Department of English

Faculty

PROFESSORS

 

Hadara Bar-Nadav (PhD, University of Nebraska-Lincoln) Assistant Professor of Poetry.  Poetry, especially modern and postmodern poetry and poetics; African-American literature; interdisciplinary studies.

Book: A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight (MARGIE/IntuiT House, March 2007)  awarded the 2005 MARGIE Book Prize. Recent work can be found in the Beloit Poetry Journal, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, The Journal, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, and Verse. Reviews found in the American Book Review and the Harvard Review.  

barnadavh@umkc.com;  (816) 235-6033; Cockefair Hall 121. 

John Cyril Barton (Ph.D., University of California, Irvine). Assistant Professor: American Literature, especially the 19th Century; African American Literature; Legal and Cultural Studies; Rhetoric; Critical Theory.
Selected Articles: “Howells’ Rhetoric of Realism: The Economy of Pain(t) in The Rise of Silas Lapham and Social Complicity in The Minister’s Charge.”  Studies in American Fiction 29:2 (2001): 159-187; “An American Travesty: Capital Punishment & the Criminal Justice System in Dreiser’s An American Tragedy.”  Research in English and American Literature  v. 18, (2002): 357-384; “Iterability and the Order-Word Plateau: ‘A Politics of the Performative’ in Derrida and Deleuze/Guattari.” Critical Horizons 4:2 (2003): 227-264.
bartonjc@umkc.edu, (816) 235-5206, Cockefair Hall 112  

Virginia Blanton (Ph.D., SUNY-Binghamton). Associate Professor: Old and Middle English Languages and Literatures; Arthurian Legends; Medieval Romance; Hagiography and Religious Studies; Women's Studies.Books: Intertexts: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Culture Presented to Paul E. Szarmach, co-edited with Helene Scheck (MRTS, 2008). Signs of Devotion: The Cult of St. Æthelthryth in Medieval England, 695-1615 (Penn State Press, 2007). Journal Issues Edited: Twenty Years Later: The Reception of Feminist Scholarship in Medieval Studies, Medieval Feminist Forum 43 (2007). Founding Mothers and Medieval Foremothers, co-edited with Anne Clark Bartlett, Medieval Feminist Forum 42 (2006).

Selected Articles:"‘Don’t worry, I won’t let them rape you’: Guinevere’s Agency in Jerry Bruckheimer’s Production of King Arthur," Arthuriana 15.3 (2005), 91-112.", "King Anna’s Daughters: Genealogical Narrative and Cult Formation in the Liber Eliensis," Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 30.1 (2004): 127-149. "Imagines Etheldredae: Mapping Hagiographic Representations of Abbatial Power and Religious Patronage," Studies in Iconography 23 (2002): 55-107. "Tota integra, tota incorrupta: The Shrine of St. Ethelthryth as Symbol of Monastic Autonomy," Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32.2 (2002): 227-267.
blantonv@umkc.edu, (816) 235-2766, Cockefair Hall 16H

Michelle Boisseau (Ph.D., University of Houston). Professor: Poetry; Creative Writing; Modern and Contemporary Literature. Coordinator of Creative Writing; Associate Editor of BkMk Press.
Books: Trembling Air.  The University of Arkansas Press Fayetteville, 2003; Writing Poems, 6th edition. Pearson Longman, 2004; Understory, Samuel French Morse Prize (Northeastern University Press 1996) ; No Private Life ( Vanderbilt University Press 1990). Recent work can be found in these journals: Poetry, TriQuarterly, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Cincinnati Poetry Review, Great Rivers Review, National Poetry Review; and in these anthologies: Collins, 180 More (Random House) 2005; Vando and Miller, Chance of a Ghost (Helicon Nine 2005); Hix, Wild and Whirling Words (Etruscan 2004); Meyer, Poetry: An Introduction (Bedford St. Martins 2003).
boisseaum@umkc.edu, (816) 235-2561, Cockefair Hall 16G

