Faculty & Staff
English Program Graduate Instructors/Teaching Assistants
Timothy Amidon [timothy_amidon@mail.uri.edu] is a Ph.D. candidate in Writing at the University of Rhode Island. He received his M.A. from Indiana University in 2007 with a thesis titled “Institutional Authors, Institutional Texts? An Analysis of the Intellectual Property Policies Promulgated at Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne and Its Peer Institutions.” He has published poetry in Confluence Literary Magazine, The Margin, and Cobalt Fuse. Amidon has presented presentations at scholarly conferences across the country, including the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) and Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW). Intellectual Interests Include: The Intersection of Intellectual Property/Copyright and the Composition Classroom, The History/Evolution of Copyright, Open Source Authorship/Publishing, 16th Century, Restoration, and Enlightenment Period British Literature, and Cyberpunk/Science Fiction. Amidon teaches in the Writing Program and in the English Program at University of Rhode Island.
Kenna Barrett [cbarrett@my.uri.edu] is a Ph.D. candidate in Writing at University of Rhode Island. She received her M.A. in Philosophy from the University of California, San Diego. Her scholarly interests include feminist theory, theory and practice of argumentative writing, and rhetoric and philanthropy. She is a contributing author to Giving USA, and her short stories and essays have appeared in the Battered Suitcase and the New Haven Advocate. Barrett teaches in the Writing Program and in the English Program at University of Rhode Island.
Michael Becker is a Ph.D. candidate at University of Rhode Island. He earned his M.A. from the University of Sussex (Brighton/Falmer, England) in 2004 and his B.A. from the University of Colorado (Boulder, CO) in 2001. He has presented scholarly papers at the URI Graduate Student Conference and at the Modernist Studies Association. His primary field is British Modernism and his current intellectual interests include gender and sexuality, narratology, literary depictions of food and eating, and the relationship between form and historicity in literary studies. Becker teaches in the Writing Program and in the English Program at University of Rhode Island. Before starting his Ph.D. he was an adjunct instructor, teaching college level composition and literature classes in online and traditional classrooms.
Nancy Caronia [ncaronia@my.uri.edu] is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Rhode Island. She earned her M.A. in English literature from SUNY Brockport where she received the Blaine DeLancey Memorial Award for her critical scholarship on Walt Whitman in 2008 and Bharati Mukherjee in 2009 and the Calvin Rich Poetry Award in 2008. Her essay, “Meeting at Bruce’s Place: Springsteen’s Italian American Heritage and Global Notions of Family,” is forthcoming in the anthology Essays on Italian American Literature and Culture (Bordighera Press, CUNY) and a poem, “Underworld,” is forthcoming in the She is Everywhere anthology. Additionally, she is co-editing a critical anthology with Edvige Giunta entitled, Personal Effects: Essays on Memory, Culture, and Women in the Work of Louise DeSalvo. She has presented her scholarly work at numerous professional conferences, including the NEASA (Northeast American Studies Association), AIHA (American Italian Historical Association), and CUNY’s Calandra Institute, and she is a council member of the NEASA. In addition to teaching in the Writing and Rhetoric, English, and Comparative Literature programs at URI, Caronia serves on URI’s Common Reading Program (CRP) committee—a freshman initiative and was most recently asked to interview Cedric Jennings, the subject of Ron Suskind’s Hope in the Unseen, for the CRP and Emmy Award winner Michael Emerson of Lost for the URI Student Entertainment Committee. Previously, she has taught at NYU, New Jersey State University, SUNY Brockport, and SUNY FLCC. Intellectual interests include: 20th century transatlantic and transnational discourses, especially ethnic and immigrant literature, popular culture, and drama and film.
Kim Evelyn [kim_evelyn@my.uri.edu] is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Rhode Island. She has presented scholarly papers at the British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference, University of Rhode Island and University of Guelph. Her intellectual interests include: postcolonial theory and literature (particularly Caribbean, Southeast Asian and African); displacement, immigration and diasporas; African American studies and literature; race studies; Caribbean history; media studies; multicultural studies. Evelyn teaches in the English Program, including literature courses cross-listed with African and African American Studies at University of Rhode Island. She has consistently worked on the University of Rhode Island Graduate Conference, most recently Co-Chairing the event, and is a TA Trainer (2010-2012).
