Faculty

Robert R. Bensen (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) joined the English Department in 2017 as adjunct instructor, following retirement from Hartwick College where he was Professor of English and Director of Writing from 1978 to 2017. He teaches COMP 100, and has taught a wide range of writing and literature courses.

Bensen’s poetry and literary criticism have been widely published in The Paris Review, Callaloo, The Caribbean Writer, Native Realities, Jamaica Journal, AGNI, Akwe:kon, Poetry Wales, The Thomas Hardy Review, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature (India), Ploughshares, and many other journals. Among his books of poetry, published in collaboration with artists, are In the Dream Museum (with Lebbeus Woods, Red Herring Press), Scriptures of Venus (with Hyde Meissner, Swamp Press), Day Labor (with Phil Young, Serpent & Eagle Press), Two Dancers (with Charles Bremer, Woodland Arts Editions) and Orenoque, Wetumka and Other Poems (with Phil Young, Bright Hill Press).

His poetry has been awarded a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Robert Penn Warren Award. He has also won several fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Newberry Library, and teaching and research awards from Hartwick College. He has written numerous essays on Caribbean and Native American literature, and edited anthologies of those literatures, most recently Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education (U. of Arizona Press). His bibliographic study, American Indian and Aboriginal Canadian Childhood Studies, was commissioned and published by Oxford University Press online.

Suzanne Black, Ph.D., University of Michigan, 2000, came to Oneonta in Fall 2008 after several years teaching in Indiana and Minnesota. She teaches courses in modern world literature, professional writing, and composition. In addition to her literature background (a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Michigan), she has an undergraduate degree in chemistry and experience as a grant writer.

She remains interested in popular science writing and in more humanistic aspects of the sciences, such as scientific images and overlaps between literature and the sciences. Her current research focuses on visuals in molecular biology and on the influence of scientific inquiry on the poets W. H. Auden, Fernando Pessoa, Francis Ponge, Muriel Rukeyser, Paul Valery, and William Carlos Williams. She is also revising a translation of Julio Dinis's 1868 novel An English Family, about British wine merchants in Portugal.

Courses (Spring 2018):
COMP 100 - Composition (2 Sections)

Erin Braselmann earned an M.A. from SUNY New Paltz in 2010.

Courses (Spring 2018):
COMP 100 - Composition (2 Sections)

Martin Christiansen earned an M.A. from Central Michigan University in 1998.

Office Hours (Spring 2018):
MW 1:00-2:00pm, 4:00-4:30pm

Courses (Spring 2018):
COMP 200 - Advanced Composition
ELIT 240 - Medieval English Literature
LITR 100 - Themes in Literature

Having completed her B.A. at UCLA and her Ph.D. at Princeton, Dr. Crane joined the Oneonta faculty in 1992. She directed the English Department’s Graduate Program from 1993-2001, and served as Department Chair from 1998 to 2005. She teaches courses in British Medieval and Renaissance Literature, early World Literatures, and Composition. Dr. Crane has received Mellon Foundation and NEH grants to support her studies in philology and medieval poetry.  Dr. Crane was awarded the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2006, along with the College at Oneonta Outstanding Advisor and Mentor Award for that same year. She is interested in the history of rhetoric, textual iconography, and the literary representation of intellectual and spiritual authority. Before arriving at Oneonta, she worked as an editor for Macmillan, Scribner’s, and the UCLA School of Medicine.

Office Hours- (Spring 2018):
TTh 8-8:20am
11:20am-12:00pm
Courses: (Spring 2018):
COMP 100 - Composition
LITR 100 - Themes in Literature

Andrea Denekamp, an alumna of SUNY Oneonta for her B.S. in English and Geography in 2005, completed her doctoral studies at Drew University in 2012. She started teaching at Oneonta in 2008 and was the recipient of the Simphiwe Hlatswayo Teaching Award for Outstanding Part-Time Instructor in 2014. Dr. Denekamp’s academic interests include British and environmental literatures and Inkling studies. She recently published a chapter, “‘Transform stalwart trees’: Sylvan Biocentrism in The Lord of the Rings,” in “We should look at green again”: Representations of Nature in Middle-earth. Currently, she is working an article examining the environmental ethic of Wendell Berry and J. R. R. Tolkien and a co-authored book of essays centering on women’s experiences of infertility.