Joan Dean (Ph.D., Purdue University). Distinguished Teaching Professor: Modern American, British, and Irish Literature; Drama; Shakespeare; Film.
Book: Dancing at Lughnasa. Cork University Press, 2003; Riot And Great Anger: Stage censorship in Twentieth-Century Ireland. University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.
deanj@umkc.edu, (816) 235-2555, Cockefair Hall 114

Stephen John Dilks (Ph.D., Rutgers University). Associate Professor: Modern and Contemporary British and Irish Literature; Composition Theory and Practice; Modernism and Postmodernism; Literary Theory; Samuel Beckett and James Joyce; Essayisms.
Books: Cultural Conversation: The Presence of the Past. Bedford / St. Martin's, 2001.
dilkss@umkc.edu, (816) 235-2556, Cockefair Hall 16C

Laurie Ellinghausen (Ph.D., University of California - Santa Barbara). Assistant Professor: Renaissance/Early Modern Literature; Shakespeare; Class, Labor, and Social Hierarchy; Early Modern Women's Writing; Cultural Studies.

Book: Labor and Writing in Early Modern England, 1550-1660 (forthcoming from Ashgate Press)

Selected Articles:"'Shame and eternal shame': The Dynamics of Historical Trauma in Shakespeare's First Tetralogy," forthcoming in Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Vol. 19 (2007) "Literary Property and the Single Woman in Isabella Whitney's A Sweet Nosgay," Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 (Winter 2005), 1-22 "Black Acts: Textual Labor and Commercial Deceit in Thomas Dekker's Lantern and Candle-light," in Rogues and Early Modern Literary Culture, ed. Craig Dionne and Steven Mentz, Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2004, 294-311. "The Individualist Project of John Taylor 'The Water Poet'," Ben Jonson Journal, Vol. 9 (2003), 147-69

ellinghausenl@umkc.edu, (816) 235-6032, Cockefair Hall 121

 

Jennifer Frangos (Ph.D., Stony Brook University). Assistant Professor: Eighteenth-Century British literature and culture; history of sexuality; feminist theory, queer theory; cultural studies, Transatlantic studies.
Book: Teaching the Transatlantic Eighteenth Century, edited with Cristobal Silva (forthcoming, Cambridge Scholars Press).
Selected Articles: “Manl(e)y Fictions: The Woman in Man’s Clothes and the Pleasures of Delarivier Manley’s ‘new Cabal,’” Sexual Perversions 1650–1890, ed. Julie Peakman (forthcoming: Palgrave) … “Ghosts in the Machine: Eighteenth-Century Apparitions and the Discourses of Enlightenment,” Intersections 9, ‘Spirits Unseen: The Representation of Subtle Bodies in Early Modern European Culture,’ (forthcoming: Brill, 2007) … “Aphra Behn’s Cunning Stunts: ‘To the fair Clarinda’,” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 45:1 (Spring 2004) 21–40 … “‘I love and only love the fairer sex’: The Writing of a Lesbian Identity in the Diaries of Anne Lister (1791–1840),” Women’s Life-writing: Finding Voice/Building Community, ed. Linda S. Coleman (Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1997) 43–61.
frangosj@umkc.edu  816-235-2559; Cockefair Hall 120 

Jane Greer (Ph.D., Ohio State University), Associate Professor: Composition Studies; History of Literacy; Women & Girls and Print Culture.
Book: Girls and Literacy in America: Historical Perspectives to the Present. ABC-CLIO, 2003.
greerj@umkc.edu, (816) 235-2557, 5201 Rockhill

Christie Hodgen (Ph.D., University of Missouri; M.F.A., Indiana University).  Assistant Professor: Fiction; Creative Writing; contemporary literature; history of the short story. Publications: Hello, I Must Be Going (W.W. Norton & Co., 2006); A Jeweler�s Eye for Flaw (U. Massachusetts Press, 2003).  Short stories and novellas published in over a dozen magazines and anthologies, including: The Georgia Review, Quarterly West, New Stories from the South and Scribner�s Best of the Fiction Workshops.  Awards include a Pushcart Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Grant, The AWP Prize in Fiction, and the Faulkner Society Medal for the Novella.

