Faculty

Dr. Lisa Eck

Professor and Department Chair

Office: May Hall 204
Phone Number: 508-626-4848
Email: leck@framingham.edu

B.A., Augustana College; M.A., Ph.D., Washington University in St. Louis

Teaching and Research Interests: World Literature and Anglophone Traditions, Postcolonial Criticism, Human Rights Pedagogy, Modern Literature, Gender Studies, Performance Theory, Rhetoric and Composition

Dr. Kristen Abbott Bennett

Assistant Professor

Office: May 115
Phone Number: 508-626-4047
Email: kbennett5@framingham.edu

Project Founder and Director of the Kit Marlowe Project, Assistant Director, Pedagogy for the Map of Early Modern London, and Project Co-Director of Rams Write. She has published an edited collection of essays entitled Conversational Exchanges in Early Modern England (1549 – 1640), as well as numerous essays discussing classical, medieval, and early modern literature, as well as complementary digital pedagogies.

B.A., Syracuse University; Ph.D. Tufts University

Teaching and Research Interests: Early Modern and Medieval Literature, Classics, Digital Humanities, Digital Pedagogies

Kit Marlowe Project 

Map of Early Modern London 

Rams Write

Dr. Bartholomew Brinkman

Associate Professor

Office: May Hall 208
Phone Number: 508-626-4812
Email: bbrinkman@framingham.edu

B.A., University of Utah; M.A., The Johns Hopkins University (The Writing Seminars); M.A. and Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

Teaching and Research Interests: Dr. Brinkman teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in first-year writing, American literature, digital humanities, and poetry from the turn of the twentieth century to the present (including Harlem Renaissance poetry and contemporary African American poetry). He is the author of Poetic Modernism in the Culture of Mass Print (Johns Hopkins, 2017) along with articles and essays on modern poetry, print culture/periodical studies, and digital humanities. He is currently an M. C. Lang Fellow at Rare Book School and the project director of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to develop a digital humanities center at FSU. He directs the Modern American Poetry Site. 

www.ModernAmericanPoetry.org 

www.BartholomewBrinkman.com 

Colleen Coyne
Colleen Coyne

Assistant Professor

Office: Crocker Hall 316
Phone Number: contact by email
Email: ccoyne1@framingham.edu

B.A., Johns Hopkins University; M.A., University of Chicago; M.F.A., University of Minnesota

Teaching and Research Interests: First-Year Writing, Professional Writing, Business Writing; Modern and Contemporary American Literature; Creative Writing (Poetry and Prose)

Jennifer De Leon

Assistant Professor

Office: May Hall 209
Phone Number: 508-626-5008
Email: jdeleon@framingham.edu

Jennifer De Leon is author of the YA novel Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From (Simon & Schuster, 2020), and the essay collection White Space: Essays on Culture, Race, & Writing (University of Massachusetts Press, 2021), which is a recipient of the Juniper Prize in Creative Nonfiction. She is also the editor of Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education (University of Nebraska Press, 2014), an anthology that won an International Latino Book Award. Her next YA novel, Maya, will be published in 2022.

B.A., Connecticut College; M.A.T., University of San Francisco; M.F.A., University of Massachusetts-Boston 

Teaching and Research Interests: Creative Writing (fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry), Latinx Literature, Contemporary American Literature, First Year Writing, Poverty & Literature, the American Dream 

www.jenniferdeleonauthor.com 

Dr. Alexander (Sandy) Hartwiger

Associate Professor

Office: May Hall 221
Phone Number: 508-626-4806
Email: ahartwiger@framingham.edu

B.A., M.A., Appalachian State University; Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Teaching and Research Interests: Contemporary World Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Literature and Human Rights, Cosmopolitan Pedagogy

Patricia Horvath

Associate Professor

Office: May Hall 104
Phone Number: 508-626-4849
Email: phorvath@framingham.edu

Patricia Horvath is the author of the memoir All the Difference (Etruscan Press) and the story collection But Now Am Found (Black Lawrence Press). A recipient of New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships in both fiction and creative nonfiction, she has published widely in literary journals including Shenandoah, Bellevue Literary Review, descant, Confrontation, and The Massachusetts Review

