Emeritus Profiles

Brown, Wesley

Wesley Brown

Position: Professor Emeritus of English

At Rutgers Since: 1979

Retired Since: 2005

Email Address: wesley.brown@rutgers.edu

Bio: Professor Brown is the author of the novels Darktown Strutters (2000) and Tragic Magic (1995). He has is also also the author of the play, "Boogie Woogie and Booker T," and "Life During Wartime," which was published inAction, an anthology of works from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Theater Festival (eds. Lois Griffith and Miguel Algarin, 1997). He co-edited the multicultural anthologies Visions of America (1991) and Imagining America (1993) and edited The Teachers & Writers Guide to Frederick Douglass (1996).

Education: MA, City University of New York BA, The State University of New York (Oswego)

Areas of Specialization: Nineteenth-century American literature; Modern drama

Undergraduate Courses Taught: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Literature Modern Drama American Drama Black Drama Contemporary Drama

DeKoven, Marianne

Marianne DeKoven

Position: Professor Emerita of English

At Rutgers Since: 1977

Retired Since: 2014

Email Address: marianne.dekoven@gmail.com

Bio: Professor DeKoven is the author of Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the Emergence of the Postmodern (2004), Rich and Strange: Gender History, Modernism (1991), and A Different Language: Gertrude Stein's Experimental Writing (1983). She is also the editor of the Norton Critical Edition of Gertrude Stein's Three Lives (2006), and of Feminist Locations: Global and Local, Theory and Practice (2001). She has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on a range of topics, including modernism, postmodernism, gender, feminist theory, and twentieth-century fiction. She is currently working on a book project on gender, ethics, and animals in modern and postmodern fiction. Professor DeKoven is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, was the Principal Investigator for a Rockefeller Residency Fellowship at the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers, and is the recipient of the Warren I. Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Award for Excellence in Research.

Education: PhD, Stanford University MA, Stanford University BA, Radcliffe University

Areas of Specialization: Gender and Sexuality; Modernist Literature; Twentieth Century and Contemporary Literature

Undergraduate Courses Taught: Modern Novel American Literature of the 1920's Fiction by Women

Graduate Courses Taught: Feminist Critical Theory Modernist Narrative Modernism Contemporary Fiction

Dowling, William C.

William C. Dowling

Position: Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English

At Rutgers Since: 1989

Retired Since: 2006

Bio: Professor Dowling’s publications include: Ricoeur on Time and Narrative (2011), Oliver Wendell Holmes in Paris: Medicine, Theology, and the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (2005), A Reader’s Companion to Infinite Jest (with Robert H. Bell) (2004), Literary Federalism in the Age of Jefferson (1999); The Senses of the Text: Intensional Semantics and Literary Theory (1999); The Epistolary Moment: the Poetics of the Eighteenth-Century Verse Epistle (1991); Poetry and Ideology in Revolutionary Connecticut (1990); Jameson/Althusser/Marx (1984); Language and Logos in Boswell’s Life of Johnson (1981), The Boswellian Hero (1979), and The Critic’s Hornbook (1977). He is currently at work on a book entitled The Strange Death of Literary Boston: Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Lothrop Motley, and the American Civil War

Education: PhD, Harvard University MA, Harvard University BA, Dartmouth College

Areas of Specialization: Eighteenth Century English Literature; Nineteenth Century American Literature; Literary Theory

Undergraduate Courses Taught: Comparative Literature Seminar: The Mirror of Enlightenment Douglass Honors Seminar : Age of Johnson Rutgers College Honors Seminar: The Face of Battle Senior Seminar: New Historicism Senior Seminar: Oliver Wendell Holmes and Literary Boston Senior Seminar: Pepys and Restoration England Senior Seminar: Theory of Internal Audience Principles of Literary Study American Literature Survey: Puritans to Civil War

Ellis, Kate

Kate Ellis

Position: Associate Professor

Undergraduate Courses Taught: Principles of Literary Study The Gothic Novel Eighteenth-Century Women Writers Women Writers and the Rise of the Novel Nineteenth-Century Women Writers Twentieth-Century Women Writers Autobiography By Women Romance as a Genre Creative Writing

