News and Events
New Faculty in the Department of English
Full Professor
Henri Cole has held many teaching positions and artist-in-residencies at various institutions, including Columbia University, Harvard University, and his alma mater, The College of William and Mary. Cole served as director of the Academy of American Poets from 1982-1988. He has published six books of poetry, including The Marble Queen (1986), The Zoo Wheel of Knowledge (1989), The Look of Things (1995), The Visible Man (1998), Middle Earth (1998), and most recently, Blackbird and Wolf in 2007. Awards include finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Middle Earth, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an NEA award. Cole enjoys riding his bicycle and drinking martinis (though not, presumably, at the same time).Associate Professor
Hannibal Hamlin, who earned his Ph.D. from Yale University, specializes in Renaissance literature and culture, particularly Shakespeare and the Bible. His most recent project, a book-length study of biblical allusions in Shakespeare, garnered Hamlin three major fellowships in the last year with monetary awards topping $120,000. Hamlin is the author of Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature. Hamlin sang for a number of years as a professional soloist and ensemble singer in Toronto, specializing in Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque-style music, and performed in New York City before coming to Ohio.Sandra Macpherson earned her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, and taught at the University of Chicago from 1996-2007. Her book, Harm's Way: Tragic Responsibility and the Novel Form, is forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University Press. Essays have been published in various critical journals, including Representations, ELH, and Modern Philology. She earned a Faculty Award for Graduate Teaching in June 2007. Macpherson's recent works-in-progress include Pornotopianism, a monograph on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pornography and the paradoxes of the "porn wars." She has won the Franke Humanities Fellowship and the W.M. Keck Foundation and Mayers Fellowship, among others. To relax, Macpherson performs highland dancing and plays "shopgirl" with her three-year-old daughter.
Assistant Professor
Maria Teresa (Mabel) Agozzino (Adjunct) is the associate director of the American Folklore Society. She received her Ph.D in Folklore and Celtic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was head of the U.C. Berkeley Folklore Archives for several years. Agozzino has taught folklore courses at both U.C. Berkeley and California State University East Bay, organized many conferences, and served on several directorial and editorial boards, including those for the California Folklore Society, the Celtic Studies Association of North America, and the Ritual Year Working Group of the Société internationale d'ethnologie et de folklore. She has traveled widely and conducted fieldwork in several European countries, in North and South America, and most notably among the Welsh in Patagonia, Argentina. Her research interests and publications center on folk belief; calendrical customs; Wales, the Welsh, and the Welsh Diaspora; and Arthuriana.. Maria "Mabel" Agozzino got her nickname from a group of bikers.Jennifer Higginbotham completed her Ph.D. in English at Penn and specializes in Renaissance studies. Her dissertation examined the representation of girls in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature and its impact on emerging ideas about childhood and gender identity. She also studies Renaissance drama and Shakespeare more broadly as well as feminist and gender theory. She has taught courses at Penn in composition, Shakespeare, Renaissance women's writing, and contemporary revisions of Shakespeare. In the last year, Higginbotham has learned to both ride a horse and drive a car. She hopes to continue riding (and driving) in Columbus.
Daniel Keller received his Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of Louisville in May 2007. His dissertation was titled "Literacies in Transition: The Reading Practices of Entering College Students." His research on literacy and video games has been published in "Literacy, Identity, and Gaming" in Gaming Lives in the 21st Century: Literate Connections, and "Reading and Playing: What Makes Interactive Fiction Unique" in The Players' Realm: Video Games and Gaming Culture. Keller's interest in video games, along with his work on multimodal literacy, is part of his larger concerns with student literacy. Keller won the Kairos Graduate Student Award for Scholarship in 2006. Keller loves traveling to odd tourist sites, including the Desert of Maine—thirty-five acres of sand in the middle of Maine's pine forests.
Carolyn Skinner earned her Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of Louisville. Articles on nineteenth-century women's rhetoric, writing center theory and practice, and collaborative composition have appeared in Rhetoric Review, Writing Center Journal, and Multimodal Composition for the 21st Century: A Resource Book for Teachers, edited by Cindy Selfe. Works-in-progress include a book-length manuscript, Delicate Authority: Ethos in the Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century American Women Physicians. Skinner was the recipient of the John Richard Binford Memorial Award from the University of Louisville (an honor awarded to one graduating Ph.D. student university-wide for excellence in graduate studies). When not researching and writing, Skinner takes ballet classes.
Nathan Wallace received his Ph.D from the University of Notre Dame, and his wide array of interest include visual culture, Enlightenment philosophy (particularly Edmund Burke), as well as British and Irish literatures. He received a Service-Free Year Fellowship that allowed him to conduct research in Dublin, Ireland from 1998-1999. Works-in-progress include a book-length manuscript, The Critical Constabulary: A Literary and Political History of Anglo-Irish Imperial Reconciliation. Wallace has taught many courses, including British Literature 1800 to Present and Studies in Literature and Other Arts. He is assistant professor at Ohio State-Marion. Wallace's friends in the department report he has an abiding fear of shellfish.
Visiting Faculty
Anita Albertsen is a visiting scholar for Project Narrative. She earned her M.A. in Scandinavian Language and Literature from the University of Southern Denmark. Since 2006, she has been a Ph.D. Fellow at the Institute of Literature, Media, and Cultural Studies on a grant from The Danish Research Council. She has published articles in a number of Danish journals including Sysvinkler and Apparatur. Albertsen is haunted by toilet matters, including having an office at University of Southern Denmark located right next to a toilet that Jacques Derrida might have gone to when he visited Kolding in 2001.Jan Alber is an Assistant Professor at the English Department of the University of Freiburg in Germany, and currently a visiting scholar for Project Narrative. His current research focuses on "unnatural" elements in postmodernist drama, fiction, and film. Alber's dissertation, Narrating the Prison: Role and Representation in Charles Dickens' Novels, Twentieth-Century Fiction, and Film, was published by Cambria Press in 2007. He has written articles on Beckett, Dickens, narratology, the prison experience, the ideological underpinnings of prison narratives, and cinematic prison metaphors. These essays were published or are forthcoming in journals like Dickens Studies Annual, The Journal of Popular Culture, Short Story Criticism, and Style. He has also contributed to numerous edited collections. He sometimes has very strange dreams. In one of them, he was chased by three bearded witches on broomsticks who tried to kill him with chain saws.
Gary Bays is a visiting professor with the Digital Media Project. He is an associate professor of English at Wayne College, where he has taught since 1986. He earned his B.S. and M.A. degrees from Central Michigan University. In his spare time, Bays is an accomplished guitarist.
Susan Burch earned her Ph.D. in American and Soviet history from Georgetown University. She is a research associate at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, and has taught at Gallaudet University and lectured in Aberdeen, Scotland. She was a Fulbright Scholar in the Czech Republic in Spring 2004. Burch is the author or editor of five books, including Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson, co-authored with Hannah Joyner, and nominated for multiple awards. She is editor-in-chief of forthcoming The Encyclopedia of American Disability History, as well as At the Intersections: Deaf Meets Disability Studies, co-edited with Alison Kafer. She has published numerous articles, book chapters, and reviews. Burch is also a swing dance enthusiast, and can often be seen walking the halls of Denney Hall in saddle shoes.
