English

A number of student publications are produced throughout the year at Denison.

Students at Denison enjoy a curriculum in English that balances the need for broad introductory courses with abundant opportunities to focus on special topics in our more advanced courses.

The Department of English participates fully in offering courses that fulfill a variety of General Education requirements, and we also teach First-Year Studies 101, perhaps the most important course that you, as an incoming first-year student, will take.In our small classes, students find varied but uniformly passionate instruction in American, British, and world literature, with consistent attention to interpretive and writing skills.

For more than 50 years, Denison students have studied the art and craft of creative writing through the Writing Program's workshops in poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Students may choose to concentrate in creative writing, undertaking a program that culminates in a year-long senior writing project. Recent projects have included novels, books of poems or plays, memoirs, and works of creative nonfiction.

Each year, through the Harriet Ewens Beck Series for Visiting Writers, students have a special opportunity to meet and work one-on-one with such writers as Andrea Barrett, W. S. Merwin, Adrienne Rich, Tobias Wolff and many more. Writing students give readings, work for campus publications, and intern at local and national literary organizations. Many students go on to graduate programs and careers in writing, publishing or editing.

Students have the opportunity to contribute to Exile, our student-edited literary magazine; or  Articulate, our student-edited journal of critical essays;  as well as to enter one or more of our annual contests for writers of fiction, poetry, scholarly articles and personal essays.

If you're planning to major in English in college, you should complete the regular college preparatory program in high school, preferably with four years of English.

Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner '64 poses with friend Mickey in front of Swasey Chapel on the Denison campus.

Careers in education, advertising, communications, editing, writing, marketing, law and publishing are open to our graduates. Many also continue their studies in graduate school.

Among Denison graduates who majored in English are Michael Eisner '64, former chair and CEO of Walt Disney Co.; authors Clark Blaise '61, Frederick Turner '59 and Pam Houston '83; Northwestern University Associate Professor of English Jeffrey Masten '86; Lauren Staniar '90, Leo Burnett advertising; Dan Fiden '97, computer game developer at Jellyvision; Jamie Herman '93, senior editor of InStyle Magazine; Danida Saunders '95, National Geographic Magazine; poet Alison Stine '00 whose work was recently featured in New Voices in the Kenyon Review; and Hillary Campbell '00, Columbus Monthly Magazine.

Associate Professor Jim Davis teaches in historic Barney-Davis Hall

Department Chair and Associate Professor Linda J. Krumholz joined the faculty at Denison in 1992. She earned a B.A. at Reed College and an M.A. and a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She specializes in contemporary ethnic American literature and Black studies. Her publications on Toni Morrison and Leslie Marmon Silko have appeared in African American Review, Ariel and Modern Fiction Studies.

Professor David A. Baker holds the Thomas B. Fordham Chair in Creative Writing. He joined the faculty at Denison in 1984. Baker earned a B.S.E. and an M.A. at Central Missouri State and a Ph.D. at the University of Utah. He is an award-winning poet and the author of eight books of poetry as well as two critical books. Baker is a recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Baker teaches classes in British and American poetry, creative writing and poetry writing. He has served on the faculty of several writing workshops including the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Catskills Poetry Conference, the Kenyon Review Summer Writers' Workshops and the Midwest Writers' Conference.

Assistant Professor Brenda Boyle joined the faculty at Denison in 2003. She earned a B.A. at Davidson College, an M.A. at the University of California and an M.A. and a Ph.D. at Ohio State University. Her research interests include Irish and English literature, twentieth century American literature, film and drama and American war literature.

Assistant Professor Sylvia A. Brown joined the faculty at Denison in 1997. She earned a B.A. at Samford University and an M.A. and a Ph.D. at Emory University. Her research interests include the early British novel and disability studies.

Professor Kirk Combe joined the faculty at Denison in 1991. He earned a B.A. at Davidson College, an M.A. at Middlebury College and a D.Phil. at Oxford University in England. His research interests include Restoration and 18th-century literature and the genre of satire and critical theory.

Associate Professor James P. Davis joined the faculty at Denison in 1985. He earned a B.A. at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, an M.A. at the University of Kansas and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. His research interests include 19th-century British literature, cultural studies and non-fiction writing.

Associate Professor Richard A. Hood joined the faculty at Denison in 1990. He earned a B.A. at Wesleyan University, an M.A. at the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. at the University of Rochester. Hood specializes in American and modern literature. His novel White Oak Flats is forthcoming from Mayhaven Press.

Assistant Professor Anita Mannur joined the faculty at Denison in 2005. She earned a B.A. at the University of Wisconsin and a Ph.D. at the University of Massachussetts. Her teaching and research interests lie in Asian American and South Asian diasporic literatures and food and culture. She is editor with Jana Evans Braziel of Theorizing Diaspora (Blackwell, 2003) and editor of a special volume of the Massachusetts Review (Fall 2004) on "Food Matters." She is currently at work on a book length manuscript on gastronomic multiculturalism in South Asian American literature and culture.

