Faculty Directory | English Department

skip to main content
skip to navigation

English Department

Home

Majors
Faculty Directory
Frequently Asked Questions
Contact Us

My LaGuardia | Faculty & Staff Portal | Ask LaGuardia

Search:

DIRECTORY

Faculty
Directory

Abdullah-Matta, Allia

Phone: 718.349.4078
Office: E-103P Mail: E-103
Email: amatta@lagcc.cuny.edu

Aksakalova, Olga

Phone: 718.730.7508
Office: LIB-H1 Mail: E-103
Email: oaksakalova@lagcc.cuny.edu

Alexander, Christopher

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: M-109E Mail: E-103
Email: calexander@lagcc.cuny.edu

Chris Alexander holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University and a Ph.D. in American Literature from The University at Buffalo, with a dissertation project on the nineteenth-century roots of literary Modernism. His interests include the study of everyday life and experimental auto-ethnography as an art/writing practice; narrative structure and narratology in fiction and table-top role-playing games; and constraint-based writing in the work of Georges Perec. Also, drag queens and death metal. His creative publications include Panda (Truck Books 2012) and McNugget (Troll Thread Press 2013).

Aliano, Kelly

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: E-103
Email: kaliano@lagcc.cuny.edu

Aykol, Ece

Phone: 718.482.7516
Office: M-109N Mail: E-103
Email: eaykol@lagcc.cuny.edu

Dr. Ece Aykol earned her BA and MA degrees from Istanbul University, Turkey, and came to the United States in 2000 as an international student to pursue a doctorate. She joined LaGuardia’s English Department in 2014 after earning her PhD in English and Film Studies from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and then teaching film and literature in the English Department at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. Dr. Aykol is a bilingual and interdisciplinary teacher and scholar specializing in Contemporary World Literature, Word & Image, and Memory Studies. She focuses her courses on the study of verbal and visual texts from around the world. Students interested in taking the courses Dr. Aykol teaches can expect to engage with historical and current local and global issues, which they will reflect on through thought-provoking reading, viewing, and writing activities. Dr. Aykol’s essays have been published in edited volumes and in peer-reviewed academic journals such as Image [&] Narrative and Pacific Coast Philology.

Bajaj, Lalit

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: MB-14
Email: lbajaj@lagcc.cuny.edu

Baksh, Anita

Phone: 718.730.7507
Office: LIB-H2 Mail: E-103
Email: abaksh@lagcc.cuny.edu

Bandele, Nkosi

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: MB-14
Email: Nbandele@lagcc.cuny.edu

Baumgartner, Jennifer

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: E-254B Mail: E-103
Email: jbaumgartner@lagcc.cuny.edu

Berke, Nancy

Phone: 718.482.5908
Office: E-103 T Mail: E-103
Email: nberke@lagcc.cuny.edu

Nancy Berke. I received my Ph.D. in English from the CUNY Graduate Center and came to LaGuardia in 2004. Prior to LaGuardia, I taught at Hunter College and was a Fulbright Scholar in Belgium. My areas of specialization are American modernism, poetics, and women’s studies. At LaGuardia I teach all levels of composition, Introduction to Poetry, and The Woman Writer. My publications include the book, Women Poets on the Left (Florida, 2001), and articles in Legacy, The Times Higher Education Supplement, American Studies, as well as other publications. I have also contributed chapters to the feminist anthologies Gender in Modernism (Illinois, 2007), A History of Twentieth Century American Women’s Poetry (Cambridge, 2016), and Options for Teaching Modernist Women’s Writing in English (Modern Language Association, forthcoming). In addition to teaching and writing, I co-founded and facilitate LaGuardia’s Faculty Scholars Publication Workshop and am a LaGuardia representative on the CUNY University Faculty Senate.

Bermeo, Nilo

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: E-103
Email: nbermeo@lagcc.cuny.edu

Boccio, Rachel

Phone: 718.482.7704
Office: E-254 E Mail: E-103
Email: rboccio@lagcc.cuny.edu

Rachel Boccio is an Assistant Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College in the City University of New York. Her scholarly interests range widely across the American nineteenth and twentieth centuries with a particular focus on literature, education, incarceration, and arts and activism. Her articles have appeared in Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, Rethinking Schools, and The Edgar Allan Poe Review. Prior to joining the faculty at LaGuardia, Dr. Boccio taught English and American literature for two decades at John R. Manson Youth Institution, a maximum-security prison for adolescent males in Connecticut. An essay drawing on this work will appear in the forthcoming MLA volume, Approaches to Teaching Literature and Writing in Prison.

Bromley, Robin

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: MB-14
Email: rbrobley@lagcc.cuny.edu

Bruns, Cristina

Phone: 718.730.7506
Office: E-263CMail: E-103
Email: cbruns@lagcc.cuny.edu

The focus of Professor Cristy Bruns’ scholarship and much of her teaching are these broad questions: Why do we read fiction and how does it affect us? What do stories do for us? Why does literature—fiction, poetry, drama—matter? She is the author of the book Why Literature? The Value ofLiterary Reading and What It Means for Teaching? (Continuum/Bloomsbury Academic 2011) and has published several articles, the most recent of which is entitled “Reading Readers: Living and Leaving Fictional Worlds” in the journal Narrative (October 2016). Cristy earned a Bachelors degree in English at Wheaton College, a Masters degree in English at Northwestern University and an individual interdisciplinary Ph. D. in English and education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. At LaGuardia Community College she is Assistant Professor and teaches a range of composition and literature courses.

Burg, Evelyn

Phone: 718.482.5634
Office: E-103U Mail: E-103
Email: burgev@lagcc.cuny.edu

Cardaio, Luke

Office: MB-14 Mail: MB-14
Email: lcardaio@lagcc.cuny.edu

Chandler, Linda

Phone: 718.482.5910
Office: E-103G Mail: E-103
Email: lchandler@lagcc.cuny.edu

LINDA CHANDLER received a B.S.E. from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. She also has a Masters in English from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in English from the University of California at Berkeley. She specializes in American Literature before 1800 and Nineteenth Century American Literature. She has presented at numerous conferences and is currently working on her manuscript Keeping Home: Another Look at Domesticity in Antebellum America. She has taught Basic Writing, Composition I, Composition II, The Bible as Literature, Children's Literature, the New Student Seminar and LIB200: Science, Humanism and Technology at LaGuardia.
Schools attended: University of Pennsylvania (B.S.E.); Stanford University (M.A.); University of CA, Berkeley (Ph.D).
Area of Specialization: American Literature before 1800; Nineteenth Century American Literature.
Favorite Quote: "Make better ripples in the world" - Melanie Lewis

Chatterji, Tuli

Phone: 718.730.7451
Office: E254A Mail: E-103
Email: tchatterji@lagcc.cuny.edu

Clark, J. Elizabeth

Phone: 718.482.5665
Office: E-103H

J. Elizabeth Clark earned her B.A. from Lycoming College (creative writing and history) and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Binghamton University (creative writing and American literature with an additional certificate in Latin American & Caribbean Area Studies). She is a published poet and has written articles on a variety of subjects such as ePortfolios, writing pedagogy, pedagogy and technology, digital rhetoric, assessment, women's studies, the poetry of HIV/AIDS and NBC's The West Wing.
At LaGuardia, she has provided leadership in ePortfolio, assessment, advising student clubs, the college's common reading program, basic writing, accelerated composition, and the writing program. She often leads professional development seminars about technology, curriculum, ePortfolios, and integrative learning. Outside of LaGuardia, she is on the Council for Basic Writing, works with AAC&U on integrative learning & ePortfolio, and currently serves as the copy editor for the International Journal of ePortfolio.
Her current writing projects include a middle grade novel and non-fiction science writing for children.

Cole, Lisa

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: E-103
Email: lcole@lagcc.cuny.edu

Cole, Terry

Phone: 718.482.5657
Office: E-103 K Mail: E-103
Email: tcole@lagcc.cuny.edu

Coleman, Tara

Phone: 718.730.7454
Office: M-119C Mail: E-103
Email: tcoleman@lagcc.cuny.edu

Tara Coleman is Associate Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College. She has a research background in English and Comparative Literature, with a focus on Chinese-language poetry and films that cross boundaries of nation, language and artistic form. Since coming to LaGuardia, she has also conducted research into the role of critical reading in writing instruction, and has worked on projects promoting translingual pedagogies on campus. She has been one of the lead organizers of the Wikipedia Translatathon, serves on the English Department’s Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Committee, and works on various curriculum and professional development goals in the Writing Program. She also serves on the Faculty Council.
Education Barnard College (BA in Comparative Literature), The Chinese University of Hong Kong (M.Phil in English Literary Studies) and Rutgers University (PhD in Comparative Literature)

Conners, Carrie

Phone: 718.482.5965
Office: M 120-D
Email: cconners@lagcc.cuny.edu

Carrie Conners is originally from Moundsville, West Virginia. She received her BA in English Literature and English Writing from the University of Pittsburgh and her MA and PhD in Literary Studies with a minor in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Her academic interests include contemporary American poetry, humor in literature, politics in literature, and working-class poetics. In addition to Composition, she has taught Creative Writing, Introduction to Poetry, First Year Seminar, and Learning Communities clusters. She has published articles and book chapters on American poetry. She is also a poet, and her book Luscious Struggle is forthcoming from BrickHouse Books. Her poems have appeared in Bodega, Little Patuxent Review, The Monarch Review, Kestrel, Quiddity, RHINO, and other publications.

Poetry Book

Luscious Struggle. BrickHouse Books, 2019 (forthcoming).

Article and Book Chapters

“‘Ping Ping Ping / I break things’: Productive Disruption in the Working-Class Poetry of Jan Beatty, Sandra Cisneros, and Wanda Coleman.” The Journal of Working-Class Studies, Volume 3, Issue 1, June 2018.

“Bursting at the Seams: Exploding the Confines of Reification with Creative Constraints in Sleeping with the Dictionary” in Reading the Difficulties: Dialogues with Contemporary American Innovative Poetry. Eds. Dr. Thomas Fink and Judith Halden-Sullivan. University of Alabama Press. 2014.

"But he aint never bin seen!": The Protean Howard Hughes and Overlapping Capitalist Narratives in Ed Dorn’s Gunslinger” in The Changing Image of the Businessman through Literature. Ed. Christa Mahalik. Cambridge Scholars Press. (2011).

