Academics
Faculty
Nathaniel Lewis
Department Chair
Associate Professor of English
B.A. Yale University; M.A. University of North Carolina; Ph.D. Harvard University
Dr. Lewis has just completed a book on Western American literature and is currently at work on a study of the Maine woods. A co-director of the American Studies program, he teaches courses on nature writing, postmodern theory, multiethnic literature and aesthetics.
Saint Edmund's Hall 335
Phone: 802.654.2308
Box 245
E-mail: nlewis@smcvt.edu
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Kathleen M. Balutansky
Professor of English
B.A. Goshen College; M.A., Ph.D. University of Notre Dame
Dr. Balutansky specializes in Caribbean and post-colonial literature and theory, with a special focus on women writers. She is the author of The Novels of Alex La Guma: The Representation of a Political Conflict (1990). Her publications on the Caribbean include translations, interviews and scholarly articles on Caribbean writers and a co-edited anthology of essays by Caribbean writers, Representing Caribbean Creolization: Reflections on the Cultural Dynamics of Language and Literature (1998). She is currently Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the College, and is the president of the Haitian studies association.
Klein Hall
Phone: 802.654.2640
Box 242
E-mail: kbalutansky@smcvt.edu
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Frank Nicholas Clary
Professor of English
B.A. LaSalle College; Ph.D. University of Notre Dame
Dr. Clary is a Renaissance specialist who is working on the New Variorum Edition of Hamlet, which will be published by the Modern Language Association. He and his co-editors have received three substantial Grants from the NEH to support this work. He has published several articles on Shakespeare's plays, particularly on Hamlet, and reviews books on Shakespeare for The Sixteenth Century Journal and Shakespeare Quarterly. He teaches courses on Milton, Shakespeare and drama.
Saint Edmund's Hall 343
Phone: 802.654.2390
Box 353
E-mail: nclary@smcvt.edu
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Liz Inness-Brown
Professor of English
B.A. St. Lawrence University; M.F.A. Columbia University
Professor Inness-Brown (a.k.a. Liz Monley) is a fiction writer who loves to teach writing. Author of two books of short stories, Satin Palms (Fiction International, 1981) and Here (LSU Press, 1994), as well as a novel Burning Marguerite (Knopf, 2002), she's been acclaimed nationally; the San Francisco Chronicle called her novel “a stunning debut,” and the New York Times Book Review said “Vivid yet concise, Inness-Brown's language burns away all but the essence of her story.” She teaches fiction writing, of course, but she also runs the Writing Center, a peer-tutoring program, and trains the tutors through her course Teaching Writing. Her favorite course, though, is the first-year seminar The Examined Life, in which students study memoir and examine their own lives by writing about them. Professor Inness-Brown lives with her husband, Keith, and son Michael in South Hero, one of the Champlain Islands, where she gardens in the summer and snowshoes in the winter.
Saint Edmund's Hall 333
Phone: 802.654.2441
Box 359
E-mail: einness-brown@smcvt.edu
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Carey Kaplan
Professor of English
B.A. Barnard College; M.A. University of Chicago; Ph.D. University of Massachusetts
Dr. Kaplan has published books on Doris Lessing and on canon formation (The Canon and the Common Reader). She is interested in collaborative composition, critical theory, feminist theory, queer studies and women’s writing. She is the driving force behind the establishment of the gender studies program and co-teaches a course in this program every spring. She also teaches Critical Theory, British Modernism, 18th Century Literature and Women’s Literature.
Saint Edmund's Hall 342
Phone: 802.654.2359
Box 126
E-mail: ckaplan@smcvt.edu
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Christina Root
Professor of English
A.B. Bryn Mawr College; M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Columbia University
Dr. Root teaches courses in British literature, Romanticism, post-colonialism and British fiction. She is working on a full-length study of Romantic literary thinkers who offer ecological alternatives to the dominant, Western, mechanistic modes of consciousness.
Saint Edmund's Hall 336
Phone: 802.654.2439
Box 282
E-mail: croot@smcvt.edu
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Lorrie Smith
Professor of English and American Studies
B.A. University of Massachusetts-Boston; M.A., Ph.D. Brown University
Dr. Smith specializes in American poetry and African American Literature. She teaches courses on a variety of topics in these fields, including seminars in Whitman and Dickinson, Faulkner and Morrison, literature of the Middle Passage, and race and culture. She recently completed an article for a collection published by Rutgers University Press on connections between the Black Arts Movement and current spoken word poetry, and she is writing a book entitled Reports from Vernacular Valleys: Post-Sixties Black Poetry and the Public Sphere. She is also a faculty member in the American Studies program.