Office Hours (Spring 2018):
MW 2:30-3:30pm
Courses (Spring 2018):
COMP 100 - Composition (2 sections)

Laura Dohner earned a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Binghamton, 2017.

Office Hours (Spring 2018):
MWF

Courses (Spring 2018):
COMP 100 - Composition
LING 215 - Intro to Editing & Publishing
LITR 306 - Children's Literature

Dr. Doughty joined the faculty in Fall 2006 after spending several years teaching at Lake Superior State University in Michigan. She earned her MA from Indiana State University and her Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma. A generalist, she has taught classes in linguistics, composition, and literature, particularly children's literature, fantasy, and folk literature. She is the author of Folktales Retold: A Critical Overview of Stories Updated for Children (2006) and "Throw the book away": Reading versus Experience in Children's Fantasy (2013). Dr. Doughty's research interests are varied but lean toward the intersection of literature and linguistics, as well as language in popular culture.

Her research includes papers examining magic and technology in the Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl, and Faerie Wars series; language attitudes about the Junie B. Jones series; environmentalism in children's and YA fantasy; gender in urban fantasy by women; and storytelling, fate, and self-determination in Robin McKinley's folktale revisions. She is the Area Chair of the Children's and YA Literature and Culture area of the Popular Culture Association and the editor of the collection Children's and Young Adult Literature and Culture: A Mosaic of Criticism (2016).

Office Hours (Spring 2018):
T-TH 1:00-2:30pm, and by appointment

Courses (Spring 2018):
COMP 150 - Intro to Creative Writing
LITR 100 - Themes in Literature
WLIT 200 - World Lit: Ancient to Medieval

Mark S. Ferrara,  Ph.D. University of Denver, 2004, is the author of several books, including Palace of Ashes (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015) and Sacred Bliss (Roman and Littlefield, 2016). His newest monograph, For the Sake of Profit, exposes the uninvited consequences of an ongoing veneration of business and its leaders by demonstrating how enterprise driven solely by the profit motive endangers human beings and the environment.

Ferrara has taught for universities in the United States, South Korea, China, and on a Fulbright scholarship in Turkey. His courses are internationally focused, interdisciplinary, and aim to raise critical insight of other cultures through their literatures.

Office Hours (Spring 2018):
T 12:30-2:30pm
W 2-3pm

Courses (Spring 2018):
COMP 100 - Composition
ELIT 241 - The English Renaissance
ELIT 270 - Shakespeare

Dr. Finin joined the English Department in 2003, after teaching Shakespeare and Literary/Critical Theory for several years as a part-time instructor at SUNY-Oneonta.In 2001, she received the college’s Simphiwe Hlatswayo Award for Excellence in Part-Time Teaching. Dr. Finin received her doctorate from Binghamton University in 1997, earning the Distinguished Research Award for her work on English Renaissance Drama. She has presented many scholarly papers at The Shakespeare Association of America, as well as other conferences, and published several essays on plays by Shakespeare, Webster, and Middleton.

Dr. Finin's teaching interests include courses on Shakespeare, Early Modern English literature, literary and critical theory, and various introductory survey courses. Currently, Dr. Finin is involved in two major research projects: one on Shakespeare’s female icons and a second on early modern English writers’ representations of Ireland and its people in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. She is developing courses on Spenser's The Faerie Queene and the notoriously fluid genre of Romance in English Literature. In addition to her teaching and scholarly interests, Dr. Finin is a trained labyrinth facilitator who offers various community labyrinth walks, lectures and workshops.