Features, Interviews, and Honors

“Considering Craft: Adapting from a Whirlwind to a Calm Breeze.” October 2018. https://littlepatuxentreview.org/tag/carrie-conners/

“From a Newtown Literary contributor: Carrie Conners”https://www.newtownliterary.org/single-post/2018/11/29/From-a-Newtown-Literary-contributor-Carrie-Conners

Pushcart Prize Nomination: “Negotiations Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel and United Steelworkers of America.” Kestrel. November, 2018.

Selected Conference Presentations

“Loved Labors Lost in Appalachia.” Kestrel Symposium. Fairmont State University, Fairmont, WV. September 21-22, 2018.

“Work Is Work: American Working-Class Poetics in the 1990s.” Presented at the National Poetry Foundation Poetry and Poetics of the 1990s Conference at the University of Maine 2017.

“Creative Writing Across the English Department: Models of Engagement.” Presented at the Transitions and Transactions II: Composition and Creative Writing Pedagogies in Community Colleges Conference at the Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York. 2014.

"The Good Life: The Politics of Hedonism in Marilyn Hacker’s Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons." The National Poetry Foundation Poetry of the 1980s Conference. University of Maine. 2012.

Croson, Linda - Day Supervisor of the Writing Center

Phone: 718.482.5688
Office: E-111
Email: lcroson@lagcc.cuny.edu

Cucu, Sorin

Phone: 718.482.5681
Office: E-103 FF Mail: E-103
Email: scucu@lagcc.cuny.edu

Das, Bijoyeta

Phone: 718.482.5615
Office: E-254B Mail: E-103
Email: bdas@lagcc.cuny.edu

Dokko, Misun

Phone: 718.730.7703
Office: E-254D Mail: E-103
Email: mdokko@lagcc.cuny.edu

Professor Misun Dokko earned a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in English and American Studies from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Geneseo where she developed an interest in African American literature. She earned a Master of Arts (MA) and a Doctor in Philosophy (PhD) from The University of Maryland at College Park. Her graduate course work focused on African American literature. Different factors led Professor Dokko to pivot and write a dissertation about marginal characters in Asian American literature. Her dissertation examines what makes them marginal (i.e., dirtiness, animalism, narrative transience, etc.), the historical and cultural contexts of their manifestations (i.e., yellow peril discourses, public health discourses, and immigration policies), and the ethics of accounting for their otherness.

Teaching at LaGuardia has intersected with her interest in marginal literary characters and Levinasian theory on ethics and otherness. Drawing on these influences, she is developing a research project on pedagogy. This research will focus on supporting first-year composition students who struggle with basic reading comprehension and writing. Since teaching at LaGuardia, she has identified a small cohort of students who attend regularly, possess steady work habits, but who have difficulty articulating themselves while struggling to complete assignments correctly. This is in spite of scaffolding that Professor Dokko implements such as using culturally relevant texts, inviting the use of home languages, including repeated oral reading instruction, introducing academic conventions on appropriate paraphrasing, and many other support systems described in research about helping college students to understand and write about what they read. Connecting this research to scholarship on interventions for primary and secondary school learners, she proposes that instructor-based one-on-one interventions in first-year composition will help this small cohort of struggling but dedicated students bridge the achievement gap in order to read and write at their peer level.

Dragan, Richard

Phone: 718.482.5686
Office: M-111G Mail: M-111G
Email: rdragan@lagcc.cuny.edu

Richard Dragan currently teaches Basic Writing, Composition I and II. In Spring 2007, he taught American Literature II, a survey of American Literature since 1865. Previous to LaGuardia, he taught a two-semester sequence on Great Works (with a World Literature focus) at Baruch College for several years. While in graduate school, he worked extensively in business and technical journalism publishing hundreds of articles for national magazines and websites. His work has been translated into 11 languages in print and online. Additionally, he has taught web design and computer technology at Columbia University’s School of Continuing Education for over a decade.
He is busy revising his dissertation on the use of recent science for aesthetic effects in the encyclopedic novels of James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo and Richard Powers. He is collaborating on a cognitive science cluster for 2009 that will bridge 'the two cultures' of science and the humanities. He is circulating a manuscript of short stories, Words for a Mood, and is working on a new novel.
An avid amateur classical and jazz guitarist, he continues to arrange music, especially jazz standards and the music of J. S. Bach.
Schools Attended: Oberlin College (B.A. in English and Minor in History), Columbia University (M.A. in English and Comparative Literature, MFA in Creative Writing, Fiction), The Graduate Center / CUNY (Ph.D. in English). Areas of Specialization: 20th/21st Century British and American Literature, Modernism and Postmodernism, Science and Literature, James Joyce, Anglophone Literature, Creative Writing—Fiction, Journalism. A Favorite Quote: "What two temperaments did they individually represent? The scientific. The artistic." --James Joyce, "Ithaca," Ulysses (1922).
Authors I Have Taught At LaGuardia: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Stephen Crane, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, H.D., Mina Loy, Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, John Updike, John Cheever, Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Raymond Carver, Alice Walker, Ha Jin, Amy Tan, John Ashbery, Alice Munro, Yusef Komunyakaa, Charles Wright, Derek Walcott.
Recent and Upcoming Conference Papers:

"Falling Men: Realistic and Postmodern Terror and Wonder in DeLillo and McEwan's Recent Fiction and James Marsh's Man on Wire." Don DeLillo in the Twenty-First Century Conference, Don DeLillo Society, Louisville, KY, February 2009.

"Close Reading Matters: Explicating American Literature by Urban Community College Students." Close Reading Conference, NYCEA, St. Bonaventure University, Buffalo, NY, October 2008.

"Darwin on the Balloon: Reading Evolutionary Science in Ian McEwan's Enduring Love." Revolution and Literature / Evolution and Literature Conference, NYCEA, SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz, NY, April 2007.

"Leaving the Bronx: Don DeLillo's Modern and Postmodern Cities in His Early Fiction." Literature and the City Conference, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY, March 2006.

"Mind-Body Problems: Science and Triangulating Desire in the Work of Richard Powers and Jeanette Winterson. " Locating Love Conference, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY, March 2004.

Contributing Editor: PC Magazine

Eisenstadt, Bert - Director of the Writing Center

Phone: 718.482.5688
Office: E-111
Email: beisenstadt@lagcc.cuny.edu

Fess, Paul

Phone: 718.730.7703
Office: E-254C Mail: E-103
Email: pfess@lagcc.cuny.edu

Fink, Tom

Phone: 718.482.5672
Office: E-103 I Mail: E-103
Email: finkto@lagcc.cuny.edu

Professor Thomas (Tom) Fink--member of LaGuardia's English Department since 1981--regularly teaches ENG 101, 102, and 270 (Introduction to Poetry), and also sometimes teaches ENG 266 (Shakespeare). ENG 289 (Introduction to Literary Studies), Poetry Writing (ENG 271), and ENG 259 (Technical Writing). Professor Fink is the author of twelve books of poetry, most recently Zeugma (Marsh Hawk P, 2022). His poem, "Yinglish Strophes IX," originally published in Barrow Street, was chosen by Heather McHugh and David Lehman for The Best American Poetry 2007 (Scribner's). Fink's books of criticism/pedagogy include Reading Poetry with College and University Students: Overcoming Barriers and Deepening Engagement (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), "A Different Sense of Power": Problems of Community in Late-Twentieth Century U.S. Poetry (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001), and The Poetry of David Shapiro (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1993). Fink is the co-editor of two critical anthologies: Reading the Difficulties: Dialogues with Contemporary Innovative American Poetry (U of Alabama P, 2014) and Burning Interiors: David Shapiro's Poetry and Poetics (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2007). He is also co-editor of Literature Around the Globe (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt, 1994). Professor Fink has published over 250 reviews, interviews, and articles in numerous journals, including Contemporary Literature, Boston Review, American Poetry Review, Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, Jacket (and Jacket 2), Minnesota Review, Slope, Talisman, Twentieth Century Literature, and Verse. Fink's paintings hang in various collections, and they have been featured in journals such as Otoliths and BlazeVox. Schools Attended: Princeton University (B.A.) and Columbia University (M.A., Ph.D.) Area of Specialization: Contemporary U.S. Poetry

Flood, Deirdre

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: E-103
Email: dflood@lagcc.cuny.edu

Foster, Judith N.

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: MB-14
Email: jfoster@lagcc.cuny.edu

Fox, Meghan

Phone: 718.730.7453
Office: M-119A Mail: E-103
Email: mefox@lagcc.cuny.edu

Dr. Meghan C. Fox is Assistant Professor of English, Co-chair of the English Department’s Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Committee, and Director of Recruitment for the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Liberal Arts Option at LaGuardia Community College. She teaches literature, composition, journalism, and liberal arts courses, and she is a faculty mentor to the Journalism Club and The Bridge, the college’s student newspaper. Her research interests include modernism, metamodernism, and feminist and queer theory. She has published work in Woolf Studies Annual and The Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914-1945 and has a forthcoming article in MFS: Modern Fiction Studies. She is currently working on a monograph concerning hybridity in literary modernism titled “Betwixt and Between”: The Liminal Subjects and Hybrid Forms of Modernism. She serves on the Board for the Feminist inter/Modernist Association.

Gallagher, Kristen

Phone: 718.482.5638
Office: C-411
Email: kgallagher@lagcc.cuny.edu

Kristen Gallagher is a writer, professor, and yoga and meditation teacher living in Queens, NY. Her most recent book, 85% True / minor ecologies (Skeleton Man Press 2016), blends fiction and nonfiction in a series of tales of Florida-based ecological horror. It has been reviewed in Tripwire, Full Stop, and Jacket2; an interview about it appears in Dichtung Yammer; and part of it has been translated into an endlessly self-generating audio book by Human Scale Press. Other recent books include: Grand Central (Troll Thread 2016), We Are Here (Truck Books 2011) and "Florida," a long chapbook from Well Greased Press in 2015. Other recent publications include: excerpts from “Florida” published in 6x6 and nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2017; "Untitled (Rosewood Trip)," text w screenshots from Google Maps, published in Printed Web 3 in 2015; and "Dossier on the Site of a Shooting," a multi-platform digital work published on GaussPDF in 2014 and reviewed by Paul Soulellis in Rhizome. Her essay “Teaching Freire and CUNY Open Admissions,” originally published in Radical Teacher, is anthologized in Class and the College Classroom: Essays on Teaching (Bloomsbury 2013). Her essays on the work of Tan Lin appear in Jacket2, Criticism: A Journal for Literature and the Arts, and the collection Reading the Difficulties from University of Alabama Press. Her essay “LeRoi Jones’ ‘Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note,’” appears in Jacket 2: Feature on Poetry 1960. In LaGuardia’s English Department, she teaches ENG 099, ENG 101, ENG 102, ENN 198: Creative Writing Urban Studies, and ENG 274: Creative Nonfiction. She teaches yoga and meditation through LaGuardia’s Wellness Center.