Daniel Facchinetti [dfacchinetti@mail.uri.edu] is a Ph.D. candidate in English at University of Rhode Island. He received his M.A. from the University of New Hampshire. He has presented at URI's 2008 Grad Student Conference, "Space, Place, and Imagination." Intellectual interests: 19th and 20th Century American lit, British Modernism, German Romanticism, the postmodern, American Transcendentalism, primitivism. Facchinetti teaches in the Writing Program and in the English Program at University of Rhode Island.
Rebekah Greene [rebekah_greene@mail.uri.edu] is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Rhode Island. She received her M.A. from the University of Rochester in 2007 with a thesis titled "Landscape, 'Portable Civilization,' and the Traveling Other in R.L. Stevenson’s The Master of Ballantrae." Greene has published on Milton's "Comus" in The Explicator and has additionally published entries in the Encyclopedia of American Environmental Literature. Her book reviews have been published in American and Australian journals, she currently serves as a peer reviewer for Victorian Network, and she is a bibliographer for Routledge’s Annotated Bibliography of English Studies. Greene has presented at many scholarly conferences, including the North East Modern Language Association, the International Association of Literature on Screen, and the British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference. Greene has also guest lectured at the Susan B. Anthony National Historic Site and has received several research grants for her work. Additionally, Greene is a former English Department representative to the URI Graduate Student Association and is a past member of the University’s Graduate Council. Intellectual interests include: Victorian and Edwardian literature; travel and exploration literature; adventure fiction; geography and landscape studies; postcolonial studies; silent cinema. Greene teaches in the Writing Program and in the English Program at University of Rhode Island and currently serves on the English Department’s Graduate and Publicity Committees.
Rosaleen Greene-Smith is a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in English at University of Rhode Island. She is specializing in 18th Century Literature. Intellectual interests include: 18th century rhetoric and logic, Scottish Enlightenment rhetorics, 18th century vernacular poetry, aesthetic ethics, citizenship and rhetorical studies, C.S. Peirce, and Trans-Atlantic pragmaticism. She received her M.A. from University of Massachusetts, Boston, and has most recently presented papers at the CCCC, and Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference. Forthcoming publications include “The Legacy of Petrus Ramus in U.S. Composition: Realism, Scottish Common Sense, and Peircean Pragmatic Method,” in Ramus Revisted (Ashgate, 2011). Greene-Smith is teaches in the Writing Program and the English Program at University of Rhode Island, and she is the Director of the Writing Center.
Wendy Grosskopf [wendy_grosskopf@my.uri.edu] is a Ph.D. candidate in Writing at the University of Rhode Island. She received her M.A. from California State University Northridge in 2008 with a thesis titled “From Perversion to Synthesis,” a collection of short stories which explores the dialectical relation between standard and nontraditional social practices, and the way such conversations shape individual and collective social actions and thought patterns. She has short stories and poems published in Moorpark Review, Northridge Review, Not Enough Night, as well as a number of small-press nonacademic literary journals. She served as the director of ArtistSalon Raw—Valley Edition from 2005 to 2007. Grosskopf has presented at scholarly conferences across the country, including the URI English Department Graduate Conference, the Southwest Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association, and the Conference on College Composition and Communication. Her intellectual interests include: citizenship and rhetorical studies, creative writing, critical research methodologies, ethics, genre studies, modern and postmodern theories, Orientalism, philosophy and composition studies, pragmatics and composition studies, responses to student writing, rhetoric and composition, theories of representation, twentieth-century literature, visual rhetorics, and writing as social action. Her current emphasis is on pedagogy; specifically, she is developing original theory and source material for use in teaching argumentation in undergraduate writing classrooms. Grosskopf teaches in the Writing Program and in the English Program at University of Rhode Island.
Mihaela Harper [mharper@my.uri.edu] is a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in English at University of Rhode Island, currently completing her dissertation on anomie. She received her M.S. in English from Southern Connecticut State University. Harper has been invited to present scholarly papers at a number of professional conferences, including the MLA (Modern Language Association), PCA/ACA (Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association), and NeMLA. Intellectual interests include: 20th century comparative literature, movement, postmodernism, ethics, language, and rhetorical theory. Harper teaches in the Writing Program and in the English Program at University of Rhode Island.