Office hours (Spring 2018):
T 10am-12pm
W 1-2pm

Courses (Spring 2018):
COMP 100 - Composition
LITR 150 - Intro to Literary Studies
LITR 294/360 - Poetics

Dr. Hecht joined the English Department as an Assistant Professor in 2006, after teaching literature and creative writing as a full-time lecturer at SUNY, Oneonta for several years. Dr. Hecht earned his MFA in Poetry from the University of Arizona (1990) and his Ph.D. from Syracuse University (2002). His dissertation addressed the intersection of politics and landscape representation in early American literature. He has published essays on James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

His books include two edited anthologies: The Erie Canal Reader: 1790-1950 (Syracuse University Press, 2004)-literary writings about the Erie Canal-and Freemen Awake!: Rally Songs and Poems from New York's Anti-Rent Movement (Delaware County Historical Association (2017). His poetry has been published widely in literary journals and websites, such as Denver Quarterly, Prick of the Spindle, Sheila-Na-Gig on-line, and Yes Poetry. His first poetry collection is Talking Pictures (Cervena Barva Press, 2012). Dr. Hecht is currently researching a book on environmental themes in the animated films of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. He teaches courses in American literature, Literary/Critical Theory, and Creative Writing.

Office Hours (Spring 2018):
W 2-4:30 pm
F 2-2:30 pm

Courses (Spring 2018):
ALIT 201 - American Lit: 1865 to Present
ALIT 365 - Race and the American South
COMP 270 - Fiction Workshop

In addition to teaching courses in creative writing and American literature, George Hovis chairs the Red Dragon Reading Series, which features writers of national and international acclaim. He earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has attended the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. His short fiction has been published in Carolina Quarterly, New Madrid, Limestone, The McNeese Review, Stone Canoe, and elsewhere.

His interviews and essays on literature of the American South have appeared in such journals as Southern Cultures, Mississippi Quarterly, The Southern Literary Journal, Appalachian Heritage, The North Carolina Literary Review, and The Thomas Wolfe Review. His book Vale of Humility (University of South Carolina Press, 2007) explores “plain folk” black and white in contemporary North Carolina fiction. Currently, he is at work on a novel about a North Carolina mill town adjusting to desegregation in the mid-1970s. In 2017, George received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching

Office Hours  (Spring 2018):
TTh 12 pm
W 2-3 pm

Courses: (Spring 2018):
ALIT 286 - African-American Women Writers
WLIT 270 - Postcolonial Lit: Africa

Konstantina M. Karageorgos received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Karageorgos's research interests include the post-45 African American novel, Africana avant-gardes, black internationalism, and aesthetics and narrative forms within the black radical tradition. Through a re-examination of philosophical theories of modernity/coloniality, her work analyzes literary forms of commitment that disrupt prevailing epistemological, aesthetic, and historical narratives on post-1945 black writing.

Her book in progress, Beyond the Blueprint: Decolonization, the Cold War, and the Making of an African American Avant-Garde, argues that African American radical writers living in the U.S., Europe, North and West Africa used the novel form to articulate new formal and political possibilities for black internationalism. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Mediations, South Atlantic Quarterly, and Against the Current, as well as the edited volume Lineages of the Literary Left. In addition to her scholarly monograph, she is at work on a crossover project that analyzes post-Ferguson reconstructions of mid-twentieth century African American literary and visual art in various media outlets including The New York Times, The Root, The New Republic, and The Atlantic.

An alumnus of SUNY Oneonta for his B.A. in 1980 and M.A. in 1990, Professor Lee completed his doctoral work in Comparative Literature at Rutgers University in 2000. He has lectured and taught in China, South Africa, and throughout the United States, and was the first recipient of the Simphiwe Hlatswayo Teaching Award at Oneonta in 1998. He received the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2004, and the SUNY Oneonta Outstanding Advisor Award in 2003. He teaches courses in world literatures and literary theory as well as composition. His recent publications include an introductory text for advanced high-school students, Globalization, Language, and Culture, articles on short fiction, theoretical issues, and cross-cultural concerns.