Gallardo, Ximena

Phone: 718.482.5902
Office: M-109 B
Email: xgallardo@lagcc.cuny.edu

Originally from Chile, Dr. Ximena Gallardo C. is a gender and film scholar who has published and presented widely on issues of representation in popular culture. She is currently working on a comprehensive study of women and gender in science fiction cinema entitled She Came from Outer Space. Dr. Gallardo is also Feminism editor for Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture, and the co-chair for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Area for the Southwest and Texas Popular Culture/American Culture Association. Her first book, Alien Woman (Continuum, 2004), a study of the representation of women and gender in the Alien film series, was co-authored with C. Jason Smith.Schools Attended: Louisiana State University.
Area of Specialization: British literature, Gender Theory and Film Theory, Ethnic Literatures, and Composition.
Favorite Quote: "If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning." -- Catherine Aird
Authors I teach: Whenever I teach essays, novels, and short stories, I usually choose at least one article or essay by Barbara Ehrenreich, Gloria Naylor’s Bailey’s Café or Mama Day, and at least one work by Octavia Butler: “Bloodchild,” Dawn, or Wild Seed. When I teach drama, I always include at least one play by William Shakespeare (my usual choices are Othello, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, and King Lear), and several selections from the following: Los Vendidos by Luis Valdez, Dutchman by Imamu Amiri Baraka, Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 by Anna Deavere Smith, Jeffrey by Paul Rudnick, Betrayal by Harold Pinter, Death and the Maiden by Ariel Dorfman, M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang, and The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. My choices for poetry vary enormously, but I tend to fall back on one or more of these poets: Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, Hopkins, Yeats, Eliot, Plath, Angelou, Piercy.Books: Alien Woman: The Making of Lt. Ellen Ripley. Co-author. New York: Continuum, 2004. Winner of the 2005 Ray and Pat Browne Popular Culture Association Book Award.

Articles:

"Happily Ever After: Harry Potter and the Quest for the Domestic." Co-author. Reading Harry Potter Again: New Critical Essays. Ed. Giselle Liza Anatole. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2009.

"The Alien Film Series." Co-author. Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Vol. II. Ed. Robin Reid. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2008: 3-5.

"Feminism." An Unofficial Companion to the Novels of Terry Pratchett. Ed. Andrew M. Butler. Oxford: Greenwood, 2007. 149-152.

"Sexism." An Unofficial Companion to the Novels of Terry Pratchett. Ed. Andrew M. Butler. Oxford: Greenwood, 2007. 331-333.

"Alien: The History of Xenosex." Den of Geek. Dec. 19 2007.

"Oy Science Fiction: On Genre, Criticism, and Alien Love: An Interview with Marleen S. Barr." Co-author. Fem-scape, a special edition of Reconstruction. 5.4 (Winter 2005). n.p. 5 pp.

"How the Online Classroom Changed the Way I Teach." In Transit: The LaGuardia Journal on Teaching and Learning 1.1 (Fall 2005): 23-27.

"'Who Are You?': Alien/Woman as Post-human Subject in Alien Resurrection." Post.human.ous, a special edition of Reconstruction: An Interdisciplinary Research Community 4.3 (Summer 2004). n.p. 13 pp.

"Cinderfella: J. K. Rowling's Wily Web of Gender." Co-author. Reading Harry Potter: Critical Essays. Ed. Giselle Liza Anatole. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003. 191-205.

Editions:

Fem-scape, a special edition of Reconstruction: An Interdisciplinary Research Community 5.4 (Winter 2005).

Post.human.ous, a special edition of Reconstruction. Co-editor. Reconstruction: An Interdisciplinary Research Community 4.3 (Summer 2004).

Websites: LaGuardia Community College's 2007-2008 Common Reading Companion Website to An Inconvenient Truth. Content manager. LaGuardia Community College. 2007-2008.

Gonzalez, Belkis

Phone: 718.482.5667
Office: M-119B Mail: E-103
Email: begonzalez@lagcc.cuny.edu

Gregoire, Chandler

Phone: 718.482.5678
Office: MB54 Mail: E-103
Email: cgregoire@lagcc.cuny.edu

Grégoire, Stafford

Phone: 718.482.5679
Office: E-103 Mail: E-103
Email: sgregoire@lagcc.cuny.edu

Stafford Grégoire earned his Baccalaureate at Hunter College (1992) and his Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley (May 2004). His specialization is in Nineteenth Century African American and American Literature. He is revising his dissertation, Blacks Seeing Seeing Blacks: Surveillance and The Gaze in the Works of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and William Wells Brown for publication. This work explores the nexus between Foucault’s theory of surveillance and Lacan’s refinement of the theories of the Gaze. He is interested in the depiction of the visual forces of the “look,” “the gaze,” or surveillance, which reify the status of African Americans as diminished beings. Currently he is an Assistant Professor at LaGuardia Community College CUNY and working on a newer, though still related field, Hip-Hop Fiction or contemporary African American crime novels. He has recently presented two papers on the subject in New Mexico and The Bronx. “Hip-Hop Scribes: Uncomfortable Truths in Black on White” examined the creation of a new genre of African American or Black Literature outside of the confines of mainstream publishing. “Hip-Hop Scribes: Double-Consciousness Double-Crossed” examines how this new genre is, because of its unique genesis, able to transgress the DuBoisian paradigm of “self-consciousness” in African American Belle Lettres. Previous Academic Honors:

Outstanding Graduate Instructor Award (1998-1999)

Summer Mellon Fellowship (1995)

Graduate Opportunity Fellowship (1992-1994)

Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellowship (1990-1992)

Havlin, Natalie

Phone: 718.349.4064
Office: E-200 B Mail: E-103
Email: nhavlin@lagcc.cuny.edu

Natalie Havlin is Associate Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College where she teaches courses in U.S. Latina/o Literature, Caribbean Literature, Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies, and U.S. and Transnational Social Movement Studies. Havlin's research and publications have focused on U.S. Latinx writers and artists who have contributed to U.S. urban social movements since the early 20th century. Her publications also include research and reviews of scholarship on feminist art and theorizations about beauty, disability justice, queer theory, affect, decolonization, Left internationalism, and racial capitalism. From 2017-2020, Havlin served as co-editor of the peer reviewed journal WSQ (Women's Studies Quarterly) published by the Feminist Press at CUNY. For more information visit: www.nataliehavlin.com/

Hearst, Elliot

Phone: 718.730.7525
Office: M-120 EMail: E-103
Email: ehearst@lagcc.cuny.edu

I joined the LaGuardia faculty in 2008, and have taught Writing Through Literature 102, as well as Preparing and Writing the Research Paper 103. I have also been a facilitator of ACT Writing Exam preparation workshops at Queensborough Community College.
I find that the most rewarding aspects of teaching are the give-and-take with students as we explore and discover together the underlying themes of a given text, and the process of helping students become more effective and expressive writers. I very much enjoy working with the highly energetic and motivated student body that we have at LaGuardia.
Schools Attended: CUNY - Queens College (B.A., M.A.)
Area of Specialization: The Romantic period
Authors I Teach: Joyce Carol Oates, Ernest Hemingway, Tim O'Brien, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jean Rhys, Tennessee Williams, James Joyce, Alice Walker, William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, William Blake, John Keats
Favorite Literary Quote: "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." -Groucho Marx

Hendrickson, Jason

Phone: 718.349.4065
Office: E-200E Mail: E-103
Email: jhendrickson@lagcc.cuny.edu

Hiraldo, Carlos

Phone: 718.482.5674
Office: E-103A Mail: E-103
Email: eaykol@lagcc.cuny.edu

Carlos Hiraldo is a published theorist, poet, and book reviewer. His works include MachuPicchu Me (Palamedes Publishing, 2016), a collection of poetry, and SegregatedMiscegenation: on the Treatment of Racial Hybridity in the US and LatinAmerican Literary Traditions (Routledge, 2003). His academic articles and his poetry have been published in national and international journals. His book reviews have appeared in such publications as Book/Mark,Galatea Resurrects, and Jacket. He teaches Basic Writing, Composition I, Writing through Literature, Introduction to Poetry, Introduction to Short Fiction, Creative Writing, and The Novel. He received his Ph.D. from SUNY at Stony Brook and his scholarship focuses mainly on ethnicity and class.

Schools Attended: SUNY at Stony Brook (Ph.D. )
Area of Specialization: Post-Colonial Literature, 20th American Literature, Latino Literature
Favorite Quote: "I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different." - Kurt Vonnegut
Authors I teach: James Baldwin, Charles Bukowski, Kurt Vonnegut, Jose Saramago, Amiri Baraka, Julia Alvarez, Fyodor Dostoevsky and etc and etc and etc.

Books:

Segregated Miscegenation: On the Treatment of Racial Hybridity in the U.S. and Latin American Literary Traditions.

New York & London: Routledge, 2003.

Machu Picchu Me. San Francisco: Palamedes Publishing, Inc., 2016

Editorial:

Editor, Heart of Darkness, including new Introduction, About the Author, and About the Editor sections, for Palamades Publishing, Inc, 2017.

Assistant Editor, Transplanting Your Head and Other Feats of the Future. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2001.

Assistant Editor, The Highway of Light and Other Engineering Oddities. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2001.

Co-Editor, SNARK: A Journal of Poetry and Short Fiction, SUNY at Stony Brook, 1997-1999.

Articles:

“Haunted by a Memory I Never Lived,” Sophia and Philosophia, Fall-Winter 2019.

“Kelly Sadler and a Loss of Perspective,” Quillette. May 19, 2018.

The Class of Bukowski: Engaging LaGuardia's Working-Class Students with the Novels of Charles Bukowski. In Transit: The LaGuardia Journal of Teaching and Learning Volume 3, Fall 2008.