Stefanie Head [stefanie_head@my.uri.edu] is a Ph.D. candidate in English at University of Rhode Island. She received her M.A. from Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) with a thesis titled “Changing the Subject: Narrating Freedom in Toni Morrison's Beloved and Jazz.” Her essay “Making Sense of Silence: Negotiating with Foe” was published in the Proceedings from the 1st International Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics and Literary Studies August 31st-September 1st 2004. She has presented papers in numerous scholarly conferences in the U.S. and abroad, including the MLA (Modern Language Association) and ALA (American Literature Association) annual conferences. Intellectual Interests include: British Romanticism, movement (speed & affect), the imagination, ethics, aesthetics, trauma. Head teaches in the Writing Program and in the English Program at University of Rhode Island.
Gavin F. Hurley [ghurleyURI@gmail.com] is a Ph.D. candidate in Writing and Rhetoric at University of Rhode Island. He received his M.A. in Writing from Rowan University. He has presented at URI's 2010 Grad Student Conference, “Carried Across: Translations, Temporalities, and Trajectories” and will be presenting at several conferences in 2011 including the CCCC in Atlanta and the “Literature, Rhetoric, and Values” Conference at Waterloo University. Intellectual interests: spiritual composition studies, English Bible translations, the rhetoric of the Catholic Church, and Existentialist Literature. Hurley teaches in the Writing Program and in the English Program at University of Rhode Island.
Marcy Renee Isabella [marcyrenee@my.uri.edu] is a Ph.D. candidate in Writing at the University of Rhode Island. She received her M.A. in English (concentration in writing practices and poetics) from SUNY Albany in 2010 with a thesis titled "Just the Authentic Act: Dialogical No-Selfs, Per-Zine Communities, and Anarchistic Tendencies." Intellectual interests include: composition theory and pedagogy, peer tutoring, zines and independent publishing, anarchist praxis and poetics. Isabella teaches in the Writing Program at the University of Rhode Island.
Eva Jones [eva_jones@mail.uri.edu] is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Rhode Island. Jones is preparing a dissertation on the formations of women’s literary history within the literature of Geoffrey Chaucer and the Italian Trecento that extend to Christine de Pizan in early 15th century France. She earned her M.A. in English Education from Teachers College, Columbia University and a B.A. in English from Western Connecticut State University.
Beazley Kanost is a Ph.D. candidate at University of Rhode Island and holds a B.A. in Psychology and an M.A. in English from the University of Oklahoma and an MFA in Creative Writing from Brown University. At the college level she has taught literature, creative writing, professional/technical writing, and academic writing, including courses on the mythology in Homer’s works, reading and writing the short story, and representations of the self in popular culture. She taught most recently at Wheaton College and Roger Williams University, before coming to the University of Rhode Island. She has also taught creative writing and literature to adults and high school students through Brown University’s School of Continuing Education. Her current work focuses on a genealogy of American coolness that seeks to parse that chimeric value as constituted by and manifest in grammars of the usual suspects: class, race, gender, and sexuality. Her most recent publication is from a series of pose proems titled Pay Attention to Your Dream: A User’s Manual for Those Who Sleep. In 2010 she won first place in the URI English Department’s Critical Essay Contest for graduate students with her essay, “How Cool Was Falstaff?”. During the past year she has presented papers at the New England Women’s Studies conference (“Judges”), at the New England American Studies Association conference (“Absence in Person: Babo’s Performance in Herman Melville’s ‘Benito Cereno’”), and at the URI Graduate Student conference (“This Thug Which is Not One”). On occasion she makes books out of refuse and other things.
Sarah Kruse came to Rhode Island from Portland, Oregon where she received her M.A. in English Literature summa cum laude from Portland State University. Her research interests include language philosophy, structuralism, deconstruction, modern poetry, and romanticism. She has presented at the 2009 University of Rhode Island graduate conference and at the 2010 CUNY Graduate Center’s Film Studies Conference in New York and will be presenting at the 2011 NeMLA conference. Her most recent publication “The Paradox of Ideology, Identity, and Judgment: A Zizekian Analysis of Camus’s The Fall” appeared in The International Journal of Zizek Studies. She is a regular contributor for the online literary magazine Propeller. She has also taught as an adjunct faculty member at Portland State University and teaches writing and literature at URI.
