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Faculty and Staff

English

  • Phone: (507) 222-4322
  • Fax: (507) 222-5601

Faculty

Faculty Page photo of Vern Bailey
Vern D. Bailey
Marjorie Crabb Garbisch Professor of English, Film and the Liberal Arts, Emeritus
Office: Laird Hall 208
Phone: x4322
Peter Balaam
Peter J. Balaam
Assistant Professor of English
Office: Laird Hall 205A
Phone: x7492

Peter Balaam teaches courses in early American literature and culture, with a special interest in the 19th century. He is currently at work on a book on mourning in the antebellum era. Degrees: University of California Berkeley, B.A.; Princeton Theological Seminary, M.Div.; Princeton University, M.A., Ph.D.

Wayne Carver
Wayne M. Carver
William H Laird Professor of Liberal Arts, Emeritus
Office: Laird Hall 208
Phone: x4322

Wayne Carver, William H. Laird Professor of Liberal Arts, Emeritus, graduated from Weber Junior College (Ogden, Utah) and Kenyon College (Gambier, Ohio) and joined the English faculty of Carleton in 1954. At Carleton he was in on the beginning of the teacher certification program, the American Studies Program, and The Carleton Miscellany. He worked on the Miscellany for its first seventeen years. He continues to write and publish ephemera and to teach whenever and wherever he has the chance. Degrees: B.A. Kenyon College

Arnab Chakladar
Arnab Chakladar
Assistant Professor of English
Office: Laird Hall 202
Phone: x5547

Arnab Chakladar teaches and writes on South Asian literature and film, and postcolonial studies. He has published on the marketing of Indian literature, the novels of Shashi Deshpande, and multilingual publishing and translation on the Web. He is the founder of AnotherSubcontinent.com, an online journal and forum on South Asian society and culture. He is unhealthily obsessed with his dogs. Degrees: Delhi University (Hindu College), BA; University of Southern California, Ph.D."

Nancy Cho
Nancy J. Cho
Professor of English
Director of American Studies
Office: Goodsell Observatory 204
Phone: x4315

Nancy Cho teaches and writes on nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, Asian American literature, and contemporary multicultural drama. She also offers courses in American studies. Degrees: Yale, B.A.; Michigan (Ann Arbor), M.A., Ph.D.

Adriana Estill
Adriana Estill
Associate Professor of English and American Studies
Office: Laird Hall 207A
Phone: x7498

Adriana Estill teaches courses on U.S. Latino/a literature and twentieth century American literature, especially poetry. She also teaches in the American Studies program. She has published essays on Sandra Cisneros and Ana Castillo and recently contributed to the Gale encyclopedia of Latino/a authors with scholarly entries on Sandra María Esteves and Giannina Braschi. Her interest in popular culture has led to published articles on Mexican telenovelas and their literary origins as well as to current research into the perceptions and constructions of Latina beauty in contemporary Latino literature and the mass media. Degrees: Stanford B.A.; Cornell, M.A., Ph.D.

Keith Harrison
Keith Harrison
Professor of English & Writer in Residence, Emeritus
Office: Laird Hall 208
Phone: x4322

Keith Harrison, an internationally known poet, was a Professor of English and Writer in Residence at Carleton from 1968 to 1996. He taught beginning and advanced Crafts of Writing Poetry and experimental classes in poetry recitation. A recent book, entitled Changes: New and Collected Poems, 1959-2002, was published in 2002 by the Black Willow Press.

Pierre Hecker
Pierre Hecker
Assistant Professor of English
Off Campus: Winter 2010 through Spring 2010
Office: Laird Hall 201
Phone: x4489

Pierre Hecker’s areas of teaching interest include Shakespeare; the drama, poetry, and prose of the English Renaissance; drama in performance; visual culture; the history, theory, and criticism of drama and film; screenwriting; and genre fiction. Degrees: Wesleyan, B.A.; Columbia, M.F.A. (Film); Oxford, M.Phil and D.Phil.