Arroz Frito with Salsa: Asian Latinos and the Future of the United States, Asian American Law Journal Volume 15, May 2008.

Class in the Class: Sharing Bukowski's Class with Community College Students, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Volume 35, Number 4, May 08.

Poems:

“Photograph,” “Ice Cream Man,” and “Our Traps,” Map Literary, October 2018.

“FB” and “In Contemplation,” Marsh Hawk Review, Fall 2017.

Fat People Exercising. Other Poetry. Series III, Number 1, Winter 2008.

Off Sylvia Plath, Bay of Pigs and I Give You A Song. Still Standen: A Celebration of the Poet's Life. Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K.: Other Poetry Editions, 2007.

Kate Winslet. Miracle & Clockwork: The Best of Other Poetry, Series Two, 2005.

Conferences and Presentations:

Participated in panel discussion “How to Create a Poetry Collection” at the Broadway Branch of Queens Library, June 28th, 2018.

Read original poems for Newtown Literary Reading at The Astoria Bookshop on Friday, October 11th 2013.

Read original poems published in Newtown Literary Issue I at Waltz-Astoria for the Boundless Tales Reading Series on May 9th, 2013.

Chaired panel on Race and U.S. Literature and Round Table on Poets and Teaching Poetry for North Eastern Modern Language Association Conference in Buffalo, New York. April 10-13, 2008.

Guest Lecturer, Identity against the Grain: Caribbean Latino Authors and Their Encounters with the Racial Ideology of the United States. CUNY Graduate Center, New York, October 5th 2007.

Presented Novel Concepts: The Role of the Novel in Developing Ideas of Race and Nation in the Americas, 47th Annual Convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association at The Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 10 – 13, 2005.

Hoes, Candace E.

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: E-103
Email: choes@lagcc.cuny.edu

Holmstrom, Bethany

Phone: 718.482.5639
Office: E-263D Mail: E-103
Email: bholmstrom@lagcc.cuny.edu

Housepian, Steve

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: MB-14
Email: shousepian@lagcc.cuny.edu

Isaac, Rochell

Phone: 718.730.7511
Office: M-109L Mail: E-103
Email: risaac@lagcc.cuny.edu

Johnsen, Heidi L.

Phone: 718.482.5663
Office: E-103 O Mail: E-103
Email: hjohnsen@lagcc.cuny.edu

Schools Attended: Brigham Young University (B.A. , M.A.) State University of New York at Stony Brook (Ph.D.)
Area of Specialization: Rhetoric and Composition, Early American Literature, Women's Studies
Favorite Quotes about Writing:

" . . . with writing, you start where you are, and you usually do it poorly. You just do it-you do it afraid. And something happens. --Anne Lamott

Few of us make our living from writing, and the concept of writer tends to carry allsorts of cultural baggage, like creative genius and suffering. But if we write regularly, we are writers. I’ve found that students and adult professionals who write get a big boost by acknowledging that they are writers-a surprisingly mysterious and difficult inner adjustment of the mind and feelings. --Peter Elbow

You learn to write by reading and writing, writing and reading. As a craft it’s acquired through the apprentice system, but you choose your own teachers. Sometimes they’re alive, sometimes dead. --Margaret Atwood

Jones, Jacqueline - Deputy Chair

Phone: 718.482.5969
Office: E-103D Mail: E-103
Email: jacjones@lagcc.cuny.edu

Kamble, Jayashree

Phone: 718.349.4066
Office: MB-109 D Mail: E-103
Email: jkamble@lagcc.cuny.edu

Jayashree Kamblé is an Associate Professor in the English department. She teaches Basic Writing, ENG/ENA 101 Introduction to Expository Writing, and literature courses like ENG 291: Survey of British Literature II and ENG 245: Images of Women in Literature. She has a Ph.D. in English with a supporting program in popular culture from the University of Minnesota, where she also taught writing, surveys of British Literature, Shakespeare, and introductory literature courses spanning all genres. She worked as a copywriter before graduate school and as an academic adviser after. Her first book, Making Meaning in Popular Romance Fiction: An Epistemology, was published in 2014 by Palgrave MacMillan. She is co-Vice President of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance, publishes academic writing on romance fiction for the Journal of Popular Romance Studies, and reviews romance novels for Kirkusreviews.com.
Schools Attended: B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of Pune, India, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Areas of Specialization: Romance narratives in film, fiction, and television. Mainstream English and Hindi-language cinema. The novel. Literary theory and criticism.
Recent articles and book chapters:
“From Barbarized to Disneyfied: Viewing 1990s New York City Through Eve Dallas, J.D. Robb’s Futuristic Homicide Detective,” “Capital Crimes” Special Issue of the Forum for Inter-AmericanResearch
“Branding a Genre: A Brief Trans-Atlantic History of Romance Novel Cover Art.” Essay in the collection Romance Fictionand American Culture: Love as the Practice of Freedom?
RecentAwards:
PSC CUNY Research Award 2017-2018

Kapetanakos, Demetrios

Phone: 718.349.5670
Office: E-103 EE Mail: E-103
Email: dekapetanakos@lagcc.cuny.edu

Kattekola, Lara

Phone: 718.730.7521
Office: M-109 G Mail: E-103
Email: lkattekola@lagcc.cuny.edu

Klages-Bombich, Marisa A.

Phone: 718.482.5370
Office: E-103 S Mail: E-103
Email: mklages@lagcc.cuny.edu

Dr. Marisa Klages-Bombich is a professor in the English Department with research interests around rhetorical embodiment, faculty professional development, and developmental writing. She earned her PhD in 2008 with a focus on medieval rhetoric from West Virginia University. She most frequently teaches ENA101, ENG101 and ENG290. Her most recently co-authored boom is Taking College Teaching Seriously.

Knauer, Caron

Phone: 718.718.5656
Office: MB-14
Email: Cknauer@lagcc.cuny.edu

Koh, Karlyn

Phone: 718.482.5658
Office: E-103 V Mail: E-103
Email: kkoh@lagcc.cuny.edu

Karlyn Koh. In addition to being a Professor of English at LaGuardia, I am the Director of the Honors Program, and the campus faculty representative for the Jack Kent Cooke Undergraduate scholarship program. I serve on several transfer scholarships selection committees, and advise the dynamic student collective, the Honors Student Advisory Committee (HSAC), which is based in Honors House (M201-B). Information about HSAC can be found at http://www.laguardiahonors.com/
My scholarly work is concerned with the effects of (post)colonialism and globalization on the construction of identity (in particular, racialized ethnicity). With funding from a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) Doctoral Fellowship, I completed a study on this subject, with a focus on the relationship between the writing of history and the emergence of subjectivity. I began a study of Asian North American avant-garde poetics and visual arts at New York University, where I held a SSHRCC Postdoctoral Fellowship. My research has been published in scholarly collections and journals as well as arts magazines, and has been presented at scholarly conferences in the US, Canada, Belgium and the UK. I have also published and presented in the field of honors education, and am a past Executive Secretary of the Northeast Regional Honors Council. I am also an avid student of yoga.
Schools Attended
University of Auckland, New Zealand (BA in English and Political Science); University of British Columbia, Canada (MA); Simon Fraser University, Canada (Ph.D.); School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University; New York University (Postdoctoral Fellow, Comparative Literature).
Area of Specialization
Critical theory, post-colonial theory, Asian American cultural studies, queer theory, poetry.
Awards/Honors

State Assembly of New York Women’s History Month Proclamation Recognition (for service to Queens and New York State), New York State Assembly (sponsored by Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan), March 2019.

Stanford University Teacher Tribute, Stanford University, September 2017.

Bonita C. Jacobs Transfer Champion Award, National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students, February 2014.

Professor of the Year Award, Student Government Association, LaGuardia Community College, Spring 2011.

Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society, Hallmark Paragon Award for Advisors—International Level, 2008.

Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society, New York Region, Horizon Award forNew Advisors, 2007.

Selected Articles

“Cultivating a Community of Excellence” (with G. Mellow). Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council 16.2 (Fall/Winter 2015): 65-69.

"Present Memory: Albert Chong's Imagining The Past." Out of The Archives: Process and Progress, ed. Sarita See and Angel Velasco Shaw. New York: Asian American Arts Center, Fall 2009. 16-22.

"'glove's dream': A Short Meditation." Aitia 28.1 (2009): 34-38.

"Networking a Community Out of Fragmentation" (with J. Chaffee and E. Goodman).

Honors in Practice 5 (2009): 161-170.

"Humanistic Mathematics" (with Dr. Marina Dedlovskaya). Mathematics, Information Technologies, and Education, Volume II. Ed. Sergey Gerasimenko. Orenburg, Russia: Orenburg State UP, 2006. 274-7.

"At the Edge of a Shattered Mirror, Community?" Asian North American Identities: Beyond the Hyphen, eds. Eleanor Ty and Donald Goellnicht. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2004. 149-69.

"Speculations and (Dis)Identification: Notes on Asian Canadian Women Writers." New Scholars-New Visions in Canadian Studies 1.1. Seattle, WA: Canadian Studies Center, University of Washington, 1996. [monograph]

Selected Conference Presentations

“Applying for Major Scholarships I & II.” 2 General Sessions Workshops as part of the Major Scholarships Committee. Annual Convention of the National Collegiate Honors Council, Denver, CO, November 6-9, 2014.

“Fostering Honors Community in a World of Commuter Students” Panel (convener and co-presenter with J. Chaffee and E. Goodman). CUNY Honors Opportunities Conference, Macaulay Honors College, November 5, 2008.

"A Poetics of Betrayal," Annual Conference of the Cultural Studies Association, Portland State University, April 19, 2007.

"'glove's dream.'" Rhetoric, Politics and Ethics conference, University of Ghent, Belgium, April 22, 2005.

"Reading Between Image and Text in Three Works." Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association, Hartford, CT, October 18, 2003.

"Figures of Community." 20th Annual Conference of the Association for Asian American Studies, San Francisco, May 9, 2003.

"Community, Love and Friendship." "The Desire for Dimension: Queer Theory and Asian American Studies" panel organized by the Asian American Literature discussion group. Modern Language Association Convention, San Francisco, 29 December 1998.

"Asian Canadian: A Name (Un)Bound." 15th Annual Conference of the Association for Asian American Studies, Honolulu, 26 June 1998.

