English Faculty and Staff

Faculty

Danit Brown, Chair and Associate Professor
B.A., Oberlin College; M.F.A., Indiana University

E-mail: 

Publications: Ask for a Convertible, a collection of linked short stories. Fiction in StoryQuarterly, Glimmer Train, and Story, among others. She is at work on a novel.

Courses: Introductory Creative Writing, Advanced Creative Writing (Fiction), Creative Writing Workshop (Fiction), Introduction to Creative Nonfiction, Screenwriting Fundamentals, Composition.

Lauren Brown, Assistant Professor
B.A. SUNY Geneseo, M.A., Ph.D., Binghamton University

E-mail:

Publications:  Publications: Lauren's research interests include American literature of the 20th & 21st centuries, multi-ethnic literature of the U.S., nation in literature, postcolonial theory and literature, immigration and diaspora, women writers, and gender studies. Recent research has been published in The Cormac McCarthy Journal and The New Americanist. She is currently at work on two articles: one on Toni Morrison's novel Home, and another exploring Latinx immigration and experience in contemporary U.S. literature.  

Courses: College Writing, Introduction to Literary Study, Literature Matters, American Literature II.

Nels Christensen, Associate Professor
B.A., California State University; M.A. & Ph.D. Michigan State University

E-mail:

• Research and Writing: Ecocriticism, Ecopedagogy, and Environmental Creative Non-Fiction.
• Publications: Learning Where the Weather Is Real: Why Teaching in Bad Weather Is Good. Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, Facing the Weather in James Galvin's The Meadow and Cormac McCarthy's The Road Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE) 21:1 (Winter 2014), Leaving a Trace Wake: Great Lakes Thought and Culture, The Art of Stillness Gray's Sporting Journal.

Courses: Composition, The Idea of Nature and the Nature of Ideas, Writing in Place, Terrorists and Treehuggers.

Scott Hendrix, Director of the Writing Center
B.A., Oregon State University; M.F.A., University of Oregon; Ph.D., University of Kansas

E-mail:

Areas of Specialization: Literacy studies, composition studies, writing center theory/practice, and pedagogy.

Courses: Composition, English Language, Responding to Student Writing.

Ian F. MacInnes, Howard L. McGregor Professor of Humanities
B.A., Swarthmore College; M.A. & Ph.D., University of Virginia

E-mail: 
Home Page: http://aulis.org/

Publications: Ian's scholarship focuses on representations of animals and the environment in Renaissance literature, particularly in Shakespeare. He has published essays on topics such as horse breeding and geohumoralism in Henry V (2011), on invertebrate bodies in Hamlet (2012), and on animal networks in early modern England (20020). His long-running website and now iPhone app, Ian’s English Calendar, calculates dates for scholars of English history and Literature. 

Courses: British Literature I, Greek & Roman Literature, Shakespeare, Age of Elizabeth, Voices of Liberty: Milton and His Age, Redeeming Eve: Early Modern Women's Writing, Renaissance Ecology, Composition.

Helena Mesa, Associate Professor 
B.A., Indiana University; M.F.A. University of Maryland, Ph.D. University of Houston

E-mail:

Publications: A collection of poems, Horse Dance Underwater. She is also co-editor of Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets. Her poems have appeared in literary journals such as Indiana Review, Third Coast, Pleiades, and Barrow Street. She is currently at work on a new collection of poems.

Courses: Introductory Creative Writing, Advanced Creative Writing (Poetry), Creative Writing Workshop (Poetry), Visual Poetry, Introduction to Creative Nonfiction, Latina/o Literature, Composition.

Ashley Miller, Assistant Professor
B.A., Vassar College; M.A. & Ph.D., Indiana University

E-mail:  

Publications: Ashley's research interests include Romantic and Victorian literature, media studies and print culture, gender studies, and the history of science. She is the author of Poetry, Media, and the Material Body (Cambridge, 2018). Other recent research has been published in Victorian Literature and Culture, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Studies in Romanticism, Literature Compass, and Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies. 

Courses: Writing Essentials, College Writing, Introduction to Literary Study, The Prehistory of Sherlock, British Literature II, Victorian Sexualities, The Novel and the New, The British Romantics, British Fiction after 1850.

Krista Quesenberry, Visiting Assistant Professor
B.A., Ball State University; M.A. and dual-title Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University

E-mail: 

Research Specialization: Krista's teaching and research covers a range of fields -- professional writing, American literature, feminist and LGBTQ theories, and narrative medicine. Her recent work has appeared in Life Writing, The Hemingway Review, and the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, and she is currently working in editorial roles on correspondence projects for American literary figures (Ernest Hemingway and Kay Boyle with James Laughlin) and on a graphic memoir about illness, disease, and disability (Bill Doan). 

Courses: Intro to Literature, Multimedia Journalism sequence, Professional Writing. Faculty adviser, Albion Albion Pleiad.

Jess Roberts, Professor 
B.A., Dartmouth College; M.A., Ph.D., University of Michigan

E-mail:

Publications: Jess’s recent publications include essays on Sarah Piatt in The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Poetry (Cambridge UP, 2011) and A History of Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Poetry (Cambridge UP, 2017). You can find her pedagogical essays in south: a scholarly journal 48.2 (2016) and Options for Teaching the Literatures of the American Civil War (MLA, 2016). Her writing has also appeared in Callaloo, ESQ, and Oxford Bibliographies in American Literature.

Jess directs Albion’s Big Read program and the Big Read Youth Leadership Program. For more information about that program, please visit our website at www.albionbigread.org. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram as well. 

Courses: Writing Essentials, College Writing, Professional Writing, Literature Matters, American Literature I & II, African-American Literature, Children’s Literature, Literature of the American Civil War, Whitman and Dickinson in Context

Staff

Mary Morrow

Email: 
Office: Vulgamore 406 
Phone: 517.629.0232

Faculty Emeriti

James W. Cook, B.A., Wayne State University; M.A., University of Michigan; Ph.D., Wayne State University

John E. Hart, B.A., Kansas Wesleyan; M.A. & Ph.D., Syracuse University

Sarah (Sally) Jordan, B.A., Salem College; M.A. & Ph.D., Brandeis

Judith Lockyer, B.A., M.A., University of Kentucky; Ph.D., University of Michigan

Paul Loukides, B.A., University of Pittsburgh; M.A., University of Iowa

Eugene E. Miller, B.A., University of Notre Dame; M.A., Ohio University; Ph.D., University of Illinois