Other Publications

• "Charlotte Smith's Subversive Gothic." 
  Feminist Studies 3.3/4, Spring - Summer, 1976. 51-55
• "Paradise Lost: The Limits of Domesticity in the Nineteenth-Century Novel."
  Feminist Studies 2. 2/3, 1975. 55-63
• "The Function of Northrop Frye at the Present Time." 
  College English 31.6, Mar., 1970. 541-547

Ian, Marcia

Marcia Ian

Position: Associate Professor Emerita of English

At Rutgers Since: 1987

Retired Since: 2014

Email Address: gnudle@optonline.net

Bio: Professor Ian is the author of Remembering the Phallic Mother: Psychoanalysis, Modernism and the Fetish (1993). She is currently writing a book entitled American 'Secularity': The James Family and Others, which examines the writing of Henry James, Sr., William James, and Henry James in relation to America's mythic idea of itself as a "secular" nation. She is interested more generally in the intersections (and lack thereof) of psychoanalysis, philosophy and religion, and has published essays on these subjects as well as on Henry James and, in a not entirely unrelated development, certain aspects of popular culture, especially female bodybuilding.

Education: PhD, University of Virginia MA, University of Virginia BA, Wellesley College

Areas of Specialization: Nineteenth Century American Literature; Psychoanalysis

Undergraduate Courses Taught: Issues and Problems in Literary Theory Literary Theory Modern Novel Psychoanalytic Theory Theories of Interiority Twentieth-Century Literature

Graduate Courses Taught: Feminist Theory Literary Modernism Literary Theory Modern British Novel Psychoanalytic Theory The James Famil

Jehlen, Myra

Myra Jehlen

Position: Board of Governors Professor Emerita of English

At Rutgers Since: 1985

Retired Since: 2014

Email Address: myrajehlen@gmail.com

Bio: Professor Jehlen is the author of Readings at the Edge of Literature (2002), Class and Character in Faulkner's South (1976), American Incarnation: The Individual, the Nation, and the Continent (1989), and "The Literature of Colonization" in Volume I of The Cambridge History of American Literature: Volume 1, 1590-1820 (ed. Sacvan Bercovitch, 1994). She has also co-edited a number of volumes, including The English Literatures of America, 1500-1800 (1996), with Michael Warner. Her essays deal with American writing, comparative literature, and theoretical issues in literary interpretation and history.

Education: PhD, University of California, Berkeley BA, The City University of New York

Areas of Specialization: Literature and Intellectual History; Nineteenth Century American Literature

Undergraduate Courses Taught: Principles of Literary Study American Literature Science Fiction

Graduate Courses Taught: American-British Transatlantic Relations Comparative Novel Cooper, Hawthorne, James: Style in Fiction Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century American Literature Henry James and William Dean Howells: Two Aesthetics of American Realism

Kusch, Robert

Robert Kusch

Position: Professor Emeritus of English

At Rutgers Since: 1970

Retired Since: 2011

Email Address: rkusch@rci.rutgers.edu

Bio: Professor Kusch's publications include The Field: Poems (2003) and My Toughest Mentor (1999).

Education: PhD, Northwestern University MA, Northwestern University BA, Valparaiso University

Areas of Specialization: Modernist Literature; Twentieth Century and Contemporary Literature; Twentieth Century and Contemporary Poetry; Victorian Literature

Undergraduate Courses Taught: Introduction to Poetry Principles of Literary Theory Twentieth-Century Poetry

Graduate Courses Taught: Modern and Contemporary Poetry Victorian Literature

Levine, George

George Levine

Position: Professor Emeritus of English

At Rutgers Since: 1968

Retired Since: 2006

Email Address: georgelevine@gmail.com

Bio: Professor Levine has released the following publications: Dying to Know (2002); The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot (2001); Darwin and the Novelists (1988); The Realistic Imagination (1981); and Lifebirds (1997). He also wrote introduction and notes for The Origin of the Species (2004). He works in aesthetics, nineteenth-century literature and culture, the relations between literature and science, and problems connected with the condition of the profession. He is at work on a new study, "The Uses of Darwin," and "How to Read the Victorian Novel." He was Director of the Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture.

Education: PhD, Minnesota University MA, Minnesota University BA, New York University

Areas of Specialization: Victorian literature; literature and science

Undergraduate Courses Taught: Victorian Fiction Victorian Prose Narrative and Science Narrative and Epistemology Science and Culture

McClure, John A.