B.A., Emerson College; M.F.A., University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Teaching and Research interests: fiction writing, life writing, women’s studies, and disability studies

http://patricialhorvath.com

Patricia Lynne
Dr. Patricia Lynne

Professor

Office: May Hall 225
Phone Number: 508-626-4809
Email: plynne@framingham.edu

B.A.., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; M.A., George Mason University; Ph.D., University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

Teaching and Research Interests: First-Year Writing, Writing about Science, Technical Writing, Composition Theory and Pedagogy, Open Education Resources, Writing Assessment

Dr. Carolyn Maibor

Professor

Office: May Hall 207
Phone Number: 508-626-4808
Email: cmaibor@framingham.edu

B.A., Simmons College; M.A., University of Montreal; Ph.D., Brandeis University

Teaching and Research Interests: Early through 19th-century American Literature & Philosophy, Literary Theory & Gender Studies, Rhetoric & Composition

Kelly Matthews
Dr. Kelly Matthews

Associate Professor

Office: May Hall 115A
Phone Number: 508-626-4815
Email: kmatthews@framingham.edu

B.A.., Harvard University; M.Phil., Trinity College Dublin; M.A.T., Boston University; Ph.D., University of Ulster

Teaching and Research Interests: Secondary English Education, 20th-century Irish Literature

Dr. Desmond McCarthy

Professor and Graduate Coordinator

Office: May Hall 206
Phone Number: 508-626-4813
Email: dmccarthy@framingham.edu

B.A., Framingham State College; M.A., Ph.D., Brandeis University

Teaching and Research Interests: American Literature, Modernism, Ethnic Literature, Contemporary Novel, Journalism

Lynn Parker
Dr. Lynn Parker

Professor

Office: May Hall 223
Phone Number: (508) 626-4814
Email: lparker@framingham.edu

B.A., Providence College; M.A., Ph.D., Brandeis University

Teaching and Research Interests: 19th-century British novel, Narrative, 18th and 19th-century British literature, Short Story, Gender Studies, Expository Writing

Evelyn Perry
Dr. Evelyn Perry

Professor

Office: May Hall 205
Phone Number: 508-626-4838
Email: eperry@framingham.edu

B.A., M.A., Simmons College; Ph.D., University of Rhode Island

Teaching and Research Interests: Children's and Young Adult Literature, Folk and Fairy Tale Retellings & Legend, Creative Writing

Sally Shafto
Dr. Sally Shafto

Instructor

Office: May Hall 224
Phone Number: 508-626-4805
Email: sshafto@framingham.edu

Sally Shafto is an interdisciplinary film scholar with a strong background in art history (M.A., Columbia University). After finishing a Ph.D. in Film-Art-Aesthetics at the University of Iowa and holding a post-doctorate fellowship at Princeton, she lived in Paris for a decade where she taught in a film school and translated for Cahiers du cinéma. Her extensive background includes working in museum administration, running a film festival, and working as a film journalist in North Africa. In Morocco where she lived for five years, she taught in a public university in Ouarzazate and for an American junior-year-abroad program in Tangier. In the U.S., she taught for several years at Sarah Lawrence College and most recently at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. She has published widely in English and in French to journals such as Senses of Cinema, Framework, and Cinémathèque. In 2007 she published a study on a post-New Wave group of filmmakers (The Zanzibar Films and the Dandies of May ’68). Her numerous translations include Jean-Michel Frodon’s The World of Jia Zhangke (The Film Desk, 2021), Jean-Marie Straub and Daniéle Huillet’s Writings (Sequence Press, 2016), and Marie-José Mondzain’s Can Images Kill? (Critical Inquiry, Fall 2009). Currently she is translating the early film writings of French filmmaker, Chris Marker (forthcoming, University of Minnesota Press), and preparing a biographical study of Robert Bresson.  