Office Hours (Spring 2018):
TTh 12:30-1:30pm

Courses: (Spring 2018):
COMP 100 - Composition

Joshua Lewis has taught composition at various institutions, such as SUNY Broome Community College, Hartwick College, and SUNY Oneonta. He received his Ph.D. in English from Binghamton University, and he has been part of the Greater Binghamton Community for over 13 years. In his spare time, he writes poetry and fiction along with facilitating poetry workshops at the Broome County Arts Council, an organization dedicated to serving the arts.

Office Hours  (Spring 2018):
TTh 2:15-3:15pm

Courses (Spring 2018):
No English Courses

Dr. Lobdell earned her Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 2007.

Office Hours  (Spring 2018):
MWF 10:05-11:45am

Courses (Spring 2018):
COMP 100 - Composition
COMP 239 - Technical & Professional Writing

J. McDermott has taught at SUNY Oneonta since 2001. A graduate of the University of Hartford in Hartford, CT (English/Linguistics) and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (Labor Studies), McDermott delayed any meaningful start to a career for at least a decade. He finally found an outlet for his creativity in radio, where he worked as a writer, director, producer and engineer for many years. A freelance business copywriter for Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 companies, he also consults in the development of business writing skills. McDermott is active in departmental, campus, and union activities, and regularly teaches courses in writing and literature.

A native of Long Island and graduate of Colgate University, Professor Morgan-Zayachek returned to New York in 2000 after spending the previous decade at Big 10 universities in the Midwest. She received a doctorate in English from Indiana University in 1998, specializing in Irish studies, and completed a two-year lectureship at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has received research grants and teaching commendations at both schools, and her publications include essays on the film Michael Collins and the novels of Irish author Edna O'Brien.

Her current research focuses on the influence of radio in Ireland, and her essay on Irish quiz programs during WWII appeared in the winter 2001 edition of History Ireland. She has also introduced and co-edited a collection of essays, A Century of Irish Drama: Widening the Stage (Indiana UP, 2001). She teaches courses in composition, critical theory, and Irish, British and American literature, and has a particular interest in William Butler Yeats.

Office Hours (Spring 2018):
MWF 9:30-11:30am

Courses (Spring 2018):
ALIT 374 - Hawthorne & Melville

Since Dr. Payne began teaching at SUNY Oneonta in the fall 2001 semester, he has created several new courses including creative writing workshops in screenwriting and creative nonfiction, and courses in American and environmental literature such as Hawthorne and Melville, Environmental Literature, Rachel Carson, and The River as Metaphor and Reality. Prior to teaching at SUNY Oneonta, Dr. Payne earned a J.D. at Albany Law School, and his experience as a practicing attorney included service as Counsel to the New York State Senate Transportation Committee. He then completed his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University at Buffalo, where his dissertation was a multidisciplinary study of American Nature Writing and Environmental Politics.

His book-length works include Voices in the Wilderness: American Nature Writing and Environmental Politics (1996); The Palgrave Environmental Reader (2005); Writing the Land: John Burroughs and His Legacy (2008); Why Read Thoreau’s Walden? (2013); and Orion on the Dunes: A Biography of Henry Beston (2016). Dr. Payne also directs the biannual John Burroughs Nature Writing Conference & Seminar, commonly referred to as the “Sharp Eyes” Conference, at SUNY Oneonta. In 2012, Dr. Payne was honored with the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Courses (Spring 2018):
COMP 200 - Advanced Composition

Stephen  Rice earned an M.A. at SUNY Oneonta

Office Hours  (Spring 2018):
TTh 10:20-11:20

Courses (Spring 2018):
COMP 100 - Composition (2 sections)

Andrew M. Richmond received his B.A. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, his M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge, and his Ph.D. from the Ohio State University. He has taught a wide array of undergraduate courses, including first and second year composition, British literature to 1800, introduction to Shakespeare, introduction to fiction, the Bible as literature, introduction to video game analysis, the rhetoric of science and technology, and literature in the U.S. experience.

His research focuses on the ecological and cultural contexts of medieval British romances, and his recent publications on these subjects have appeared in the journal Neophilologus and the edited collection Dark Chaucer: An Assortment. While he has done work with animal studies in the past, his current book project concentrates on exploring representations of landscape in late medieval British romance.