Fellowships and grants

PSC-CUNY 39 Research Award, City University of New York, Spring 2007.

PSC-CUNY 37 Research Award, City University of New York, Fall 2006.

PSC-CUNY 36 Research Award, City University of New York, Fall 2005.

CUNY Faculty Development Grant (with M. Dedlovskaya), Fall 2006.

Diversity Projects Development Fund Fellowship (with C. Hiraldo), City University of New York, Spring 2005.

Faculty Fellowship Publications Program, City University of New York, Spring 2005.

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship, 1999-2001.

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship, 1995-8.

Honors Website: lagcc.cuny.edu/honors and http://www.laguardiahonors.com/

Lamone-King, Tulip

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: MB-14
Email: tking@lagcc.cuny.edu

Leopando, Irwin - Chair of English department

Phone: 718.482.5907
Office: E-103 J Mail: E-103
Email: ileopando@lagcc.cuny.edu

Irwin Ramirez Leopando is an Assistant Professor and Co-Director of the English Department Writing Program. He earned his PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2011. His research interests include composition-rhetoric, educational philosophy, and happiness studies. Born and raised in the Philippines, he came to New York City in 1995. He lives in Queens with his wife and two children.

Livingston, Sue

Phone: 718.718.565
Office: MB-14
Email: slivings@lagcc.cuny.edu

Maharaj, Aarti

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: MB-14
Email: amaharaj@lagcc.cuny.edu

Marks, Christine

Phone: 718.482.6105
Office: MB-109 M Mail: M-103
Email: cmarks@lagcc.cuny.edu

Christine Marks is an assistant professor in the English Department at LaGuardia Community College. She received her PhD from the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, with a dissertation project on intersubjective identity constellations in the works of the contemporary American novelist and essayist Siri Hustvedt. Her academic interests also include food and culture, literature and medicine, gender studies, hybrid identities, and theories of the gaze. She has taught courses in composition, cultural studies, American literature, and world literature. She currently teaches her composition courses at LaGuardia on the themes of border crossings and immigration as well as food across cultures. Some of her favorite authors to read and teach are Gloria Anzaldúa, Junot Díaz, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Lucy Grealy, Siri Hustvedt, Jamaica Kincaid, Richard Rodriguez, Arundhati Roy, Lauren Slater, Amy Tan, Alice Walker, and August Wilson. She has published articles on hysteria, illness, and identity in Siri Hustvedt’s work and has a forthcoming article on the use of metaphors in illness narratives.

McGurty, Ellie

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14Mail: E-103
Email: emcgurty@lagcc.cuny.edu

McMills, Neddy D.

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: MB-14

McNair, Lucy

Phone: 718.730.7522
Office: E-254 E Mail: E-103
Email: lmcnair@lagcc.cuny.edu

Lucy McNair is an Associate Professor in the English department. She teaches Introduction to Expository Writing (ENG 101 and 102), Creative Writing (ENN 198 and ENG 274) and the internship course for The Lit, ENG 288. Previous to LaGuardia, she taught World Humanities, French, Translation Theory, and English as a Foreign Language. She holds a B.A. in German, a M.A. in Modern Languages (French and English), and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the City University of New York. Before graduate school, she worked as a translator and published literary translations from the French including poetry, creative nonfiction and fiction. Her scholarship focuses on North African literature and film. Her latest article, “Towards an Ethics of Traumatic Memory: Mouloud Feraoun’s La Cite des roses and Zahia Rahmani’s France, récit d’une enfance,” appeared in The Journal of North African Studies in 2018. At LaGuardia, she co-curates The New York Forum of Amazigh Film, an annual showcase of North African indigenous cinema ( https://www.nyfaf.com/). From 2016 to 2019 she has coordinated The Lit, the LaGuardia student literary and art journal, and currently co-leads the Language Across the Curriculum seminar at the Center for Teaching and Learning, an interdisciplinary approach that embraces and builds on language diversity. Prof McNair is dedicated to learning from and with LaGuardia students and proud to support their academic progress, creative expression, and life goals.

Meyer, Neil

Phone: 718.349.4067
Office: E-103 M Mail: E-103
Email: nmeyer@lagcc.cuny.edu

Neil Meyer joined the faculty of LaGuardia Community College in 2012. During his time at LaGuardia he has served as the director of Basic Writing and Deputy Chair. He completed his PhD at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His research spans early American literature, LGBTQ Studies, and Composition Studies. His work has appeared in Early American Studies, New England Quarterly, WPA: The Journal of Writing Program Administration, and other locations.

Nassif, Farid

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14Mail: E-103
Email: fnassif@lagcc.cuny.edu

Navarro, Lauren

Phone: 718.730.7509
Office: MB-14G Mail: M-103
Email: lnavarro@lagcc.cuny.edu

Nelson, Lee

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14Mail: E-103
Email: lenelson@lagcc.cuny.edu

Ortiz, Jenny

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: MB-14
Email: jeortiz@lagcc.cuny.edu

Pacht, Michelle

Phone: 718.482.5914
Office: M-103 CC Mail: M-103
Email: mpacht@lagcc.cuny.edu

Michelle Pacht is a Professor of English who earned her M.A.in English Literature at Hunter College and her Ph.D. in English at the CUNY Graduate Center.She teaches a range of composition and literature courses at LaGuardia, including Writing Through Literature, The Short Story, The Novel, and Images of Women in Literature. Dr. Pacht’s research focuses on how genre—the short story and short story cycle, in particular—has been used by 19th and 20th century American authors to raise questions about identity, history, and place. She has published and presented on authors including Willa Cather, Charles W. Chesnutt, Louise Erdrich,Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Sarah Orne Jewett, Maxine Hong Kingston, Flannery O’Connor, and Edgar Allan Poe as well as on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
Books/Book Chapters:

December 2012 “Who’s Afraid of Mary Shelley? Why Community Colleges Should Assign ‘Difficult’ Texts and How to Make It Work” in Teaching Literature in Community College Classrooms: Traversing Practices, edited by Margaret Barrow and Manya Steinkoler, published by McGraw-Hill.

“Who’s Afraid of Mary Shelley?: Why Community Colleges Should Assign ‘Difficult’ Textsand How to Make it Work.” Teaching Literature in the Community College Classrooms:Traversing Practices. Ed. Margaret Barrow and Manya Steinkoler. McGraw Hill, 2012.

The Subversive Storyteller: The Short Story Cycle and the Politics of Identity in America.Cambridge Scholars Publishers, 2009.

"Creating Community: Motherhood and the Search for Identity in Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine." Narratives of Community: Women's Short Story Sequences. Cambridge Scholars Publishers, 2007.

Journal Articles:

“Overcoming Obstacles: How WID Benefits Community College Students and Faculty.”Writing Across the Curriculum at the Community College, a special issue of Across the Curriculum. December 2010.

“The Messy Teaching Conversation: Toward a Model of Collegial Reflection, Exchange, and Scholarship on Classroom Problems.” with Drs. Heidi Johnsen, Ting Man Tsao, and Phyllis vanSlyck. Teaching English in the Two-Year College. December 2009.

Film:

Making Your Mark: Creating A Staged Assignment. A film by Karen Gregory and Thomas Meacham. 2009.

Conference Presentations:

May 2019 “A Child Adrift: Finding Family at Sea in Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym” presented at the Poe Studies Association session Poe and Childhood at the American Literature Association conference, Boston, MA

October 2018 “Articulating Success: Facilitating Student Continuity and Transfer from Two-Year to Four-Year Colleges” presented at the CUNY Humanities Alliance Conference Community College and the Future of the Humanities, New York, NY

October 2018 “The Making of a Community College Major” presented at the Two-Year College English Association Northeast Annual Conference English at the Crossroads: Power and Possibilities, Long Island City, NY

April 2018 “From First-Year Composition to Disciplinary Writing: Critical Assignment Design Considerations for WID Instructors,” respondent and session moderator at Critical Pedagogies at CUNY: Learning Through Writing, Long Island City, NY

February 2018 “Faculty’s Role in Transfer” presented at Preparing Students for Transfer: Strategies for Faculty, Long Island City, NY

June 2016 “Feminine Transgressions: Sex, Marriage, and Gender Roles in Edith Wharton’s Short Stories,” presented at the Edith Wharton Society Conference Wharton in Washington, Washington, D.C.

“Using Technology to Reach Basic Skills Students Nationwide” presented at the New York College Learning Skills Association Symposium. Briarcliff Manor, NY. April 2015.

“The Scene of the Crime: Home Burials in the Stories of Edgar Allan Poe” presented at the Fourth International Poe Conference. New York, NY. February 2015.

“Reaching the Facebook Generation: Using Social Media to Teach Literature” presented at Transitions and Transactions: Literature Pedagogy at Community Colleges. New York, NY.April 2012.

“Spinsters and Sea Widows: Women, Wilderness, and Identity in Sarah Orne Jewett’s Deephaven” presented at the Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention, New Brunswick, NJ. April 2011.

“Take the Money and Run: How Henry James Predicted Bernie Madoff” presented at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention. Philadelphia, PA. December 2009.

“Classroom Collaborations: Creating WID Resources By and For Faculty and Fellows”presented at the Writing in the Disciplines Conference. Bronx, NY. October 2009.

"Reclaiming the Classroom: Two Year Colleges and Innovative Self-Assessment" presented at The Conference on College Composition and Communication, New Orleans, LA. April 2008.

"Creating Community: Motherhood and the Search for Identity in Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine" presented at the National Women's Studies Association Conference, St. Charles, IL.June 2007.

"How to Reform a Racist: Genre as Politics in Charles W. Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman"presented at the American Literature Association Conference, Boston, MA. May 2007.

"Creating Connections: Isolation, Epiphany and the Collective Protagonist in O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge" presented at O'Connor and Other Georgia Writers: A Scholarly Conference. Milledgeville, GA. April 2006.

"Framing History: The Short Story Cycle as Political Statement in Hawthorne's Legends of the Province-House" presented at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention,Washington, D.C. December 2005.

