English Department Shines Bright

Posted in News Story

Each year, students are asked to nominate faculty in the College who have shaped their Georgetown experience in a meaningful way. Ten of those nominated this year include Christine So, Elizabeth Velez, Maureen Corrigan, Jennifer Natalya Fink, Libbie Rifkin, Ellen L. Gorman, Michael Collins, Patrick O’Malley, Andrew Rubin and Barbara Feinman Todd.

They have been invited to attend the 5th Annual Georgetown College Honors Reception on Friday March 18th, 2011.

Christine So: Associate Professor in the Department of English

She has published in Feminist Studies, MELUS, and in East Main Street: Asian American Popular Culture. Her book, Economic Citizens: A Narrative of Asian American Visibility (Temple University Press, 2007) traces the many economic questions–what money can buy, how money is lost, how money is circulated, and what labor or objects are worth–that have dominated certain Asian American texts . Focusing on books that have achieved mainstream popularity, Economic Citizens demonstrates that a rhetoric of social equivalence has depended uneasily and unsuccessfully upon the logic of capital. Her current project investigates Asian American equivalence in the context of ethical acts of recognition and redress.

Elizabeth Velez: Academic Director of the Community Scholars Program and a professional lecturer in the Women’s Studies Program

She teaches “Feminist Theory” for Women’s Studies. A writer and journalist, she has covered feminist issues for national publications for the past ten years. Professor Velez’s most recent book, The Hell With Love, a feminist anthology of poetry, was published in January 2002. She is currently working on Kiss Off: Poems to Set You Free, an annotated radical feminist anthology of poetry. (Jan, 2003, Warner Books)

Maureen Corrigan: Critic in Residence and a Lecturer in the Department of English

She is an expert in 19th century British Literature; Women’s Literature (special focus on autobiography); Popular Culture; Detective Fiction; Contemporary American Literature; Anglo-Irish Literature.

Publications include: Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books (Random House, 2005), “David Copperfield” in The Book that Changed My Life (Gotham Books, 2006). She was Associate Editor (with Robin Winks) and Contributor to Mystery & Suspense Fiction (2 vols., Scribner, 1999) which won an Edgar Award for Criticism from The Mystery Writers of America. For the past 18 years, Corrigan has been the book critic for the Peabody Award-winning program, “Fresh Air,” heard nationally on NPR. She is also a columnist for Book World in The Washington Post, and a regular contributor to Newsday. Other reviews and essays have been published in The Village Voice, The New York Times, The Nation, The New York Observer and The Philadelphia Inquirer. She serves on the Advisory Panel of The New American Heritage Dictionary and as an Advisor to the National Endowment of the Arts’ “Big Read” Project. She has served as judge and chair for the LA Times Book Award (mystery and suspense division).

Libbie Rifkin: Full Time Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of English

She has published in Contemporary Literature, Modernism/Modernity, and the Journal of Modern Literature. Her book, Career Moves: Olson, Creeley, Zukofsky, Berrigan, and the American Avant-Garde (Wisconsin, 2000) is an institutional history of poetic ambition and the social construction of masculinity in the post-War period. She is currently editing a volume of essays on gender and poetic friendship.

Jennifer Natalya Fink: Assistant Professor in the Department of English

Jennifer is the author of three award-winning novels, Burn and V (both from Suspect Thoughts Press), The Mikvah Queen (Rebel Satori Press) and a short story collection – 13 Fugues (forthcoming: Dark Coast Press). She is the founder and Gorilla-in-Chief of The Gorilla Press, an organization that promotes youth literacy through bookmaking. Nominated for the Pulitzer, National Jewish Book, and National Book Award, Fink is also the winner of the Dana Award, Story Magazine s short fiction award, and twelve other awards. She is the U.S. judge for the Caine Prize for African Literature (known as the African Booker ), and has published widely on literature, literacy, and hybridity, most notably in the anthology Performing Hybridity (Minnesota), which she co-edited with May Joseph.

Ellen L. Gorman: Lecturer in the Department of English

Ellen teaches Introduction to Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies and Humanities for the English Department and her research interests include aesthetic theory, popular culture, cultural theory and art criticism. She co-edited and contributed to The Hummer: Myths and Consumer Culture, published by Lexington Books in 2007, an interdisciplinary series of essays on the meaning and function of the Hummer in American culture. She co-coordinates a yearly symposium on visual culture at George Mason University and has published articles on her work, most recently in the Organdi Quarterly Review.

Michael J. Collins: Distinguished Professor of English

Michael is an expert on Shakespeare; British theatre since 1950; Anglo-Welsh poetry. Articles on Shakespeare (focus on performance and pedagogy), Anglo-Welsh poetry, and American literature.

Publications include: Editor, Shakespeare’s Sweet Thunder: Essays on the Early Comedies (Delaware, 1997).

Patrick R. O’Malley: Associate Professor in the Department of English

Patrick’s teaching and research interests are in Nineteenth-Century British literature and culture, gender and sexuality, the Gothic novel, religion and literature, Irish and Anglo-Irish history and literature, and literary theory.

His book, “Catholicism, Sexual Deviance, and Victorian Gothic Culture,” was published by Cambridge University Press in 2006. In addition, he has published articles and essays on Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Sydney Owenson, and John Henry Newman. He is currently working on a book about the representation of history in the works of nineteenth-century Irish Protestants.

Andrew N. Rubin: Associate Professor in the Department of English

Andrew is the author and co-editor of several books, including Archives of Authority (forthcoming), Adorno: A Critical Reader, and The Edward Said Reader. He has written on the subject of twentieth century culture for magazines and journals including The South Atlantic Quarterly, Alif: A Journal of Comparative Poetics, The Journal of Palestine Studies, The Nation magazine, The New Statesman and al-ahram.

His research interests and expertise include 20th century Anglophone Literature, and Literary Theory. He has written extensively on the work of George Orwell, Edward W. Said, and Theodor W. Adorno, among others.

Barbara Feinman Todd: Adjunct Instructor in the Department of English and Director of the Journalism Program

Barbara is the Journalism Director in Georgetown University’s English Department where she teaches. Todd also serves as co-director of the Pearl Project. In 2008, she and her Pearl Project co-professor, Asra Nomani, received first place in the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication’s Best Practices in Teaching of Information Gathering Competition for their teaching of the Pearl Project. She is the founding associate dean of Georgetown University’s MPS in Journalism graduate program. She has also worked as a freelance editor and writer for more than two decades, assisting as ghostwriter, editor or researcher for senators, journalists, and business leaders on several high-profile books.