Literature Faculty
Neil Arditi
Courses: Elective Affinities in Modern American Poetry
B.A., Yale University. M.A., Ph.D., University of Virginia. Special interest in British Romantic poetry, Romantic legacies in modern and contemporary poetry, and the history of criticism and theory. Essays published in Raritan, Parnassus, Keats-Shelley Journal, Philosophy and Literature, and Jewish-American Dramatists and Poets. SLC, 2001-
Bella Brodzki
Courses: First Year Studies: Self/Life/Writing: Studies in Autobiography, Global Intertextualities
B.A., Sarah Lawrence College. M.A., Hebrew University. Ph.D., Brown University. Special interests in critical and cultural theory, gender studies, postcolonial studies, translation studies, autobiography, and modern and contemporary fiction. Selected scholarly publications include essays in PMLA, MLN, Yale French Studies, Studies in Twentieth-Century Fiction, Yale Journal of Criticism, Modern Fiction Studies, Profils Américains, and in collections such as Borderwork: Feminist Engagements with Comparative Literature; Women, Autobiography, and Fiction: A Reader; Critical Cosmos: Latin American Approaches to Fiction; Feminism and Institutions: A Dialogue on Feminist Theory; and MLA Approaches to Teaching Representations of the Holocaust. Author of Can These Bones Live?: Translation, Survival, and Cultural Memory; co-editor of Life/Lines: Theorizing Women’s Autobiography. Recipient of National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, Lucius Littauer Award, and Hewlett-Mellon grants. Visiting professor at Université de Montpellier-Paul Valéry and Université de Versailles-St. Quentin. SLC, 1984-
Una Chung
Courses: First-Year Studies: Imagination on the Move: Exploring Travel in Literature, In World Time: Cultural Studies of the Pacific Rim
B.A., University of California-Berkeley. M.A., San Francisco State University. Ph.D., Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Special interests in Asian American literature and film, late twentieth-century transnational East and Southeast Asian cultural studies, East Asian film, postcolonial theory, ethnic studies, globalization, affect, new media. SLC, 2007-
Isabel de Sena
Courses: Advanced Beginning Spanish, Intermediate Spanish III: Atlantic Crossings, Everyday Lives
M.A., University of California-Berkeley. Ph.D., University of California-Santa Barbara. Special interests include medieval Peninsular literature, Latin American literature in general and fiction in particular, and Luso-Brazilian literature and culture; translations include Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts. SLC, 1997-
Roland Dollinger
Courses: An Introduction to German Thought and Literature, Beginning German, Twentieth-Century German Literature
B.A., University of Augsburg, Germany. M.A., University of Pittsburgh. Ph.D., Princeton University. Special interest in twentieth-century German and Austrian literature; author of Totalität und Totalitarismus: Das Exilwerk Alfred Döblins and several essays and book reviews on nineteenth- and twentieth-century German literature; co-editor of Unus Mundus: Kosmos and Sympathie, Naturphilosophie, and Philosophia Naturalis. SLC, 1989-
James Horowitz
Courses: The Eighteenth-Century British Novel in Context
M.A., New York University. M.A., Ph.D. (forthcoming), Yale University. Special interests include Restoration and eighteenth-century literature, the history of the novel, film and film theory, Henry James, and gender studies. SLC, 2008-
Alwin A. D. Jones
Courses: African American Letters: Race Writing and Black Subjectivities, Contemporary World Literatures: Fictions of the Yard
B.A., Tufts University. M.A., Ph.D. (ABD), University of Virginia. Wrote and published a collection of poetry, Black Trinity, as his senior project for the Africa and the New World Interdisciplinary Minor program at Tufts University. Dissertation project, “African Mater: Migrant Maternity in the Making of New Social Orders,” chaired by Marlon B. Ross with Deborah E. McDowell and Mrinalini Chakravorty, is a multigenre study that builds on recent exciting scholarship focusing on the mother figure in the literature and culture of the African diaspora during the chattel slavery and the nation-building/postcolonial moments. Teaching interests include African American literature and studies, eighteenth century to present; Caribbean literature and studies, literatures in English and/or translations; early American/transatlantic literatures; postcolonial literatures in English, particularly of the African diaspora; race, cultural, and postcolonial theory; and black popular culture. Writer for Black Enterprise magazine; also interested in writing about race and technology, writing and performing poetry, and exploring the intersections of black music and resistance internationally. SLC, 2008-
Daniel Kaiser
on leave fall semester
Courses: Culture Wars: Literature and the Politics of Culture Since the Late Nineteenth Century, An Introduction to Shakespeare
B.A., Columbia College. M.A., Yale University. Special interest in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American and European literature, with particular emphasis on relationships between politics and literature; recipient of French government-Fulbright fellowship for study at the Sorbonne. SLC, 1964-1971; 1974-
Barbara Kaplan
Dean Emerita of the College
B.A., Vassar College. M.A., Columbia University. Ph.D., New York University. Special interest in nineteenth-century Russian literature; author of articles and reports for educational journals and institutions on issues of open admissions, adult education, and minority student programs. SLC, 1975-2007
