College of Arts & Sciences
Department of English
Department of English

Faculty Directors

Headshot of Patrick O'Malley

Patrick R. O’Malley

Department Chair
Professor
Research/Teaching Specialties: 19th-Century British and Irish Literature and Culture; Gender and Sexuality Studies; Religion and Literature
Email: pro(at)georgetown(dot)edu

View Dr. O’Malley’s Bio
Headshot of Lori Merish

Lori Merish (She/Her/Hers)

Director of Graduate Studies
Professor
Research/Teaching Specialties: 19th and 20th Century US Literature and Culture; Feminist Theory and Women’s Writing; Working-Class Literature; Race and Class in US Literature; Literature and Material Culture
Email: lam34(at)georgetown(dot)edu

View Dr. Merish’s Bio

Nathan Hensley (He/Him/His)

Director of Undergraduate Studies
Associate Professor
Research/Teaching Specialties: Victorian Literature; Critical Theory; Environmental Humanities
Email: nathan.hensley(at)georgetown(dot)edu

View Dr. Hensley’s Bio
Headshot of Nicole Rizzuto

Nicole Rizzuto (She/Her/Hers)

Director of Honors
Associate Professor
Research/Teaching Specialties: Critical Theory; Modernism; Postcolonial/Anglophone Literature
Email: nr381(at)georgetown(dot)edu

View Dr. Rizzuto’s Bio
Dr. Sandick

Phil Sandick (He/Him/His)

Director of the Creative Writing Minor
Associate Teaching Professor
Research/Teaching Specialties: Composition and Creative Writing Pedagogy, Research Methods in Rhetoric and Composition, Contemporary Fiction, The Short Story
Email: ps1129(at)georgetown(dot)edu

View Dr. Sandick’s Bio

Faculty Publications

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A dark cover of Autotheories, edited by Alex Brostoff and Vilashini Cooppan

Publications

Autotheories

Edited by Alex Brostoff and Vilashini Cooppan | A transdisciplinary array of authors offering a new frame of reference for autotheory and its genre-bending synthesis of autobiography and critical theory.

August 20, 2025

Cover image of Action without Hope, w detail of Turner watercolor

Publications

Action Without Hope: Victorian Literature after Climate Collapse

by Nathan Hensley. A study of how writers from the early phases of our prolonged climate emergency used aesthetic strategies to redefine the category of action.

June 4, 2025

Recentering Learning Complexity, Resilience, and Adaptability in Higher Education

Publications

Recentering Learning: Complexity, Resilience, and Adaptability in Higher Education

Edited by Maggie Debelius. The COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally changed how colleges and universities manage teaching and learning. Recentering Learning unpacks the wide-reaching implications of disruptions such as the pandemic on higher education.

December 3, 2024