Gregory Hewett
Gregory G. Hewett
Associate Professor of English
Office: Laird Hall 304
Phone: x4330

Gregory Hewett teaches American literature and creative writing. He has a special interest in poetry and poetics. His third book of poems, The Eros Conspiracy, has recently been published by Coffee House Press. Greg has been a Fulbright Fellow, Fulbright Professor, and a Fellow at the Camargo Foundation, Cassis, France. Degrees: New York (Binghamton), B.A.; California (Davis), M.A.; New York (Albany), D.A.

Susan Jaret McKinstry
Susan Jaret McKinstry
Helen F. Lewis Professor of English
Office: Laird Hall 214
Phone: x4325

Susan Jaret McKinstry teaches courses on Jane Austen, the Victorian novel, Victorian poetry and painting, narrative theory, literary theory, and creative writing. Her current research explores poetry and painting, book illustration, and the book as object in the work of the Pre-Raphaelites. She is the Helen F. Lewis Professor of English. Degrees: Miami (Ohio), B.A., M.A.; Michigan, Ph.D.


Mike Kowalewksi
Michael J. Kowalewski
McBride Professor of English and Environmental Studies
Chair of English
Office: Laird Hall 210
Phone: x4323

Michael Kowalewski teaches courses in American literature and culture. He is a former Director of American Studies and active in the Environmental and Technology Studies (ENTS) program. He is a former president of the Western Literature Association and the author or editor of several books, including Deadly Musings: Violence and Verbal Form in American Fiction (1993), Reading the West: New Essays on the Literature of the American West (1996), and Gold Rush: A Literary Exploration (1997). Degrees: Amherst, B.A.; Rutgers, M.A., Ph.D.

Jessica Leiman
Jessica L. Leiman
Assistant Professor of English
Office: Laird Hall 207B
Phone: x4326

Jessica Leiman teaches and writes on British literature of the long eighteenth century, with particular focus on the novel, life-writing, gender and sexuality, and contemporary print culture. She is currently working on a book on impotence and authorship in eighteenth-century fictional and nonfictional personal histories. Degrees: Williams, B.A.; Yale, M.A., Ph.D.

Faculty Page photo of James Mcdonnell
Jim McDonnell
Class of 1941 Professor of English and the Liberal Arts, Emeritus

James McDonnell specializes in Irish literature, modern criticism and Shakespeare; he has, on a number of occasions, taken a college seminar studying Irish literature in Ireland. Degrees: Cambridge, B.A., M.A.; Washington University (St. Louis), Ph.D.

Elizabeth McKinsey
Beth McKinsey
Professor of English and American Studies
Office: Language and Dining Center 211
Phone: x5900

Elizabeth McKinsey is returning to the classroom, after thirteen years as Dean of the College, and to her "first love" American literature and American Studies. Her scholarship has focused on 19th century American literature, art, and culture; 20th century Southern literature; and issues in liberal education. She taught previously at Harvard University and Bryn Mawr College. Degrees: Harvard-Radcliffe A.B., Harvard Ph.D.

Frank Morral
Frank R. Morral
William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English, Emeritus
Office: Laird Hall 208
Phone: x4322
Faculty Page photo of Kofi Owusu
Kofi Owusu
Professor of English
Director of African/African American Studies
Office: Laird Hall 209
Phone: x4319

Kofi Owusu teaches and writes on African, African American, British, and Anglophone literatures; he is the director of the African/African American Studies program. Degrees: University of Ghana, B.A.; University of Edinburgh, M.Litt.; University of Alberta, Ph.D.

Timothy Raylor
Timothy Raylor
Professor of English
Office: Laird Hall 303
Phone: x4313

Timothy Raylor teaches English literature with a focus on Renaissance poetry and drama. Degrees: Newcastle upon Tyne, B.A.; Oxford (Worcester College), D.Phil.

Web site photo of George Shuffelton.
George G. Shuffelton
Associate Professor of English
Off Campus: Spring 2010
Office: Laird Hall 204A
Phone: x4317

George Shuffelton teaches and writes on medieval literature, with a particular interest in Chaucer, Langland, and Gower. His current research concentrates on the relationship between miscellany manuscripts and Middle English poetry. Degrees: Harvard, A.B.; Cambridge, M.Phil.; Yale, Ph.D.