Saint Edmund's Hall 337
Phone: 802.654.2392
Box 167
E-mail: lmith@smcvt.edu
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Greg Delanty
Associate Professor of English
B.A. National University of Ireland
Professor Delanty was born in Cork, Ireland and is a widely published Irish poet. His latest poetry collection is The Blind Stitch (Oxford Series, Carcanet Press and LSU 2002). His other published works include The Hellbox (Oxford Series, Oxford University Press, 1998), American Wake (Blackstaff/Dufour, 1995), Southward (LSU, 1992) and Cast In The Fire (Dolmen Press, 1986). His poems have appeared in American, Irish, English, Australian, Japanese and Argentinean anthologies, including the Norton Introduction to Poetry. He also co-edited Jumping Off Shadows: Selected Irish Poetry (Cork UP, 1995) and The Selected Poems of Patrick Galvin (Cork UP, 1995). He has read his poems widely and he was invited to give a recorded reading at The Library of Congress in 2002. He has received many awards. He teaches Irish Literature, Contemporary Poetry and Genres:Poetry.
Saint Edmund's Hall 341
Phone: 802.654.2824
Box 383
E-mail: gdelanty@smcvt.edu
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Bob Niemi
Associate Professor of English
B.A. University of Massachusetts at Amherst; M.S. Columbia University; M.A., Ph.D.
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Dr. Niemi has just completed a book on Russell Banks and has published a bibliography of Weldon Kees. He is beginning work on another study, Class Representation in Film. He teaches a wide array of courses in American popular culture and film, including Working Class Literature, The Beats and Literature of the Thirties.
Saint Edmund's Hall 345
Phone: 802.654.2569
Box 394
E-mail: rniemi@smcvt.edu
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Kerry Shea
Associate Professor of English
B.A., M.A. Middlebury College; M.A., Ph.D. Cornell University
Dr. Shea has published on women and film as well as Middle High German and Old Norse literature and is working on a book, Engendering Romance: Women and European Medieval Romance. She teaches courses in film, early British Literature, mystery fiction, utopian fiction and women’s literature.
Saint Edmund's Hall 339
Phone: 802.654.2287
Box 392
E-mail: kshea@smcvt.edu
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Joel Dando
Visiting Assistant Professor of English
B.A University of Arizona; A.M., Ph.D. Harvard University
Dr. Dando has lectured on British Romanticism, poetry, Shakespeare, and American Popular Cinema at universities in Australia and the United States. At Saint Michael’s he has taught Introduction to Literary Studies, Novel into Film, and British Writers II, in addition to working in the First Year Seminar program.
Saint Edmund's Hall 338
E-mail: jdando@smcvt.edu
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Will Marquess
Instructor of English
B.A. Duke University; Ph.D. Harvard University
Dr. Marquess has published a study of Keats. He is a fiction writer and teaches writing workshops and introductory literature courses. He is coordinator of the first-year seminar program.
Saint Edmund's Hall 329
Phone: 802.654.2802
Box 171
E-mail: wmarquess@smcvt.edu
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Antonia Messuri
Instructor of English
B.A. State University College at Potsdam; M.A. University of Vermont
Ms. Messuri specializes in the theory and practice of teaching writing. She teaches Introduction to Literary Studies, Writing I, and first year seminars. She has recently published a short story in Kalliope and is currently working on a collection of short stories and essays. She serves as liaison for students with special needs and co-coordinates the writing proficiency program.
Klein Hall 111
Phone: 802.654.2828
Box 389
E-mail: amessuri@smcvt.edu
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Joan Wry
Instructor of English
B.A. Saint Michael’s College; M.A. University of Virginia
Ms. Wry teaches the American Literature surveys, Literary Studies, and first-year seminars. She has published articles on Shakespeare and antebellum women's literature and is currently serving as the Assistant Dean of the College.
Klein Hall 108
Phone: 802.654.2891
Box 381
E-mail: jwry@smcvt.edu