John A. McClure

Position: Professor Emeritus of English

At Rutgers Since: 1975

Retired Since: 2014

Email Address: jmcclure@rci.rutgers.edu

Bio: Professor McClure is the author of Late Imperial Romance (1994) and Kipling and Conrad: The Colonial Fiction (1982), as well as essays on colonial and postcolonial discourse and geopolitics. His latest book is Partial Faiths: Postsecular Fiction in the Age of Pynchon and Morrison (2007).

Education: PhD, Stanford University MA, Stanford University BA, Tufts University

Areas of Specialization: Literature and Religion; Twentieth Century and Contemporary Literature

Undergraduate Courses Taught: Principles of Literary Study Bible as Literature Contemporary Fiction and Spirituality Pynchon and DeLillo

Graduate Courses Taught: Colonial Cultural Studies Perspectives on Globalization: Literature and Theory Postmodern Fiction and Life Philosophies

Ostriker, Alicia S.

Alicia S. Ostriker

Position: Professor Emerita of English

At Rutgers Since: 1965

Retired Since: 2004

Email Address: ostriker@rci.rutgers.edu

Bio: Ostriker's critical publications include Dancing at the Devil's Party: Essays on Poetry, Politics, and the Erotic (2000); The Nakedness of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions (1997); and Stealing the Language: the Emergence of Women's Poetry in America (1987). Her poetry collections include The Book of Seventy (2009), a National Jewish Book Award winner; The Volcano Sequence (2002); Green Age (1989); The Little Space, Poems Selected and New,  which was nominated for a National Book Award (1998);The Crack in Everything, which won the Paterson Prize and the San Francisco State Poetry Center Award and was nominated for the National Book Award (1996); The Imaginary Lover (1986), which won the William Carlos Williams Award; and The Mother/Child Papers (1986).  Professor Ostriker was active in Women's Studies and the Center for the Study of Jewish Life.

Education: PhD, University of Wisconsin MA, University of Wisconsin BA, Brandeis University

Areas of Specialization: Poetry; Feminism; Religion Eighteenth-century; Romantic poetry

Undergraduate Courses Taught: Poetry by Women Creative Writing (Poetry) Boundary Crossings: Gender, Race, and Myth in Twentieth-Century American Literature

Graduate Courses Taught: Technique in English Poetry Bible and Feminist Imagination

Poirier, Richard

Richard Poirier

Position: Professor Emeritus of English At Rutgers

At Rutgers Since: 1963

Retired Since: 2002

Bio: Professor Emeritus Richard Poirier is the author of Trying It Out in America: Literary and Other PerformancesThe Performing Self: Compositions and Decompositions in the Languages of Contemporary Life (1992), and Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing (1977). He was a Professor of Literature for Rutgers University and Chair of the English Department (1963). He was founder of the literary journal Raritan: A Quarterly Review, and the Library of America. But some agree that his most important contribution came in his criticism, which tried to convey why the act of reading is — and should be — so difficult. (1999),

Education: PhD, Harvard University MA, Yale University BA, Amherst College

Areas of Specialization: Critical and Literary Theory; Cultural Studies

Qualls, Barry V.

Barry V. Qualls

Position: Vice President of Undergraduate Education and Professor Emeritus of English

At Rutgers Since: 1971

Retired Since: 2006

Email Address: bqualls@scarletmail.rutgers.edu

Bio: Professor Qualls is the author of The Secular Pilgrims of Victorian Fiction: The Novel as Book of Life (1982), and of articles and reviews on 19th-century English literature and on the Bible and its literary impact. Currently, he is Vice President for Undergraduate Education at Rutgers. In the past he has served as Chair of the English Department, Director of the English Graduate Program, and Dean of Humanities in the School of Arts and Sciences. His particular focus as a member of the Rutgers community has been the ways graduate and undergraduate education should work together constructively in a research university. In 2004-05, he chaired the Task Force on Undergraduate Education, a group of faculty, staff, and students appointed by Rutgers President Richard L. McCormick to examine thoroughly and then reorganize undergraduate education at Rutgers' New Brunswick/Piscataway campus. Professor Qualls was named the 2006 New Jersey Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support Education.