Associate Professor Lisa J. McDonnell joined the faculty at Denison in 1982. She earned a B.A. at Connecticut College and an M.A. and a Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina. She specializes in Shakespeare, Renaissance drama and contemporary drama. Her current research is on a Chinese feminist adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew. She is also completing work on a book of interviews with noted British and American playwrights. Recently, she has served as Denison University's exchange fellow with Advanced Studies in England, affiliated with University College, Oxford. Every year she leads a May term travel seminar to London and Stratford-upon-Avon. She has won a number of awards, including a Folger Institute Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Grant, a Mellon Foundation Grant for Teaching with Technology, and the Earl Hartsell Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Associate Professor Frederick C. Porcheddu joined the faculty at Denison in 1992. He earned a B.A. at Denison University and an M.A. and a Ph.D. at Ohio State University. His teaching and creative interests lie in medieval manuscript studies, medieval and renaissance British literature, sexuality and culture and the history of the book.

Associate Professor Dennis M. Read joined the faculty at Denison in 1979. He earned a B.A. at the State University of New York, an M.A. at New York University and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. His teaching and creative interests lie in writing theory, William Blake and travel literature. He also oversees the Reynolds Writing Workshop held during the summer for high school students.

Associate Professor Sandra R. Runzo joined the department at Denison in 1986. She earned a B.A. at West Virginia University and an M.A. and Ph.D. at Indiana University. Her research interests include 19th- and 20th-century American literature and women writers.

Assistant Professor Amy Scott-Douglass joined the faculty at Denison in 2005. She earned a B.A., an M.A. in English and an M.A. in theatre at Bowling Green State University and a Ph.D. at the University of Oklahoma. She has held fellowships at Cornell University and the University of California, Los Angeles, and has participated in two National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Teaching Institutes. Her essays have been published in Pretexts (July 2000), Shakespeare the Movie, Part II (Routledge, 2003), and Cavendish and Shakespeare: Interconnections (Ashgate, 2006). Her current book project, Shakespeare in the House, is on Shakespeare prison, military and work-study programs in the United States. She teaches courses in early modern British and continental literature.

Assistant Professor John F. Shuler joined the faculty in 2007. He earned a bachelor of arts degree at Guilford College, a master of fine arts at Brooklyn College and is a doctoral candidate at the Graduate Center of City University of New York.

Assistant Professor Margot Singer joined the faculty at Denison in 2005. She earned an A.B. at Harvard University, an M.Phil. at Oxford University and a Ph.D. at the University of Utah. Her short fiction, creative nonfiction, and prose poems have been published in AGNI, The Mid-American Review, Shenandoah, the North American Review, Third Coast and elsewhere. Her teaching interests include fiction writing, creative nonfiction writing, and contemporary literature.

Professor Ann C. Townsend joined the faculty at Denison in 1992. She earned a B.A. at Denison University and an M.A. and a Ph.D. at Ohio State University. She is an award-winning poet and the author of two books of poetry, Dime Store Erotics (1998) and The Coronary Garden (2005). She is co-editing Radiant Lyre: On Lyric Poetry, with David Baker, for a 2007 publication by Graywolf Press. Townsend is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, an Individual Artist's grant from the Ohio Arts Council and a Discovery Prize from The Nation. Her poems have appeared in many anthologies, including The New Young American Poets, American Poetry: The Next Generation and The New American Poets: A Bread Loaf Anthology. She teaches classes in modern and contemporary poetry, creative writing and the history of the lyric.

Professor Marlene A. Tromp joined the faculty at Denison in 1997. She earned a B.A. at Creighton University, an M.A. at the University of Wyoming and a Ph.D. at the University of Florida. Her teaching and creative interests include Victorian literature, the novel, critical theory, pop culture, feminist movements, and women's studies. Her new book, Altered States: Sex, Nation, Drugs, and Self in Victorian Spiritualism, is forthcoming with SUNY Press. She has also published The Private Rod: Sexual Violence, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England and a collection entitled Mary Elizabeth Braddon: Beyond Sensation. She is presently at work on a collection entitled Victorian "Freaks": The Social Work of Freakery in the Nineteenth Century.

Visiting Assistant Professor James Weaver joined the faculty in 2007. He earned his B.A. from Allegheny College and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from The Ohio State University.

Visiting Assistant Professor Charles Wyatt joined the faculty in 2006. He earned his bachelor of music degree at the Curtis Institute of Music, a master of music degree at the Philadelphia Musical Academy and a master of fine arts degree at Warren Wilson College.