Rachel Trousdale
Dr. Rachel Trousdale

Associate Professor

Office: May Hall 326
Phone Number: 508-626-4661
Email: rtrousdale@framingham.edu

B.A., M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Yale University

Teaching and Research Interests: British Literature since 1900, Transnational Fiction, Modernism, Comics, Science Fiction and Fantasy

www.racheltrousdale.com

Sam Witt
Sam Witt

Associate Professor

Office: May Hall 220
Phone Number: 508-626-4837
Email: switt1@framingham.edu

Sam Witt (@sambrownwitt) is author of Little Domesday Clock (Blair Publishing 2018); Everlasting Quail (UPNE 2001), winner of the Bakeless Prize; and Sunflower Brother (Cleveland State University Press 2006). Witt edited Devouring the Green: Fear of a Human Planet, a poetry anthology on technology and ecology. Witt has won numerous awards, including the 2014 Red Hen Press Poetry Award, the Pitch Poetry Award for 2012, and the Meridian Prize 2008. His work has appeared in: Virginia Quarterly Review, Los Angeles Review, Boston Review, Georgia Review, Wired, Computerworld, San Francisco Chronicle, Black Warrior Review and New England Review. The Godless Particle was a finalist for the 2021 National Poetry Series.

B. A., University of Virginia; M.F.A., University of Iowa Writers Workshop

Teaching and Research interests: Creative Writing, Poetry and Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Prose Writing, First Year Writing, American Poetry, Southern Literature, and Russian Literature

Talia Adry
Talia Adry

Visiting Lecturer

Office: Crocker Hall 315
Phone Number: Available By Appointment
Email: tadry@framingham.edu

Talia Adry is a nonfiction writer and poet. From 2017-2018, she served as Senior Copyeditor for Reed Magazine. Her work has appeared in Reed Magazine and American Literary Review, among others. She currently teaches English Composition at Framingham State University and is working on a forthcoming memoir.

B.A., Framingham State University; M.F.A., San José State University

Teaching and Research Interests: Rhetoric & Composition, Creative Nonfiction, Prose Writing, Memoir, Narrative Journalism, American Literature, Confessional Poetry, First-Year Writing

Hannah Baker-Siroty
Hannah Baker-Siroty

Visiting Lecturer

Office: Crocker Hall 315
Phone Number: Available By Appointment
Email: hbakersiroty@framingham.edu

Hannah Baker-Siroty is a former Associate Professor English and Creative Writing at Pine Manor College, where she chaired the Writing and English Programs until the college closed in 2022. She has degrees from The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Sarah Lawrence College, and has studied at Trinity College in Dublin with The Writers' Guild of Great Britain. Some of her work can be found in Best New Poets 2012 and Closet Cases: Queer Writers on What we Wear.

Elizabeth Banks
Elizabeth Banks

Visiting Lecturer

Office: Crocker Hall 310
Phone Number: 508-626-4803
Email: ebanks@framingham.edu

B.S., Adelphi University; M.A., Northeastern University

Teaching and Research Interests: First-year writing, journalism, feature writing

Kris Comment
Dr. Kristin M. Comment

Visiting Lecturer

Office: Crocker Hall 314
Phone Number: Available By Appointment
Email: kcomment@framingham.edu

Ph.D., University of Maryland, College Park; M.A., SUNY, Stony Brook; M.Ed., Framingham State University; B.A., Montclair State University

Teaching & Research Interests: American Literature, LGBTQ+ Literature & Theory, Rhetoric and Composition

Eamon Cunningham

Visiting Lecturer

Email: ecunningham@framingham.edu
Eamon Cunningham has taught writing and composition since 2006 and has been a writing program director since 2017. At FSU, he teaches Composition II (ENWR 110) and Student Teaching Practicum and Seminar, High School and Middle School English (EDPS 421A-421B, EDPS 861A-861B, PBTL 888-889). He is the author of Understanding Rhetoric: A Guide to Critical Reading and Argumentation (Brown-Walker Press, 2018) as well as a number of book chapters and scholarly articles, including “Authentic Questioning as a Form of Inquiry: Writing in the Dialogic Classroom” which has been anthologized in The Best of the Journals in Rhetoric and Composition (Parlor Press, 2019). Eamon also writes test questions for several large-scale standardized exams including MCAS (grade 10 ELA) and MTEL (English 5-12). Teaching and research interests: Rhetoric & Composition, Rhetorical Theory, Writing Assessment, Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines. B.A., Providence College, M.A., University of Massachusetts Boston