Office Hours (Spring 2018):
TTh 2:30-4pm

Courses (Spring 2018):
COMP 290 - Writing About Literature
LITR 250 - Approaches to Literature
WLIT 294 - SpTp: Enlightenment

Jonathan Sadow is a specialist in eighteenth-century British literature who received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He teaches classes in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature that emphasize shifting conceptions of fiction, poetry, theater, gender, print culture, philosophy, and empire, as well as courses on literary theory, postmodernism, and irony. He has published articles and book chapters on genre, gender, puppets, and bagels. His recent chapter "Moral and Generic Corruption in Fenwick's Secresy" is part of the book collection Didactic Novels and British Women's Writing, 1790-1820, ed. Hilary Havens (Routledge 2017). He is affiliated with the Department of Women's and Gender Studies, and his current research interests primarily involve eighteenth-century women writers like Eliza Fenwick, Charlotte Smith, and Eliza Haywood.

Office Hours (Spring 2018):
TTh 11:30-12:30
W 9:30-1030

Courses (Spring 2018):
COMP 390 - Capstone in English
ELIT 275 - Jane Austen
LITR 100 Themes in Literature

Dr. Tredennick is a specialist in nineteenth-century British literature, especially the novel. Her dissertation explores a materialist metaphorics of death prevalent in this era. She continues to like texts with corpses in them. Prior to coming to SUNY, Oneonta, Dr. Tredennick taught at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, and at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. In addition to creepy Victorian stuff, her interests include composition (no, really), the Seattle Mariners, and Grand Theft Auto. She is the author of the predictably morbid "'A Labor of Death and a Labor against Death': Scott's Cenotaphic Paratexts" (European Romantic Review) and "Some Collections of Mortality: Dickens, the Paris Morgue, and the Material Corpse" (Victorian Review), and she is the editor of the less cadaverous Victorian Transformations, 2011.

Office Hours (Spring 2018):
TTh 5:30-6:30pm

Courses (Spring 2018):
COMP 100 - Composition (2 sections)

Andrew Tully earned an M.F.A. from Emerson College, 1994.

Office Hours (Spring 2018):
MW 11am-12pm

Courses (Spring 2018):
COMP 150 - Intro to Creative Writing (2 Sections)

Emily Vogel is an adjunct lecturer of creative writing. Her poetry has been published widely, most recently in Omniverse, The Paterson Literary Review, Lips, City Lit Rag, Luna Luna, Maggy, Lyre Lyre, The Comstock Review, The Broome Review, Tiferet, The San Pedro River Review, and 2 Bridges Review, among several others. She is the author of five chapbooks, and a full-length collection, The Philosopher's Wife, published in 2011 by Chester River Press, a collaborative book of poetry, West of Home, with her husband Joe Weil (Blast Press), and a recently released collection, First Words (NYQ Books). She has work forthcoming in The Boston Review and Omniverse. She teaches writing at SUNY Oneonta and Hartwick College, and lives with her husband, the poet Joe Weil, and their two children, Clare and Gabriel.

Courses (Spring 2018):
COMP 100 - Composition (2 Sections)

Al Winne earned a bachelor's degree from SUNY Oneonta in 1989.

Office Hours (Spring 2018):
MWF 10-11am

Courses (Spring 2018):
COMP 290 - Writing About Literature
WLIT 212 - Survey of Greek and Roman Literature

Akira Yatsuhashi joined the English Department in 2011 after teaching Classics in the Upper Midwest. He earned his Ph.D. in Classical Studies from Duke University (2010) and also holds MAs in Classics (Tufts, 2003) and Comparative Literature and Japanese Poetics (Dartmouth, 2001).  He teaches courses in Greek and Roman literature, Greek and Latin language, and composition.  His research focuses on the uses of literature and scholarly writing in shaping and defining cultural and ethnic identity in colonial and imperial contexts.  He is currently researching the role the Library of Alexandria and its literary products played in allowing elites reimagine and reorder their cultural pasts in the wake of the conquests of Alexander of the Great.