J.C. Lee is pursuing a Ph.D. in Writing and Rhetoric from the University of Rhode Island. She has earned an M.A. from the State University of New York at New Paltz, where she developed a thesis entitled "The Corporatization of the American Dream: Satiric Portrayals of Contemporary Consumerism in Douglas Coupland’s All Families are Psychotic, Chuck Palahniuk’s Survivor, and Harry Crews’ The Mulching of America." She has presented at conferences held by the New York College English Association, the SUNY Counsel on Writing, Southern Connecticut State University, URI, and the Conference on College Composition and Communication. Her scholarly work has appeared in Shopping for Jesus and the Association for the Study of Ethical Behavior in Literature Journal, Moira, and the Shawangunk Review. Her current intellectual pursuits include the rhetoric of online forums, the rhetoric of advertising and marketing, discourse studies, composition studies, public writing, and cultural studies of contemporary fiction in English. She has taught and tutored writing, literature, oral communication, and ESL at SUNY New Paltz, Johnson and Wales University, and the University of Rhode Island.
Sarah Maitland [sarah_maitland@mail.uri.edu] is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Rhode Island. She received her M.A. from the University of Massachusetts, Boston with a thesis titled “The Visual to the Verbal: Catholic Iconography and Symbolism in Reformation and Post Reformation English Literature.” Maitland has presented scholarly papers at The College English Association, The Medieval-Renaissance Conference, and The Popular Culture Association. Intellectual interests include: Romantic Literature, pedagogy, gender, sexuality, and politics, religious iconography and theology, and the gothic. Maitland teaches in the English Program at University of Rhode Island.
Stephen Marchand [marchand@mail.uri.edu] is a Ph.D. candidate in English at University or Rhode Island. He received his M.A. and M.F.A. from San Francisco State University. Marchand's work has been published in several comic book series; he has also presented a scholarly paper at University of Rhode Island Graduate Student Conference. Intellectual interests include: Modernism, Post-Modernism, Graphic Fiction, Film, Post-Structuralism. Marchand teaches in the Writing Program and in the English Program at University of Rhode Island.
Sara Murphy [saramurphy@my.uri.edu] is a Ph.D. Candidate in English at the University of Rhode Island. She received her M.A. from SUNY Albany with a thesis titled “Immortal Love in Mortal Lives: The Marriage of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ellen Louisa Tucker.” She also has a graduate certificate in Women's Studies from the University of Rhode Island. Her essay “Literature, if Anything, Will Save Me” and other writings were published in Death in the Classroom by Jeffrey Berman (State University of New York Press, 2009); additionally, she is a published poet. Murphy has presented at the ALA Symposium on Naturalism and the PAMLA annual conference; in 2010, she chaired the URI graduate conference “Carried Across: Translations, Temporalities, and Trajectories.” Currently, she is completing her training as a thanatologist through the National Center for Death Education. Intellectual interests include: 19th century American literature and intellectual history, 17th century American literature and culture, gender and sexuality studies, death education, pedagogy, and writing as rescue. Murphy teaches in the English Department and Program of Thanatology at University of Rhode Island.
Nicole Myers [NicoleAMyers@gmail.com] is a Ph.D. Candidate in Writing at the University of Rhode Island. She received her M.A. from SUNY New Paltz. She has presented papers at scholarly conferences across the country, including the 9th Annual Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference and Federation Rhetoric Symposium. Intellectual interests include: gender and sexuality, feminism, service learning, Gertrude Buck and early feminist compositionists. Myers teaches in the Writing Program and in the English Program at University of Rhode Island.
Jay Peters [jason_peters@my.uri.edu] is a Ph.D. candidate in Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Rhode Island. He completed an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Emerson College in Boston. He has published essays on the politics of peer tutoring and on the uses of Shakespearean dramatic structures in the poetry of John Berryman. His research interests include poetic language, the relationship between psychology and form, translation, and multilingual rhetorics, especially from Anglophone and Francophone cultures. He teaches at the University of Rhode Island.