Parry, Dylan

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: E-103
Email: dparry@lagcc.cuny.edu

Prendable, Sylwia

Phone: 718.482.5909
Office: E-103A Mail: E-103
Email: sniczewska@lagcc.cuny.edu

Ramirez, Kimberly del Busto

Phone: 718.482.5911
Office: M-109 K
Kimberly del Busto Ramírez is a multidisciplinary writer specializing in Latin@ Literature, Cuban-American Theatre, Dramatic Structure, and Performance Art. She holds a Ph.D. in Theatre from CUNY Graduate Center and an MFA in Playwriting from the University of Georgia. She is fascinated by all things miniature--including tiny books, toy theatres, palm-sized portraiture, and diminutive dogs. Click here to link to her portfolio

Richards, Leah

Phone: 718.349.4068
Office: E-200 G Mail: E-103
Email: lerichards@lagcc.cuny.edu

Rockwood, Matthew

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: MB-14
Email: mrockwood@lagcc.cuny.edu

Rodriguez, Sonia

Phone: 718.730.7595
Office: E-254 E Mail: E-103
Email: sorodriguez@lagcc.cuny.edu

Rogers-Cooper, Justin

Phone: 718.482.5913
Office: E-103 BB Mail: E-103

Justin graduated with a Ph.D in English from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2011. He worked as a Writing Fellow for two years at LaGuardia before being hired full time in 2010. He specializes in post-bellum American literature to the early twentieth century, with particular interests in literary depictions of emotional crowds. He updates scholarly information semi-regularly at www.academia.edu.

Rosa, Victor

Phone: 718.482.5916
Office: M-109 P
Email: vrosa@lagcc.cuny.edu

Victor Rosa is a lecturer in the English Department. He holds an MA in Journalism from Northeastern University in Boston, where he was Reading, Writing and Study Skills Coordinator for the Ujima Scholars Program. His articles and poetry have appeared in the Amsterdam News, Bilingual Review, Compost, The Lynn EveningItem and other publications. He was an associate producer and cohost of WBAI’s Latino Journal. At LaGuardia, he teaches Basic Writing, Composition, and Broadcast Journalism. He is also a faculty advisor to the College’s web radio station

Rosenblitt-Lacey, Alice

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: MB-14
Email: arosenblitt@lagcc.cuny.edu

Sanchez-Taylor, Joy

Phone: 718.482.5659
Office: LIB-H& Mail: E-103
Email: jsanchez-taylor@lagcc.cuny.edu

Joy Sanchez-Taylor is an Associate Professor of English. Her research explores race and diaspora in science fiction and fantasy literature by authors of color. She has published articles in the peer-reviewed journals Science Fiction Studies, Extrapolation, and The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. She is currently under contract with Ohio State University Press for a monograph project titled Diverse Futures: Science Fiction and Authors of Color.

Sanning, Monica

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: E-103
Email: msanning@lagcc.cuny.edu

Sarkowicz, Matthew

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: MB-14
Email: msarkowicz@lagcc.cuny.edu

Saul, Jon

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: MB-14
Email: jsaul@lagcc.cuny.edu

Scheindlin, Noam

Phone: 718.482.6091
Office: M-119G
Mail: E-103
Email: nscheindlin@lagcc.cuny.edu

Noam Scheindlin joined the English department in 2010. He received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Graduate Center, City University of New York. His doctoral dissertation, “The Bungled One: Failure and the Fictional Impetus,” inquires into the relationship between the intimate, solitary experience of being a person, and its expression in language. In exploring the Bible, and works by Marcel Proust, Herman Melville, and Georges Perec, the study puts forward the notion that it is the “failure,” to fully express who one is, that results in the consciousness proper to reading and writing fiction. Scheindlin is also at work on a study of democracy in the work of Herman Melville. His interests include phenomenology and hermeneutics; 20th Century French and American Poetry; and the theory of the novel. He has contributed to the volume The Proust Project, edited by André Aciman.

Schmidt, Christopher

Phone: 718.482.5904
Office: MB-109 D Mail: E-103
Email: cschmidt@lagcc.cuny.edu

Christopher Schmidt has taught at LaGuardia since 2010. He regularly teaches ENG101, ENG 102, ENN198 (Creative Writing), ENG 270 (Poetry), ENG271 (Poetry Writing), and LIB200 (Humanism, Science, and Technology; the Liberal Arts capstone course). He is the author of a critical book, The Poetics of Waste: Queer Excess in Stein, Ashbery, Schuyler, and Goldsmith (2014); a book of poems, The Next in Line (2008); and a chapbook, Thermae (2012). His articles, essays, and poems have appeared in Postmodern Culture , Art Margins , Tin House, Arizona Quarterly,Sub Stance, Book Forum , Boston Review , and Time magazine. He is currently drafting a critical-creative study on representations of Brazilian landscape in the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop and the landscape designs of Roberto Burle Marx. From 2015 to 2018, he was co-PI for an NEH Humanities Initiative on Global Cities. Since joining LaGuardia, he has been a faculty fellow at the Center for Humanities and the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics, both at the Graduate Center, CUNY. He also teaches at the Graduate Center in the Masters in Liberal Studies Program.
Schools Attended: Yale University, BA; The Graduate Center, CUNY, PhD.

Areas of Interest: Twentieth-Century American Literature, Modern and Postmodern Poetics, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Waste and Materiality Studies, Visual Culture and Photography, Eco criticism, Technology and the Humanities, Writing Across the Curriculum.

Schrader, Nathan

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: E-103
Email: nschrader@lagcc.cuny.edu

Schwartz, Jesse

Phone: 718.349.4073
Office: M-109 B Mail: E-103
Email: jesseschwartz@lagcc.cuny.edu

Professor Charity Scribner teaches a range of courses at LaGuardia, including ENG 099, ENG/ENA 101, ENG 102, ENG 103, ENN 191, ENG 289, ENG 295, and LIB 200. She also teaches literary theory and criticism in the PhD Program in Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center. Professor Scribner advises LaGuardia students on the Writing and Literature major, as well as opportunities for scholarships and transfer to four-year colleges.

Scribner, Charity

Phone: 718.482.5651
Office: M-109 J Mail: E-103
Email: scribner@lagcc.cuny.edu

Shen, Sigmund C.

Phone: 718.482.5915
Office: E-103 Z Mail: E-103
Email: sshen@lagcc.cuny.edu

Sigmund Shen holds a PhD in English Literature from New York University and a BA in English Writing from Queens College. He is currently Associate Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College / CUNY, where he teaches composition and research, as well as U.S. and British literature. He has published essays and book chapters (both in English and translated into Japanese) about Godzilla movies, the Final Fantasy video game series, horror cinema from the U.S. and Japan, and most terrifying of all, the crisis of higher education funding under late stage capitalism. Through August 2020, he will also be Chair of the LaGuardia chapter of the Professional Staff Congress.

Sibbitt, David

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: MB-14
Email: dsibbitt@lagcc.cuny.edu

Sorrentino, Julia

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: E-103
Email: jsorrentino@lagcc.cuny.edu

Spatafora, Nicholas

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: MB-14
Email: nspatafora@lagcc.cuny.edu

Storti, Janet

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Office: MB-14
Email: jstorti@lagcc.cuny.edu

Janet R. Storti has been teaching at LaGuardia Community College since 1981. In addition to the requisite academic achievements, a BA in English (FDU), MA in Theatre & Film (NYU), & an MA in Criminal Justice (RU), she has sold a treatment for a movie (Ensign Dolphin) to Open Passage Productions and while in graduate school at Rutgers University, contributed chapters to Probation on Trial and Is Probation Working? She was part of the year-long seminar, Difficult Dialogues, at LaGuardia Community College, and in October 2009, she attended a four-day workshop on screenwriting: Robert McKee’s NY Story. She lives in Union County N.J. with her two daughters, Amanda Dolores (Paraguay) and Huong Thai Lan (North Vietnam) and their beloved dog, Belle. She is a proud union member of two teacher unions (NY & NJ), Screen Actors Guild and Actors Equity.

Stubbs, Naomi J.

Phone: 718.482.5680
Office: E-103 DD Mail: E-103
Email: nstubbs@lagcc.cuny.edu

A British transplant, Naomi Stubbs teaches composition, research, literature in the English program, and First Year Seminar and capstone course (Humanism, Science, and Technology) in the Liberal Arts. She is the author of Cultivating National Identity Through Performance and co-editor of A Player and a Gentleman: The Diary of Harry Watkins, Nineteenth-Century American Actor . Stubbs is the co-editor of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre , and coordinator of learning communities.

Schools Attended
PhD in Theatre (Graduate Center, CUNY, 2012)
MRes in Editing Lives and Letters (Center For Editing Lives and Letter, Queen Mary, University of London, 2005)
A in English and Drama (Queen Mary, University of London, 2003)

Areas of Specialization: nineteenth-century US theatre and popular entertainments, critical editing, dramatic literature.

Tanenbaum, Laura

Phone: 718.482.5747
Office: M-120 F
Email: ltanenbaum@lagcc.cuny.edu

Linda has been a film maker for over twenty years, having launched Rhino Video with her cult classic film, My Breakfast with Blassie, a meal genre film starring the late Andy Kaufman of the show Taxi and the late Freddy Blassie, World Heavyweight Champion Wrestler. She continued working in film writing, directing and editing videos for numerous markets including drama, documentary, corporate, educational and comedy. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan with a Bachelors Degree in English, a Masters Degree in Social work, and is a doctoral candidate in Educational Communication and Technology at New York University. Her focus is on teaching tolerance using narrative and technology. She has worked as a photographer/archivist for Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, created films for the HEOP department at NYU, launched the website for the Rockefeller Foundation, and consulted and compiled numerous DVDs for commercial use. Her most recent DVD’s include several collections of television shows from the 1950’s and 1960’s.
Laura Tanenbaum joined the LaGuardia English Department in 2007. She has published book reviews and essays about feminism, the left, literature and memoir for publications including Jacobin, In These Times, Dissent, The New York Times Book Review, and The New Republic. She has also published fiction and poetry in places including Narrative, Cleaver Magazine, Entropy, Catamaran, juked, and Aji. She studied Comparative Literature at Smith College and New York University, where she was active in the graduate student unionization movement. At LaGuardia, along with Composition, she teaches Writing through Literature, Art, Politics and Protest, as well as Introduction to Creative Writing, Fiction Writing, and Creative non-fiction. She has been active in building the Creative Writing Program at LaGuardia and is currently the I the co-chair of the Urban Studies Program, an interdisciplinary program devoted to experiential learning in the spirit of John Dewey. Professor Tanenbaum lives in Brooklyn with her husband JW Mason, also a CUNY Professor, and their two sons Eli and Abraham.