Virginia Kennedy
B.A., M.A., Montclair State University. Ph.D., Cornell University (fall 2006). Special interest in cultural studies, American and Native American literatures. Recent publications include “Un-learning the Legacy of Conquest: Possibilities for Leslie Silko’s Ceremony in the Non-Native Classroom” in American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Special Edition, summer/fall 2004, and “Native Americans, African Americans, and the Space That Is America: Indians in the Fiction of Toni Morrison” in Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds, (editors Sharon Holland and Tiya Miles, Duke University Press, 2006.) SLC, 2007-
Arnold Krupat
Courses: American Literature, 1830-1929
B.A., New York University. M.A., Ph.D., Columbia University. Recipient of Fulbright, Woodrow Wilson, and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships. Additionally, recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship for 2005-2006. Special interest in cultural studies and Native American literatures. Recipient of the Sarah Lawrence Excellence in Teaching Award, 2007. Author of For Those Who Come After: A Study of Native American Autobiography; The Voice in the Margin: Native American Literature and the Canon; Ethnocriticism: Ethnography, History, Literature; The Turn to the Native: Studies in Criticism and Culture; Red Matters: Native American Studies; the forthcoming All That Remains: Native Studies; and two novels, Woodsmen or Thoreau & the Indians and What to Do? Editor for Native American literatures for the Norton Anthology of American Literature. SLC, 1968-
Ann Lauinger
Courses: Comedy and Romance in the Middle Ages, Three Poets, Shakespeare and Company
B.A., University of Pennsylvania. Oxford University. M.A., Ph.D., Princeton University. Special interest in medieval and Renaissance poetry, particularly English. Author of papers and articles on Shakespeare and Ben Jonson; Persuasions of Fall, a book of poems; and poems in Confrontation, Missouri Review, Parnassus, and other magazines; recipient of Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize, Ernest J. Poetry Prize, Thouron-University of Pennsylvania British-American Exchange Program scholarship; Woodrow Wilson fellow. SLC, 1973-
Joseph Lauinger
Courses: Ancient Greek Theatre: Rituals and Revisions
B.A., University of Pennsylvania. M.A., Oxford University. M.A., Ph.D., Princeton University. Special interest in American literature and film, the history of drama, and classical literature; recipient of the New York State Teacher of Excellence Award and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities; fiction and poetry published in Epoch, Lost Creek, Georgetown Review, Confrontation, and Pig Iron; plays performed throughout the U.S. and in the U.K., Australia, and India; member of the Dramatists Guild. SLC, 1988-
Karen R. Lawrence
President
Courses: Who’s Afraid of James Joyce?
B.A., Yale University. M.A., Tufts University. Ph.D., Columbia University. Special interest in modern and postmodern literature, the novel, and travel writing. Author of The Odyssey of Style in Ulysses, Penelope Voyages: Women and Travel in the British Literary Tradition, and numerous essays on modern literature; editor of Transcultural Joyce and Decolonizing Tradition: New Views of Twentieth- Century “British” Literary Canons. Current work includes the fiction and theory of Christine Brooke-Rose and collected essays on Joyce. Recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and the Rosenblatt Prize for Excellence in research, teaching, and service from the University of Utah. Former chair of English at the University of Utah and dean of humanities at the University of California-Irvine. Former president of the International James Joyce Foundation and the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature. President of Sarah Lawrence College, 2007-
Nicolaus Mills
Courses: First-Year Studies: The Literature of Fact: Writing the Nonfiction Essay, Declarations of Independence: American Masterworks and Their Critics
B.A., Harvard University. Ph.D., Brown University. Special interest in American studies. Books include Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America’s Coming of Age as a Superpower, The Triumph of Meanness: America’s War Against Its Better Self, Their Last Battle: The Fight for the National World War II Memorial, Like a Holy Crusade: Mississippi 1964, The Crowd in American Literature, and American and English Fiction in the Nineteenth Century; editor of Debating Affirmative Action, Culture in an Age of Money, Busing USA, The New Journalism, and The New Killing Fields; contributor to The Boston Globe, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Newsday, The Nation, Yale Review, and National Law Journal; Dissent magazine editorial board; recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, and the Rockefeller Foundation. SLC, 1972-
Angela Moger
on leave yearlong
B.A., Bryn Mawr College. M.A., University of Pennsylvania. Ph.D., Yale University. Special interests include theory of narrative, French literature of the nineteenth century, decadence in painting and literature, and semiotic and rhetorical approaches to the short story. Recipient of Yale University’s Mary Cady Tew Prize and the Dwight and Noyes Clark fellowship. Scholarly publications include essays in PMLA, Yale French Studies, and Substance; the anthologies Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism and Maupassant Conteur et Romancier; and the books Hurdles and Moving Forward, Holding Fast: The Dynamics of Movement in Nineteenth-Century French Culture. Visiting professor at the Institut d’Etudes Francaises d’Avignon. Dean of studies, Sarah Lawrence College, 1972-1975. SLC, 1971-
Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi
B.A., University of London. M.A., Ed.M., Columbia University. Ph.D., University of Ibadan. Special interests include black women’s writing in Africa and the U.S. Co-editor of two special issues on women writers for Research in African Literatures. Author of numerous articles and book chapters on African, African American, and black women’s literature. Author of three books: Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Africa Wo/Man Palava: The Nigerian Novel by Women (University of Chicago Press), and Juju Fission: Alternative Fictions from the Sahara, the Kalahari, and the Oases In-between (forthcoming). Co-editor of a book of essays, Writing the Nation, Self, and Community: The Twelve Best Literary Books by African Women (forthcoming). American Association of University Women fellow; Copeland fellow. Recipient of Hewlett- Mellon grant; Lipkin Award for Inspirational Teaching, Sarah Lawrence College, 2003; Hyman H. Kleinman Fellowship in the Humanities, Sarah Lawrence College, 1999-2002; Pen and Brush Award for scholarship, 2006. Taught at the University of Ibadan, 1972-1989. SLC, 1989-
Julia Miele Rodas
B.A., Sarah Lawrence College. M.Phil., Ph.D., Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Special interests in the Victorian novel, disability studies, and Utopian literature. Work has appeared in The Explicator, The Princeton University Library Chronicle, The Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope, and Dickens Studies Annual. Forthcoming work to appear in Victorian Literature and Culture. SLC, 2003-
Elizabeth Schmidt
Courses: Contemplation, Activism, and American Subjectivity
B.A., Wesleyan University. M.A., Ph.D., New York University. Special interest in American Poetry and Autobiographical Studies from a comparative perspective with emphasis on reading canonical American texts alongside works from Latin America and the African Diaspora. Contributing Editor of Open City. Consulting Editor of The Explicator. Frequent contributor of essays and reviews to Vogue, The New York Times Book Review, and others. Poetry Editor, New York Times Book Review 2000-2004. Editor, Poems of New York (Knopf/Everyman, 2002). Current research projects include a critical anthology of the United States Poet Laureateship and a comparative intellectual biography of Emily Dickinson and Frederick Douglass. SLC, 2007-
William Shullenberger
Joseph Campbell Chair in the Humanities
on leave spring semester
Courses: Milton, Blake, and the Bible, Conscience of the Nations: Classics of African Literature
B.A., Yale University. M.A., Ph.D., University of Massachusetts. Special interests in Milton, seventeenth-century English literature, English Romanticism, African literature, theology and poetics, and psychoanalytic criticism; co-author with Bonnie Shullenberger of Africa Time: Two Scholars’ Seasons in Uganda; essays published in Milton Studies, Renaissance Drama, and other journals and collections; Senior Fulbright Lecturer at Makerere University, Uganda, 1992-1994; director of NEH Summer Seminars on the Classical and the Modern Epic, 1996 and 1999. SLC, 1982-
Fredric Smoler
Courses: First-Year Studies in the Forms of Comedy, The Music of What Happens: Alternate Histories and Counterfactuals, Imagining Imperialism: Some Interdisciplinary Perspectives
B.A., Sarah Lawrence College. M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D., Columbia University. Central interest in European history and culture, with special emphasis on intellectual history and literature. Contributing editor at American Heritage Magazine; writes regularly for First of the Month; occasional contributor to The Nation, The Observer (London), etc.; former editor, Audacity. SLC, 1987-
Stefanie Sobelle
Courses: The Birth of the Postmodern, The Worlds of William Faulkner, Space and the Modern Novel, Amerika: U.S. Literature from the Outside-In
B.A., Stanford University. M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. candidate, Columbia University. Working primarily in twentieth-century American and European experimental literature and art, with an emphasis on the historical avant-garde and postmodern fiction and poetry. Additional interests include High Modernism and the fin de siècle. SLC, 2002-
Ilja Wachs
Ilja Wachs Chair in Outstanding Teaching and Donning
Courses: Studies in the Nineteenth-Century Novel
B.A., Columbia College. Dean of the College, Sarah Lawrence College, 1980 to 1985. Special interest in nineteenth-century European and English fiction, with emphasis on psychological and sociological relationships as revealed in works of Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Balzac, Stendhal, James, Flaubert, and others. SLC, 1965-
Fiona Wilson
Courses: Sex and Sensibility: British Poetry 1780-1850
M.A., University of Glasgow. M.A., Ph.D., New York University. Scholar and poet. Special interests in British literature, eighteenth to twentieth century; poetry and poetics; and Scottish writing. Recipient of a Hawthornden fellowship (2008) and current chair of the Scottish Literature Discussion Group of the Modern Language Association. Author of essays published in Romanticism’s Debatable Lands (Palgrave, 2007), Keats-Shelley Journal, Pequod, Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature (Edinburgh University Press, 2007), and elsewhere. Poetry published in Best Scottish Poems (Scottish Poetry Library, 2005), Poetry Review, The Independent, The Scotsman, Grand Street, and Literary Review. SLC, 2008-