Andrew Ploeg [ploe4030@yahoo.com] is a PhD candidate in English at University of Rhode Island. He received his M.A. from University of Idaho with a thesis titled “Deconstruction and the Divine: Literature, Theosophy, and the Language of Truth.” He has a forthcoming publication in Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies on the work of Edmond Jabès and a co-written essay on hyperreality and popular culture in a collection to be published by Lexington Books. Ploeg has presented scholarly papers at the Studies in Cultural Meaning Conference in Chantilly, France, as well as the Northeast Modern Language Association Conference and The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900. Intellectual interests include: postmodern literature, critical theory, and, in particular, the work of Edmond Jabès. Ploeg teaches in the Writing program and in the English program at University of Rhode Island.
Joannah Portman Daley [joannahportman@mail.uri.edu] received her MFA in Writing (Fiction) from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Writing and Rhetoric at University of Rhode Island, where she also serves as Associate Director of Technology for the department. Her dissertation investigates the intersections of social media, digital writing, and civic engagement and is currently titled "(Re)Writing Civics in the Digital Age: The Role of Social Media in Student (Dis)Engagement." Portman Daley has won research grants from the URI's Division of Research and Economic Development and Association of Teachers of Technical Writing. She has a chapter in the forthcoming book Digital Education: Opportunities for Social Collaboration and articles in the winter issues of Reflections and Academic Exchange Quarterly, the latter of which was awarded Editor's Choice. She regularly presents scholarly papers at Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) and Computers and Writing. Portman Daley teaches in the Writing Program and in the English Program at University of Rhode Island.
Don Rodrigues is an M.A. candidate in English at University of Rhode Island. His academic work engages the fields of experimental nonfiction, visual studies, philosophy, and paleography. He has a particular interest in theories of early modern logic and identity. Shakespeare’s apocalyptic love poem, “The Phoenix and Turtle," is the subject of his master's thesis, for which he was awarded a research grant from URI's Center for the Humanities. Rodrigues teaches courses in English and Writing at University of Rhode Island.
Laurie Rodrigues is a critical-comparative Americanist interested in interdisciplinarity, visual theory, race relations and post-Enlightenment philosophies. Her most recent work re-conceives post-1960s American identity as something that is grounded in belief, a product of affective labor—in short, an endtime discourse. Taking the methodological study of American literature as her object of critique, Rodrigues is primarily concerned with the emphasis that has come to be placed upon various forms of identity politics within American literary and cultural study, as well as the various ways through which this method of interpretation has formed the notion of “diversity” with which America is aligned. As a 21st-century corrective to this now-formalized impulse, Rodrigues’s work emphasizes theoretical experimentation, adapting the “revolutionary spirit” of the 1960s as an intensive diagram of the forces that intersect with post-1960 novels and “abstract” art images. Ultimately, her inquiry calls into question the antagonism between subjective exigencies, artistic networks of drive and affective labor, which can, she argues, potentially unfasten their own discursive presences. Rodrigues’s work was nominated for the 2010 Horst Frenz Prize by the ACLA, she has presented papers at several professional conferences, and has recently published in the University of Cambridge’s Journal of American Studies as well as The International Journal of Zizek Studies. She also has a book chapter forthcoming in a critical anthology to be published by Routledge.
Erin Vachon [erinjvachon@gmail.com] is a Ph.D. candidate in Literature at the University of Rhode Island. She received her M.A. from URI in 2006. Her intellectual interests include: Critical theory, Victorian literature and culture, European novel (19th and 20th century), queer theory, feminist theory, theories of aesthetics, and ethics. Vachon has taught in the Writing Program, the Literature Program, and the Honors Program at URI.
Jamie White-Farnham [j5white@mail.uri.edu] is a Ph.D. candidate in Writing at University of Rhode Island. She received her M.A. from Bridgewater State College, Bridgewater, MA. She has presented at several scholarly conferences, including the SUNY Stonybrook Council on Writing and the Northeast Writing Center Association. Intellectual interests include: everyday rhetorics, materialist feminism, and critical research methodologies. White-Farnham teaches in the Writing program and in the English program at University of Rhode Island.