Tapper, Gordon

Phone: 718.482.5669
Office: E-103 G Mail: E-103
Email: gtapper@lagcc.cuny.edu

Dr. Gordon Tapper, Professor of English, joined the department in 2003. From 2010 to 2012, he served as the Chair of LaGuardia’s Middle States Accreditation Steering Committee. From 2007-2009, he served as the assistant to the Deputy Chair of the English Department. He teaches a range of courses including Basic Writing, Composition I and II, The Novel, American Literature II, and the Liberal Arts Seminar in Humanism, Science and Technology (focusing on Genocide Studies). He also helped develop a Liberal Arts Learning Community called “Sex Wars: Sexuality, Power, and Culture in a Global Context.” He is a scholar of American literature and culture, with a special interest in twentieth-century and contemporary poetry, and his book about the poet Hart Crane, The Machine that Sings: Modernism, Hart Crane, and the Culture of the Body, was published by Routledge Press in 2006. In addition to publishing reviews of contemporary art and experimental poetry, he has written introductions for new editions of Willa Cather’s My Ántonia and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables, both published by Barnes and Noble Classics. Professor Tapper holds a PhD and MA from Columbia University, and a BA from Colgate University. He has also taught at Columbia University, DePauw University, and Centre College.

Area of Specialization: Twentieth Century and Contemporary American Literature and Culture, Twentieth Century and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, Genocide Studies, Cultural Theory of the Body, Gender Studies.

Tirado, Elvis

Phone: 718.482.5688
Office: B-200
Email: etirado@lagcc.cuny.edu

Toke, Lilla

Phone: 718.730.7523
Office: LIB-H8 Mail: E-103
Email: ltoke@lagcc.cuny.edu

Lilla Tőke is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at CUNY, LaGuardia Community College. She obtained her PhD in 2010 from Stony Brook University in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies. She also has an MPhil degree in Gender Studies from the Central European University, Budapest. Her research interests revolve around film and literature, feminist theory, and the rhetoric of social media. She has wide experience teaching various levels of academic composition, literature, and film courses.

Toro, Juan

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: E-103
Email: jtoro@lagcc.cuny.edu

Truitt, Trenton

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: E-103
Email: truitt@lagcc.cuny.edu

Tsao, Ting Man

Phone: 718.482.5661
Office: M-103 W Mail: M-103
Email: ttsao@lagcc.cuny.edu

I am Professor of English here at LaGuardia, teaching composition, grammar, and literature. I was the founder and co-facilitator of the Faculty Scholars Publication Workshop, supporting colleagues in their scholarly endeavors.

I am interested in postcolonial studies, interdisciplinary studies (medicine, literature, etc), and the scholarship of teaching and learning. I have published in Peer English, The History Teacher, Nursing Education Perspectives, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Victorians Institute Journal, and Writing Macao. My essays also appear in anthologies such as Illness in the Academy: A Collection of Pathographies by Academics (Purdue UP), Asian Crossings: Travel Writing on China, Japan and Southeast Asia (Hong Kong UP), Pirates and Mutineers of the Nineteenth Century (Ashgate), Papa PhD: Essays on Fatherhood by Men in the Academy (Rutgers UP), and The American-Style University at Large: Transplants, Outposts, and The Globalization of Higher Education (Lexington).

I hold an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington at Seattle and a Ph.D. in English from The State University of New York at Stony Brook. My dissertation "Representing China to the British Public in the Age of Free Trade, c. 1833-1844" examines the intersections between Britain's popular representations of China and its imperial policy during the Opium War.

If you are interested in my approaches to teaching, see my course portfolio titled "Course Portfolio on ENC101: Combining First-Semester Composition and a Placement Test" at the Peer Review of Teaching Project of University of Nebraska at Lincoln.

I practice taichi whenever I have time.

Uzzilia, Suzanne

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: MB-14
Email: suzzilia@lagcc.cuny.edu

Van Slyck, Phyllis

Phone: 718.482.5660
Office: E-103 N Mail: E-103
Email: vanph@lagcc.cuny.edu

As an undergraduate I majored in Philosophy. After college, I spent two years in Europe, teaching English as a Second Language in Spain; this was when I discovered how enriching and satisfying teaching could be. I came to New York, began a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and, almost simultaneously, started teaching as an adjunct at Queens College. When I was hired full-time at LaGuardia in 1990, I became involved in learning communities (thematically clustered courses) and have since designed and taught in many with colleagues in Theatre and Philosophy. Last Fall, we taught a cluster called, Identity, Performance and Poetic Justice, and this Fall we are teaching Heroes, Gods and Monsters: Classic Stories Then and Now. More than anything else I appreciate the freedom LaGuardia has given me to design courses, expand programs and to work creatively with great students and colleagues. One course that I have found especially interesting to teach over the years is LIB 200, Humanism, Science and Technology, a capstone seminar for graduating liberal arts majors. In this seminar, students research and apply knowledge from core liberal arts courses to contemporary issues (from AIDS as a global pandemic to Sex Tourism in Thailand).
Schools Attended: A.B. Bishop’s University , Quebec, Canada ; Ph.D. City University Graduate Center, Comparative Literature Program
Area of Specialization: The novel: my dissertation was based on the work of Henry James and Marcel Proust—unlikely partners; I love to teach the novel—from classic to postmodern—Emily Bronte, Haruki Murakami. Zora Neale Hurston and Garcia Marquez; I also love postcolonial novels like Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North. More I recently have taught literature of the American Southwest and have been discovering and teaching Latino and Native American poets.
Favorite Quote: Re-reading E.M. Forster this Spring, I came across the following somber statement: “Death destroys a man but the idea of death saves him” (E.M. Forster, Howard’s End) and because I teach classical tragedy in many courses (Oedipus Rex, Antigone, Medea), I thought about why we are fascinated by the inevitable end of things and how Forster is right: that how we make meaning—by thinking about endings. The Chorus in Oedipus Rex, contemplating the fate of the hero, observes: “What man, what man on earth wins more of happiness than a seeming/and after that turning away.” Here is Virginia Woolf in a similar mood: “Did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to eve that death ended absolutely? But somehow she survived she being part of the trees at home, part of the people she had never met, being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself. . .she felt herself everywhere. . . so that to know her, or anyone, one must seek out the people who completed them.”
Authors I teach: Sophocles, Oedipus Rex and Antigone; Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun; Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Henry James, Washington Square; Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera; and the most popular poem I have taught this year, Jimmy Santiago Baca, “As Life was Five.”

Vasileiou, Luke

Phone: 718.482.5694
Office: E-103 F Mail: E-103
Email: lvasileiou@lagcc.cuny.edu

Luke Vasileiou is Professor of English, and he joined LaGuardia Community College in 2009. From 2010-2013 he served as LaGuardia’s advisor for LaGuardia’s Phi Theta Chapter, and from 2013-2019 he served as Director of Composition I in the English Department. He was born and raised in Greece, and pursued graduate study in the US on a Fulbright Scholarship. He was previously a tenured faculty member at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Georgia. His interests include Rhetoric and Composition, Narrative Theory, British Victorian Literature and Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature. His articles have appeared in The Flannery O’Connor Review, Teaching English in The Two-Year College, Teaching American Literature, and Honors in Practice. Dr. Vasileiou received his BA in English (ESL Education) from The University of Athens-Greece, his MA in English (Rhetoric) from Illinois State University and his PhD in English from Louisiana State University.

Voisard, Anna

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: E-103
Email: avoisard@lagcc.cuny.edu

Wiggins, Carol

Phone: 718.482.5687
Office: MB-14 Mail: MB-14
Email: cwiggins@lagcc.cuny.edu

Wilson, James

Phone: 718.482.5678
Office: E-103 Y Mail: E103
Email: jwilson@lagcc.cuny.edu

Dr. James Wilson joined the English department at LaGuardia in 2000 and was appointed to the doctoral faculty in the Theatre Ph.D. Program at CUNY Graduate Center in spring 2009. He teaches a range of courses, including basic writing, college composition, drama, and African American literature. He served as deputy chair of the English Department at LaGuardia for seven years and co-directed the Writing in the Disciplines (WID) program. Dr. Wilson is currently the Executive Director of CLAGS (Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies) at CUNY Graduate Center.

Dr. Wilson received his BA in English from SUNY Fredonia; his MA in English from SUNY Albany; and his Ph.D. in theatre history and criticism from CUNY Graduate Center. His articles have appeared in Urban Education, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, and Theatre History Studies. His essay, "Ladies and Gentlemen, People Die: The Uncomfortable Performances of Kiki and Herb," appeared in an anthology of lesbian and gay theatre and performances in Fall 2008. Dr. Wilson is co-editor of The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, which is published by the Martin E. Segal Center (CUNY Graduate Center). His book, Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Race, Performance, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance, was published by the University of Michigan Press in June 2010 and released in paperback in July 2011.

Yen, Xiaoping

Phone: 718.482.5682
Office: E-103 GG Mail: E-103
Email: yenxi@lagcc.cuny.edu

Zhang, Yu

Phone: 718.482.5652
Office: E-103 C Mail: M-103
Email: zhangyu@lagcc.cuny.edu

Zino, Dominique

Phone: 718.730.7517
Office: E-103 R Mail: E-103
Email: dzino@lagcc.cuny.edu

Dominique Zino teaches all levels of composition at LaGuardia, as well as the First Year Seminar, the capstone course in the Liberal Arts, and selected Writing & Literature electives. She believes in teaching writing in project-based, interactive situations, where students can work toward a goal through brainstorming, drafting, revision, and learning to use feedback. Her aim each semester is to help students become more aware of their existing habits and beliefs as writers and readers, and to guide them to create and refine writing processes that can serve them in many different situations. Dominique regularly collaborates with colleagues across disciplines by teaching in themed learning communities and paired courses. She is also a member of LaGuardia's ePortfolio Leadership Team.

Dominique received her BA from Binghamton University in 2006, graduating summa cum laude with a major in English and a minor in studio art. She received her Ph.D. in English from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2014, with concentrations in American Studies and Composition and Rhetoric. Her dissertation, "Mind, Media and Techniques of Remediation, 1850-1910", received the English Program's Alfred Kazin Award for the best dissertation in American Studies.