hodgenc@umkc.edu (816) 235-5974  112 Cockefair Hall

Daniel Mahala (D.A., SUNY - Albany). Associate Professor and Director of Writing Across the Curriculum: Composition Theory; Rhetoric; Cultural Studies; Critical Theory.
mahalad@umkc.edu, (816) 235-2763, 5201 Rockhill

Jennifer Phegley (Ph.D., Ohio State University). Associate Professor: Victorian Literature and Culture; Authorship, Reading, and Publishing in the 19th Century
Books: Educating the Proper Woman Reader.  Ohio State University Press, 2004; Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present. University of Toronto Press, forthcoming.
phegleyj@umkc.edu, (816) 235-5973, Cockefair Hall 16F

Michael Pritchett (M.F.A., Warren Wilson College). Assistant Professor: Fiction Writing; Modern Novel; Introduction to Fiction. Coordinator: Professional Writing emphasis of the M.A. degree in English. Faculty Advisor: Number One, UMKC's Student Literary Magazine.
Book: The Venus Tree.  University of Iowa Press, 1998
pritchettmi@umkc.edu, (816) 235-2765, University House 226
http://p.faculty.umkc.edu/pritchettmi/

Jeffrey A. Rydberg-Cox (Ph.D. University of Chicago). Associate Professor: Classics; Greek Rhetoric; Ancient Myth and Religion; Corpus Linguistics; Digital Libraries.
Books: Digital Libraries and the Challenges of Digital Humanities.  Chandos Press, 2005; Lysias: Selected Speeches.  Focus Press, 2003.  Selected Articles:  “Talking About Violence: Clustered Participles in the Speeches of Lysias” Literary and Linguistic Computing 20.2, 1995; pages 219-235; “The Cultural Heritage Language Technologies Consortium”  D-Lib 11.5, May 2005. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may05/rydberg-cox/05rydberg-cox.html.
rydbergcoxj@umkc.edu, (816) 235-2560, Cockefair Hall 107
http://r.faculty.umkc.edu/rydbergcoxj

Anthony Sze-Fai Shiu (Ph.D., Michigan State University). Assistant Professor: American Literature, especially the 20th and 21st Centuries; Asian American Literature; African American Literature; Critical Race Theory; Cultural Studies.Selected Articles: "Styl(us): Asian North America, Turntablism, Relation." CR: The New Centennial Review 7.1 (2007): 81-106.; "On Loss: Anticipating a Future for Asian American Studies." MELUS 31.1 (2006): 3-33.; "Transformation and Agency in Asian American Studies." CR: The New Centennial Review 6.2 (2006): 111-140.; "The Devil's Traxionary (Civil Liberties Cut)." Research in English and American Literature 18 (2002): 307-22. (with Scott Michaelsen).; "What Yellowface Hides: Cultural Studies, Whiteness, and the American Racial Order." The Journal of Popular Culture 39.1 (2006): 109-125.

shiua@umkc.edu, (816) 235-5205, Cockefair Hall 117 

Robert Stewart (M.A., University of Missouri). Assistant Research Professor, Editor of New Letters, New Letters on the Air, and Editor-In-Chief of BkMk Press: Poetry Writing; Editing; Literary Journalism.   Books include:  Outside Language: Essays; Plumbers (poems); editor of Voices from the Interior (Missouri Poets), The Writer & Religion, co-editor, Spud Songs (anthology); finalist in PEN USA Award for Nonfiction, winner of Thorpe Menn Award for Literary Excellence; poems in Prairie Schooner, Notre Dame Review, Poetry Northwest, and anthologies Chance of a Ghost, and Fathers.  Winner of excellence in journalism and awards from Wesleyan University, Breadloaf Writers Conference, others.  Director, Midwest Poets Series; co-publisher, Woods Colt Press.
stewartr@umkc.edu, (816) 235-2610, University House 221
http://www.newletters.org/Stewart.asp