Greg Smith May 05
Gregory B. Smith
Lloyd P. Johnson-Norwest Professor of English and the Liberal Arts
Office: Laird Hall 215
Phone: x4320

Gregory Blake Smith teaches classes in American literature and creative writing. He is the author of two novels, The Devil in the Dooryard and The Divine Comedy of John Venner, which was selected as a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times. A new novel, The Madonna of Las Vegas, will be published by Crown in 2005. Degrees: Bowdoin, A.B.; Iowa, M.F.A.

Click here for Greg Smith's web site.

Edward L. Sostek
Professor of English and Theater Arts, Emeritus
George Soule
George A. Soule
Professor of English, Emeritus
Office: Laird Hall 208
Phone: x4322

George Soule, Professor Emeritus, published in 1988 Four British Women Novelists: Anita Brookner, Margaret Drabble, Iris Murdoch, Barbara Pym, An Annotated and Critical Secondary Bibliography. He teaches courses on Shakespeare, James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Wordsworth, Jane Austen, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Murdoch, and John Fowles for the Cannon Valley Elder Collegium of Northfield and lectures for the Wordsworth Winter School in Grasmere, Cumbria. Degrees: Carleton, B.A.; Yale, M.A., Ph. D.

Professor Soule's new web site: http://apps.carleton.edu/people/gsoule/

Faculty Page photo of Constance Walker
Constance Walker
Professor of English
Office: Laird Hall 203
Phone: x4314

Constance Walker teaches courses on rhetoric, Romanticism, and Jane Austen. Her current research involves the literary culture of the Austen family. Degrees: Allegheny, B.A.; Pennsylvania, M.A., Ph.D.

Faculty Page photo of Ruth Weiner
Ruth Weiner
Class of 1944 Professor of Theater and the Liberal Arts
Chair of Theater and Dance
Professor of English
Office: Music & Drama Center UL4
Phone: x4440
Robert Tisdale Web Photo.
Robert G. Tisdale
Marjorie Crabb Garbisch Professor of English and the Liberal Arts, Emeritus
Office: Laird Hall 302
Phone: x4316
Dennis M. Cass
Visiting Instructor in English

Staff

Elizabeth Ciner
Elizabeth J. Ciner
Associate Dean of the College
Senior Lecturer in English
Office: Laird Hall 133
Phone: x4300

Liz Ciner has been at Carleton since 1982, when she was hired to run the Write Place and the writing program and to teach rhetoric. Her major fields of interest in English are American multi-cultural literature and composition. Although she has served as associate dean of the college for over two decades, she continues to read in both areas and supervises independent studies on multicultural autobiography, in selected authors and in rhetoric and composition. Degrees: University of Pennsylvania, BA; MA, University of Washington, MA, PhD.

Carol Rutz
Carol A. Rutz
Director of the College Writing Program
Senior Lecturer in English
Office: Leighton Hall 310
Phone: x4082

Carol Rutz has directed the College Writing Program since 1997. In addition to teaching at least two writing courses per year, she works closely with faculty to help them employ writing in their courses--whatever the discipline. Recently, she has been active in the Quantitative Inquiry, Reasoning, and Knowledge (QuIRK) initiative, which seeks to teach students to use quantitative reasoning in written argument. Her research interests include response to student writing, assessment of writing, and assessment of faculty development. Degrees: Gustavus Adolphus, B.A.; Hamline, M.A.; Minnesota, PhD.

Carolyn Soule
Carolyn Soule
Administrative Assistant in English
Office: Laird Hall 208
Phone: x4322

Carolyn Soule is the English Department's Administrative Assistant. Working with her faculty colleagues and her student office assistants and learning new computer programs make her job a pleasure. Building and revising this web site is her current computer project. She also has taught composition and word processing in the Carleton Summer Writing Program. Degrees: Carleton, B.A.; Harvard, M.A.

Priscilla Paton
Visiting Scholar in English