Education: PhD, Northwestern University MA, Northwestern University BA, Florida State University

Areas of Specialization: Literature and Religion; Literature and the Other Arts; Victorian Literature; Victorian Poetry

Undergraduate Courses Taught: Bible and English Literature Bible as Literature Introduction to Poetry Nineteenth British Novel Nineteenth-century British Fiction Victorian Poetry Victorian Women Writers

Graduate Courses Taught: Victorian Literature Victorian Poetry

Sadoff, Dianne F.

Dianne F. Sadoff

Position: Professor Emerita of English

At Rutgers Since: 2006

Retired Since: 2016

Email Address: sadoffdf@rci.rutgers.edu

Bio: "I’m the type of life-long learner who likes to learn a new discourse for every project. I take pride in my ability to teach students the pleasures and skills of interdisciplinarity. My students learn to apply the discourses of political science and history to the study of fiction and the tools of gender studies, psychoanalysis, and the history of feminism’s emergence to the study of women writers. In my film and literature classes, I teach students to read film through the lens of aesthetic, visual-culture, and historical analysis and to understand the difference that media makes to the study of narrative structure and situation. By teaching my students in an interdisciplinary way, I hope to inspire them to become life-long learners too. "

Education: PhD, University of Rochester MA, Oregon State University BA, Oberlin College

Areas of Specialization: Film and Cinema Studies; Victorian Literature

Undergraduate Courses Taught: Nineteenth-Century Women Writers Introduction to Literature Theories of Genre - Novel

Graduate Courses Taught: Editorial Board, Neo-Victorian Studies, 2007- Editorial Board, Atlantis, 2005-

Curriculum Vitae

Other Publications

• “Charles Dickens”
  (co-edited with John Kucich) The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature (ed. Nancy Armstrong, 2006)
• “‘Appeals to Incalculability’: Sex, Costume Drama, and The Golden Bowl”
  Henry James Review 23, 2002
• “‘Hallucinations of Intimacy’: The Henry James Movies”
  Henry James at the Movies (2002)
• “Histories of the Present”
  Victorian Afterlife: Contemporary Culture Rewrites the Nineteenth Century (co-edited with John Kucich, 2000)
• “‘Intimate Disarray’: The Henry James Movies”
  Henry James Review 19.3, Fall 1998
• "The Father, Castration, and Female Fantasy in Jane Eyre"
  Jane Eyre: A Casebook (ed. Beth Newman, 1996)
• "'Experiments Made By Nature': Mapping the Nineteenth-Century Hysterical Body" 
  Victorian Newsletter 81, Spring l992
• "Looking at Tess: The Female Figure in Two Narrative Media"
  The Sense of Sex: Feminist Perspectives on Thomas Hardy (ed. Margaret Higgonet, 1992)
• "Romola: Trauma, Memory, and Repression"
  George Eliot (ed. K.M. Newton 1992)

Awards and DistinctionsProfessional Memberships and Affiliations

• Visiting Scholar, Department of English, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2002-3
• Visiting Scholar, Beatrice Bain Research Group, University of California, Berkeley, l991-2
• Guggenheim Fellowship, 1990-1
• Editorial Board, Neo-Victorian Studies, 2007-
• Editorial Board, Atlantis, 2005-

Other Information of Interest

• "Dianne F. Sadoff" - New Faculty Profile
  by Carolyn Williams (Future Traditions Magazine, Issue 1)

Smith, Carol H.

Carol H. Smith

Position: Professor Emerita of English

At Rutgers Since: 1959

Retired Since: 2007

Email Address: chs@rci.rutgers.edu

Bio: Professor Smith is the author of T.S. Eliot's Dramatic Theory and Practice (1976), as well as many essays on 20th century writing and questions of gender. Her current research centers on the modernist poet H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), including H.D.'s work on film in the 1930s and her use of ideas and methods from psychoanalysis. Professor Smith was also active in Women's Studies.

Education: PhD, Michigan University MA, Michigan University BA, Ohio Wesleyan University

Areas of Specialization: Women's literature; Modernism

Articles

• "Review of The Peculiarity of Literature: An Allegorical Approach to Poe's Fiction"
  American Literature 70.3, September 1998
• "Review of The Men of 1914"
  American Literature 62.2, June 1990