Saint Michael's College

Title: Visiting Assistant Professor of English

Education: B.A University of Arizona; A.M., Ph.D. Harvard University

Areas of Expertise/Research Interests: Romantic Poetry in general and the life, poetry, and letters of Lord Byron in particular; literature and the visual arts; fiction and film

Testimonial: I am grateful for the range of courses I have the opportunity to design, develop, and teach here.

What inspires students the most in your classes and/or your academic area? For at least two thousand years literary critics have been saying that the purpose of literature is to instruct and to delight - or, as some put it, to instruct BY delighting. I assume that my students are naturally drawn, as I am, to a discipline that is dedicated not only to their edification, but to their pleasure. The purpose of every class at Saint Michael's is to instruct - literature classes throw in the delight, no extra charge.

What is your favorite class to teach, and why? I have particularly enjoyed courses in which cinema plays a central role: Fiction into Film, Shakespeare on Screen, and The First Two Generations: Hollywood Films of the 1930s and 1970s. I have been impressed - and delighted - by the cinematic literacy of my students. Even students unfamiliar with the terms of filmmaking and film criticism are often quite sophisticated consumers and readers of visual storytelling.

Favorite quotes: "Happiness is the exercise of one's powers along lines of excellence." - Aristotle
"What a curious vanity it is of the present to expect the past to suck up to it." - Julian Barnes