She has published on Emily Dickinson's poetry in the journal Textual Cultures, and on issues related to composition studies and community college writing programs in New Directions: Next Steps for/in Writing about Writing (Colorado UP 2019) and Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities (MLA Commons 2018). Dominique presents regularly at the College Conference on Composition and Communication. She is on the Editorial Collective of the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy and serves as a reviewer for the Journal of Basic Writing.
Former Faculty
Bashir, Adesimba

Berman, Allen

Blaine, Michael

Comins, Barbara Dr.

Dr. Barbara Comins, Professor of English, began her professional life as a cellist playing in the New Jersey Symphony, the New York Pops, the New York Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, and orchestras backing Tony Bennett, Benny Goodman, Henry Mancini, Barry Manilow, Luciano Pavarotti, Doc Severinsen, Frank Sinatra, Ben Vereen, and many others.

Winner of a National Endowment for the Humanities dissertation award, she earned her Ph.D. in English as a fellowship student at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her writing includes pieces in the New York Times, Poetry Calendar, Allegro, the Wallace Stevens Journal, and the Edith Wharton Review. Her essays “‘That Queer Sea’: Elizabeth Bishop and the Sea,” “‘Shuddering Insights’: Elizabeth Bishop and Surprise,” and “‘Then the Theatre…Changed’: Musical Frames for Wallace Stevens” appeared in the anthologies Divisions of the Heart: Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Memory and Place, “In Worcester Massachusetts”: Essays on Elizabeth Bishop, and Essays on Transgressive Readings: Reading Over the Lines. With the British composer John Marson, she co-wrote the musical Getaway.

At LaGuardia Community College, she teaches freshman composition; creative writing; literature; the college’s capstone liberal arts seminar “Humanism, Science, and Technology,” and the course she created “Cultural Identity in American Literature.”

Costa, Catherine

Phone: 718.482.5662
Office: E-103 R Mail: E-103
Email: costaca@lagcc.cuny.edu

Fassler, Doris

Green-Anderson, Gail

Gail has been a full-time member of the English Department since 1986. In her early years at LaGuardia she was a full-time teacher and a full-time student. Thanks to an American Association of University Women Dissertation Fellowship, she was able to complete her Ph.D. in English at CUNY Graduate Center. She feels tremendous admiration for LaGuardia's "juggling" students.
Gail teaches a wide variety of courses at LaGuardia including Basic Writing, Composition I, Writing through Literature and The Novel in the college's Honors program. She has been a member of many LaGuardia Learning Community faculty teams. In 1998, LaGuardia's Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa, the national honor society, granted her honorary membership to acknowledge her excellence as a teacher. In 2003 she was named a Semi-Finalist for the David R. Pierce Faculty Technology Award from the American Association of Community Colleges.
With Bret Eynon, she launched In Transit: The LaGuardia Journal on Teaching and Learning. The first issue was published in Fall 2005. She continues to serve as Editor of the college's journal.
Schools Attended: George Washington University (B.A.); SUNY at Oneonta (M.A.); Graduate School and University Center, CUNY (Ph.D.)
Favorite Quote: "It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it." from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Heath Johnson, Margaret

Rondinone, Peter

Silva, John O.

A professor of English at LaGuardia (where I specialize in Shakespeare, The Great Writer: Chaucer, English Grammar & Syntax, and Honors Poetry), I have been the recipient of consecutive PSC-CUNY Research Foundation awards since 1990, as well as two awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities. I am currently completing a book-length project, The Spanish "Dianas": Their Significance, Impact, and Legacy (under contract with The Edwin Mellen Press) and working on a radical rereading of Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
I have published numerous scholarly papers, reflecting my interest in renaissance rhetorical and allegorical poetics, in such journals as Renaissance Quarterly, Studies in Philology, The Journal of Comparative Literature, The Shakespeare Newsletter, The Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Mediterranean Studies, and Portuguese Studies and have contributed a chapter, "Exile under Fire: Reassessing the Poetics and Practice of Manuel de Faria e Sousa," to Global Impact of the Portuguese Language(Transaction Publishers, 2001). I have presented papers in such venues as, most recently, Miami, Florida: annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America; Florence, Italy, at the conference, "Florence 2000": Renaissance Society of America; Lisbon, Portugal (Biblioteca Nacional): Mediterranean Studies Association; Montreal and Albany: NEMLA; New York City: MLA; and Newark, N.J. (Rutgers University): first international conference on Portugal and Portuguese-speaking literature.
I am fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, aspire to be an ever-better Latinist, and can read several other languages with relative ease. My primary avocations are “chilling” with my wife, children, close friends, and baby pooch, Macho; making home-made wine, a craft I learned in childhood from my father; and playing the classical guitar for which I also enjoy arranging jazz and international music. I am an active member of the Renaissance Society of America (for which I occasionally review scholarly books) and am listed in Who's Who Among America's Teachers (multiple-year honoree) and in the Directory of American Scholars. Among my special thrills in life are seeing my students' eyes light up as they make new, life-affirming discoveries about literature and feeling their energies energize mine as we share readings of magnificently enduring and probing texts.
Schools Attended: Ph.D.: CUNY Graduate Center; M.A.: Brooklyn College of CUNY; B.A.: Seton Hall University.Area of Specialization: Renaissance literature of England and the Continent, particularly Spain and Portugal.Favorite Quote: "Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such, Who still are pleased too little or too much. At every trifle scorn to take offence, That always shows great pride, or little sense; Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best, Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move; For fools admire, but men of sense approve. As things seem large which we through mists descry Dulness us ever apt to magnify." ~ (from part 2 of Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism)
Authors I teach: Besides Chaucer and Shakespeare, whom I teach in courses of their own, I regularly teach Homer's Odyssey, as well as Henry James, Alice Walker, Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver, and Shakespeare, in Writing through Literature; Homer’s Iliad and Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in Freshman Composition; and the fictional works of Kate Chopin, Guy de Maupassant, and Isabel Allende in Basic Writing.

Styler, David

Taikeff, Stanley

Young, Susan E.

I started out to be a theoretical physicist, but because of one extraordinary English professor I had as an undergrad, in a course I didn't even want to take but had to (Thank you, Dr. Jim Dale, wherever you are) my love of literature and beautiful writing was ignited, and my path took a very different turn. It was also this wonderful teacher who gave me my first teaching gig at the tender age of 18, as a kind of junior T.A. I gave four lectures in a course called English for Engineers 100, and a passion for teaching was passed on. Here I am 25 quick years later and I still love what I do. Whether it's ENG 099 or ENG 250, it's always interesting, always challenging, and always fun. I have learned how profoundly great teaching impacts a person's life, and I experienced firsthand the ability to empower that a committed teacher possesses, so I try to remember that every time I enter a classroom.
Schools Attended: McMaster University, University of Toronto, CUNY Graduate Center.
Area of Specialization: Postmodern Science-based Fiction
Favorite Quote: "To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success" – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Authors I teach: Anything by James Baldwin, any chance I get, for his unflinching humanism. In ENG 102 I love to teach Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for her prophetic take on the dangers of scientific hubris; her story is as timely now as it was when she wrote it. Donald Barthelme's Snow White in ENG102 and ENG250 because it's fun to watch students' inevitable response to this (anti)novel: freaked out and then fascinated!
Professors Emeriti
Arkin, Marian

Beaky, Lenore

Comins, Barbara

Eisenberg-Halper. Nora

Gallagher, Brian

I have been fortunate in my career to have taught and written in many areas beyond my initial field of specialization (American literature). Besides nearly forty courses in English (half-a-dozen of which I created), I have also taught Humanities courses (American Film, Film and New York City, Critical Thought Skills) and Social Science courses (Hisory of New York City). My publications divide about evenly into three categories (film, literature, the teaching of writing), with a few in other fields (e.g. a biography of the American illustrator, Neysa McMein). I have been a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, and the CUNY Graduate Center--and have occasionally taught at Vassar and the CUNY Graduate Center. Still, a vast majority of my time has been spent, basically pleasureably, at LaGuardia--my pleasure coming chiefly from working with our students.Schools Attended: Fordham University (B.A. English, Philosophy) University of Pennsylvania (M.A., Ph.D. English--speciality: American literature)Area of Specialization: American literature, Irish literature, film, American film, American cultural history, Venetian history, Restoration and Eighteenth-century literature, Drama.Favorite Quote:"The vast expanses of space terrify me."--Blaise Pascal.Authors I teach: Shakespeare (Literature of the City--Venice), Zora Neale Hurston (The Novel), James Joyce (Short Story), Alfred Hitchcock (Literature and Film), Walt Whitman (Literature of the City--New York).

Green-Anderson, Gail

Hanson, Sandra

Lynch, Daniel

Lynch, John

Macheski, Cecilia

Matthews, Roberta

Muller, Gilbert

Vogt, Leonard

I am grateful for my twenty-five years in the English department. I could not have wished for a warmer and more friendly student body, and a more intelligent and inspiring group of faculty colleagues. Of my many teaching experiences, I have greatly enjoyed and learned from my work in the Learning Communities of the Liberal Arts clusters.
For the last 20 years, I have been on the editorial collective of Radical Teacher: A Socialist, Feminist and Anti-Racist Journal on the Theory and Practice of Teaching. In addition to writing a regular column on “News for Educational Workers,” I have edited and co-edited clusters on Gay and Lesbian Studies (issue 24), Gender and Sexuality, Vols. I and II (issues 66 and 67), and the Columbus cluster on the Quincentennial. I was also co-edited of Politics of Education: Essays from Radical Teacher(SUNY Press), an anthology of articles from the first 36 volumes of the journal. Recently, I published on Queer Studies in The Politics of Writing in the 2-Year College (Boyton/Cook).
For the last 10 years, I have been a faculty mentor and co-mentor of the Straight and Gay Alliance (SAGA), a LaGuardia student club. I appreciate the opportunity to work closely with such a fun group of students. In 2000-2001, I won awards for Best Club Mentor both from SAGA and the Student Advisory Council. Most recently, I had the pleasure of working with SAGA to plan and organize the Queer CUNY V Conference.
Schools Attended: Kent State University (and yes, I was there when the National Guard killed four students and wounded nine. And yes, it did change my life).
Area of Specialization: British Drama Since 1956; Queer Studies; Composition Theory Authors I teach:

E.L Doctorow’s Ragtime-- in Composition 101.

Manlio Argueta’s One Day of Life, and Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible-- both in the Art, Politics and Protest, a Urban Studies course.

Wiener, Harvey