Meet the New faculty

Nathan Breen has taught in the English Department as a full-time Instructor and he joins us this year as an Assistant Professor. He has his PhD in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he specialized in medieval British literature, in Anglo-Saxon in particular. His dissertation deals with narrative strategies in Anglo-Saxon literature for representing the devil as a speaking character. This year, he’s teaching courses the history of the English language, world literature before 1500, and a long overdue course on Anglo-Saxon literature.

June Chung joins the English Department as an Assistant Professor. Her graduate work ranges from economics at Stanford to studies in Victorian British literature at Columbia, and she has her PhD in English from UCLA, where she specialized in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and American literature. Her dissertation combines her interests in literature, business, and popular culture by exploring the relationships between emerging American corporate practices and established European economic patterns in Henry James’s fiction. This year, she’s teaching courses in the American novel, surveys of early-twentieth-century American fiction, and a course called intriguingly “Gamblers and Con Men in American Fiction.”

Michele Morano joins the English Department as an Assistant Professor in creative writing. She has both an MFA in non-fiction writing and a PhD in English from the University of Iowa. Her dissertation, a collection of travel essays called Grammar Lessons, talks about her time living and teaching in Spain and explores the process of second-language learning and the opportunities and limitations a second language imposes on narrative. This year, she’s teaching creative writing courses in non-fiction, travel narrative, and a course called “Writing the Memoir.”

Leah Blaine joins the English Department as a full-time Instructor. She has an MA in English from San Diego State University, with work in nineteenth-century American literature, African-American literature, and women’s studies. She has written about Margaret Fuller and Susan Warner and is particularly interested in the cultural work of literature in aesthetic, political, and social contexts. This year, she is scheduled to teach courses in the first-year writing program.

Michael Bryson joins the English Department as a Visiting Assistant Professor. He has his PhD from Northwestern, where he wrote his dissertation on the representation of God in John Milton’s poetry, and he is currently interested in intersections between religion and literature in early modern British literature. He has taught courses in literature, religion, and writing, in traditional classrooms and on-line, at Northwestern, Truman College, and DePaul. This year, he is teaching courses in first-year writing, Shakespeare, and the Bible as Literature.

Scott Downing joins the English Department as a full-time Instructor. He has an MBA from Ohio State University and an MA in Writing from DePaul, with professional experience in writing and editing news articles, press releases, and management reports. This year, he is scheduled to teach courses in the first-year writing program and in technical writing.

Carolyn Goffman joins the English Department as a Visiting Assistant Professor. She has her PhD in English from Ball State University, with a dissertation on the political and cultural implications of faculty and student writing at an American-founded women’s college in Ottoman Turkey. She has taught a range of courses in composition, and in British and world literature in Turkey and in the US. This year, she is scheduled to teach courses in the first-year writing program and in world literature.

Kevin Quirk is in a shared one-year position this year between English and American Studies. Kevin has just recently defended his dissertation in American Studies at the University of Iowa that exams issues of race and ethnicity in American Culture.

Robert Zamsky joins the English Department as a Visiting Assistant Professor. He has his PhD in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he studied in the poetics program and wrote his dissertation on the relationship between music and poetry in Gertrude Stein’s and Nathaniel Mackey’s work. This year, he is teaching courses in the first-year writing program, a course on the short story, one on the reading and writing of poetry, sections of a course on reading poetry for the English major, and a focal point seminar on poetry and jazz. He is also organizing an interdisciplinary symposium on innovative jazz and writing to be held at DePaul this spring.