Jan Tillery (Ph.D., Oklahoma State University)  Professor, linguistics:  Southern American English, Texas English, sociolinguistics, dialectology, grammar pedagogy.  Her research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as American Speech, English World-Wide, Journal of English Linguistics, and Language Variation and Change and in collections of essays published by Cambridge and Oxford University Presses among others such as Routledge.  The Texas English research, funded by National Geographic Society, has been featured in the New York Times, in Texas Monthly, and in the San Antonio Express News.  She served as a member of the Editorial Board of American Speech, seven years as sponsor of Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society at UTSA and as one of a four-member English Language Arts team for TRACK, the University of Texas Telecampus online program developed as a resource, learning and diagnostic program on TAKS for Texas schoolteachers and students. She is a former Presidential Fellow of the American Dialect Society and is currently working on three invited papers.  tilleryj@umkc.edu

Thomas Stroik (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin). Professor: Linguistic Theory; Philosophy of Language; History of the English Language; Linguistics and Literary Theory.
Books: Minimalism, Scope, and VP Structure.  Sage Publications, 1996.   
stroikt@umkc.edu, (816) 235-2562, Cockefair Hall 115

Robert Unger (M.P.A., Harvard University). Professor: Journalism, Urban through International; Press, Politics and Public Policy; Non-Fiction Writing.
ungerr@umkc.edu, (816) 235-5569, University House 103A


LECTURERS

Lindsey Martin-Bowen (J.D., UMKC School of Law; M.A. in English with Creative Writing Emphasis, University of Missouri - Kansas City). Lecturer: English Literature, Composition, American literature, PACE Program, Introduction to Journalism, Reporting, Turning Life into Stories; Coordinator of Writing Assessment.
Books (published) Standing on the Edge of the World (poetry collection), Woodley Press, Washburn University (2008) Cicada Grove (novel), Paladin Contemporaries, 1992; Second Touch (poetry chapbook), Paladin Contemporaries, 1990. Articles/Reviews: Words from a Teller of Tales: Can Storytelling Play an Effective Role in Feminist Jurisprudence? UMKC Law Review (Fall 1997); 66 UMKC L.Rev. 95; "Shelby Heron's Prince of a Fellow." Contemporary Literary Criticism, 1991.
bowenlm@umkc.edu, (816) 235-2563, Cockefair Hall 111

Carrie Dimino (M.A., University of Missouri - Kansas City). Full-time Lecturer: Composition, APP Program.
diminoc@umkc.edu, (816) 235-5008, Cockefair Hall 16A

Melinda (Mindy) Fiala (M.A., University of Missouri - Kansas City). Lecturer: Composition, PACE Program.
fialam@umkc.edu, (816) 235-6408 or (816) 960-0511, Scofield Hall 104

Ben Furnish (M.Ed., Harvard University; M.A., University of Missouri - Kansas City; Ph.D., University of Kansas). Lecturer: Literature; Managing Editor of BkMk Press.
furnishb@umkc.edu, (816) 235-2558, University House 226

Bridgette Henry (Creative Writing M.A., University of Missouri - Kansas City). Lecturer: Composition.
henryb@umkc.edu, (816) 235-5008-1, Cockefair Hall 16A

Sheila Honig (M.A., University of Missouri - Columbia). Full-time Lecturer: Composition; Computer-Assisted Composition.
honigs@umkc.edu, (816) 235-2564, Cockefair Hall 109

Pat Huyett (Creative Writing M.A., University of Missouri - Kansas City), Lecturer: Composition
huyettp@umkc.edu, (816) 235-2552 x1, Cockefair Hall 16B
 
Katie Kline (M.A., UMKC) Director, Greater Kansas City Writing Project. Lecturer: Composition
klinek@umkc.edu, (816) 235-2554, 5201 Rockhill 107

Whitney Terrell (M.F.A. University of Iowa).  New Letters Writer-in-Residence; Advanced Creative Writing, Prose Forms. Director of the Writers at Work reading series.
Books:  The Huntsman.  Viking Penguin 2001; The King of Kings County.  Viking Penguin 2005.
Selected Articles:  Review of Such Sweet Thunder by Vincent O. Carter, The New York Times Book Review, April 2003; review of Once Two Heroes by Calvin Baker, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February, 2003.
TerrellW@umkc.edu, Cockefair Hall 108

