers of either sex. In addition to my work in early modern literature, I am also interested in feminist theory, gay and lesbian studies and queer theory, new historicism and/or cultural materialism. Office: Somerville 301 | Phone: 915-7678
My primary training is in medieval literature and languages, my favorite course being the history of the English language. I also enjoy grammatical analysis and courses that allow that pursuit. In recent years I have spent more and more time developing computer modules for the teaching of composition and language. Much of my time is given over to training teachers to use computer technology to enhance their teaching. Office: Bondurant C217 | Phone: 915-7684
I was hired in 1989 to teach critical theory, but I like to take that term as broadly as possible to mean thinking critically about anything--from literature to translation, from ideology to interpersonal relationships, from genre to gender. My publications are in the fields of American literature (especially the 19th and 20th centuries), translation theory, language theory, gender theory, and psychoanalytic theory; my overriding research interests lie in language and the body (the somatics of language) as the axis of mediating between social norms and individual behavior. I've taught courses at Ole Miss in twentieth-century language theory, gender theory (men's and women's studies, team-taught with Sherrie Gradin), psychoanalytic theory, the Bible as literature, and American literature. Office: Bondurant W211 | Phone: 915-7675
I am primarily interested in Irish studies and 20th-century British literature. My interest in Ireland certainly includes modern Irish literature and the major figures associated with it--Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett, for example--but I am also working on 18th- and 19th-century Irish writing. I am particularly interested in the relationship between literature and social/political history. My current major research project, a history of Irish poetry from Swift to the present, reflects as well a general interest in literary history. Office: Bondurant C136 | Phone: 915-7668
My fields of interests include Victorian, the Novel, and Women's Literature. My teaching areas include Victorian Literature, Dickens, Women's Literature (British and American--19th and 20th Century), Sensation Fiction, Victorian Novel, Popular Literature (bestsellers with focus on gender relationships). My research includes published articles on Regina Maria Roche, Charles Dickens, Walter Pater, Wilkie Collins, W.H. Ainsworth, Ouida, M. E. Braddon, Stephen King, and Tom Robbins. I am currently working on a book which focuses on treatment of women in the fiction of Ouida and Braddon in collaboration with Ronald A. Schroeder. Office: Bondurant C218 | Phone: 915-7673
My primary teaching interests are in the English Romantic Period. I enjoy teaching the survey of Romantic Literature (English 555) and the special topics in the period (English 655: Studies in Romantic Literature) on a regular basis. The survey mostly covers a broad range of Romantic poetry, with only a little fiction and non-fiction prose; but in the seminar, I have dealt with individual poets-- notably Lord Byron-- with a wide variety of Romantic fiction, and with various approaches to eighteenth-century "pre-Romantic" literature. In addition, at the undergraduate level, I teach courses in fiction (The Novel) and expository writing (Advanced Composition). My research interests are also primarily in Romantic literature (again, notably with the poetry of Lord Byron), but recently I have been working in collaboration with Dr. Natalie Schroeder on Victorian fiction. Office: Bondurant C125 | Phone: 915-7687
My training is in American Studies, and I work in 19th- and 20th-century American literature and culture. I have been particularly interested in the ways in which the texts we read, teach, and perpetuate as canonic influence our conception of the real and affect the way we think about social issues. This reverses the more common American studies concern with knowing art in its social and political context; I want to understand how art produces context--how the literary aesthetics we value inform the structures of living. Much of my scholarship has been driven by this question, especially Novel Frames: Literature as Guide to Race, Sex and History in American Culture. I've worked extensively on two major 20th-century authors, Willa Cather and William Faulkner, with monographs (Faulkner's Apocrypha; Willa Cather and the Myth of American Migration) and articles on each figure. More recently, my interests are in the 19th-century, where I am drawn to major figures such as Herman Melville and Harriet Beecher Stowe. I am also concerned with the environment of educational institutions, which accounts for my work as department chair, and I have written as well (In the Age of Distraction) on the technological ecology in which we do our work as teachers and scholars. Office: Bondurant C211 | Phone: 915-7671
My teaching and research interests revolve around the following broad areas and the points of intersection between them: Southern literature and culture (especially in the twentieth century); the literature of the Vietnam War; law and the humanities; legal theory and literary theory; legal history and the history of the legal vocation; narrative and narratology; issues involving modernism as a literary, cultural, or philosophical movement; and semiotics. I am also particularly interested in the work of a number of individual writers; William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Robert Penn Warren, Carson McCullers, Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, Cormac McCarthy, and Richard Wright. Office: Bondurant C214A | Phone: 915-3172
My primary research and teaching interests
are in early American print culture. Working with a variety of texts that
extend from the early seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century,
I have focused much of my research on such canonical figures as Cotton
Mather and Ben Franklin and, additionally, on non-canonical texts, particularly on such popular forms as providence narratives, captivity narratives, criminal narratives, and Revolutionary narratives. Influenced by reader-response criticism and reception theory, I especially am concerned with the contextual relationships between writers, printers, and readers. Most of my publications have attempted to understand how literary texts functioned in early American society and have discussed the correlation between political, social, and cultural issues with literature. I also am interested in narrative theory, autobiography, American poetry, and Mark Twain.
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