Maryfrances Wagner (M.A., University of Missouri-Kansas City). English Coordinator: High School/College Program; Composition; Introduction to Fiction.
Books: Salvatore's Daughter (BkMk), Red Silk (MidAm), Tonight Cicadas Sing (MidAm).
wagnerma@umkc.edu
http://www.umkc.edu/hscp/

Pat Wells (M.A., University of Missouri - Kansas City). Part-time Lecturer: Composition Program, PACE Program, Editor: Composing Ourselves, newsletter of the Greater Kansas City Writing Project, Coordinator of PEN/Faulkner Writers in Schools Kansas City.
wellspa@umkc.edu 5201 Rockhill


GRADUATE TEACHERS

English Department GT Office: (816) 235-1150, Cockefair Hall 007
Composition Classes: English 110, English 225

  • DeJong, Lewis
  • Ditzler, Scott
  • Philip Estes
  • Gall, Zachary
  • Gentry Acacia
  • Guilfoil-Walter, Muffy
  • Hicks, Melissa
  • Higgins, Nicole
  • Huston, Kristin
  • Lyons, Jennifer
  • Manning, Katherine
  • Mathews, Kelly
  • North, Glenn
  • Obermark, Lauren
  • Pycior, Casey
  • Russell, Ki
  • Ryen, Katherine
  • Thomas-Brashier, Adam
  • Waldrop, Andrea

ILLUS DAVIS TEACHING FELLOWSHIPS

English Department IPH.D Office: (816) 235-6991, Cockefair Hall 12         

 

            Austin April

            Carano, Lorrie

        


PROFESSORS EMERITI

Ralph Berets (Ph.D., University of Michigan). Associate Professor Emeritus: Comparative Literature; Modern Literature; Screenwriting; Film as Art; Film, Literature and the Law; Death and Dying; Psychology and Literature.
beretsr@umkc.edu, (816) 235-2764, Cockefair Hall 120

Bob Farnsworth. (Ph.D., Tulane University). Professor Emeritus.

Moira Ferguson. Martha Jane Starr Phillips/Missouri Distinguished Professor of Women's and Gender Studies.
fergusonm@umkc.edu, (816) 235-5204, Cockefair Hall 108

Daniel F. Jaffe. (M.A., University of Michigan). Professor Emeritus.

James McKinley (Ph.D., University of Missouri). Professor Emeritus: Former Director of Professional Writing Program; Retired Editor New Letters/Bkmk Press; Creative Writing; American Literature; Journalism.
mckinleyj@umkc.edu, (816) 235-1120, University House 222

David Ray. (M.A., University of Chicago). Professor Emeritus.

James A. Reeds. (Ph.D., University of Michigan). Associate Professor Emeritus. 

James Reed Honored: Presidential Thanks for Art's Rescue (KC Star 1/2/08 PDF)

Jonas Spatz. (Ph.D., Indiana University). Associate Professor Emeritus.

Lois Spatz. (Ph.D., Indiana University). Professor Emerita.

Linda Ehrsam Voigts (Ph.D., Missouri University). Curators' Professor Emerita: Old and Middle English Language and Literature; Manuscript Studies; Medieval Science and Medicine.
voigtsl@umkc.edu, (816) 235-2764, Cockefair Hall 120

David H. Weinglass (B.A., St. Catharine's College, Cambridge; Ph.D., Kansas State University). Professor Emeritus: Neoclassical British Literature; 18th-Century British Art and Literature.
weinglassd@umkc.edu, (816) 235-2764, Cockefair Hall 120

Robert F. Willson, Jr. (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin). Professor Emeritus: Shakespeare; Shakespeare on Film; Renaissance Literature; Literary Criticism.
willsonr@umkc.edu, (816) 235-2764, Cockefair Hall 120