Lucas Dietrich
Dr. Lucas Dietrich

Visiting Lecturer

Office: Crocker Hall 315
Phone Number: Available By Appointment
Email: ldietrich@framingham.edu

B.A. Wesleyan University; M.A. Boston College; Ph.D. University of New Hampshire 

Lucas Dietrich teaches First-Year Writing, with research interests in American literature and the history of books. He is the author of Writing Across the Color Line: U.S. Print Culture and Ethnic Literature, 1877-1920 (University of Massachusetts Press, 2020). Dr. Dietrich has won fellowships at Fisk University, the Library Company of Philadelphia, The Newberry Library, and an NEH Faculty Fellow award from FSU's Center for Digital Humanities. He is also a council member and former president of the New England American Studies Association (NEASA).  

www.lucasadietrich.com

Dr. Lorianne DiSabato

Visiting Lecturer

Office: Crocker Hall 310
Phone Number: 508-626-4803
Email: ldisabato@framingham.edu

B.A., University of Toledo; M.A., Boston College; Ph.D., Northeastern University

Teaching and Research Interests: American Literature, Nature Writing, Creative Nonfiction, Rhetoric and Composition

www.loriannedisabato.com

Dr. Maryam Ghodrati

Visiting Lecturer

Office: Crocker Hall 316
Phone Number: Available by Appointment
Email: mghodrati@framingham.edu

B.A., Persian Literature, M.A., English Literature, University of Massachusetts Boston. Ph.D., Comparative Literature, University of Massachusetts Amherst. 

Dr. Maryam Ghodrati is a visiting lecturer at Framingham State University, MetroWest College Planning Collaborative (CPC), the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Labouré College of Healthcare in Boston. She has been a visiting scholar at WSRC at Brandeis University conducting research on visual representations of the female body in displacement. Her interest lies in the intersections of trauma and literary theory, postcolonial and poststructuralist theory, and representations of embodiment as a primary epistemological site. Her projects in progress include a book manuscript titled Between the Visual and the Verbal: An Aesthetics of Open Wounds on Secular and Sacred Bodies of War and a volume she is co-editing on Poetics and Politics of Trauma: Regional Wounds, Universal Traumas, and the Possibility of Empathy. 

 

Marianne McGowan
Marianne McGowan

Visiting Lecturer

Office: Crocker Hall 301
Phone Number: Available By Appointment
Email: mmcgowan@framingham.edu

A.B., Brown University; M.Ed., Framingham State University

Teaching Interests: Freshman Writing; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in instructional practice; academic support.

Ashlee Okan
Dr. Lee Okan

Visiting Lecturer

Office: Crocker Hall 312
Phone Number:
Email: aokan@framingham.edu

B.A., Simmons University; M.F.A., Lesley University; Ph.D., Aberystwyth University

Teaching and Researching Interests: Creative Writing, Fiction, Children’s Literature and Young Adult Literature, Graphic Novels and Comics

Joseph Opiela

Visiting Lecturer

Phone Number: Please contact by email.
email: jopiela@framingham.edu

B.A., Boston University; M.A., Bridgewater State University 

Teaching and Research Interests: First Year Writing, Rhetoric and Composition, Professional Writing, Digital Writing, College English Textbook Publishing.   

Leah Van Vaerenewyck
Leah Van Vaerenewyck

Visiting Lecturer

Office: Crocker Hall 314
Phone Number: Available By Appointment
Email: lvanvaerenewyck@framingham.edu

Leah Van Vaerenewyck holds a BA from Bridgewater State University and an MFA from Lesley University. She has held fellowships with Education Pioneers and the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation for Higher Education. Her scholarly work has appeared or is forthcoming in English Journal, Comparative Education Review, Journal of College Reading and Learning, and Literacy Research and Instruction. Her creative work has been awarded by Glimmer Train and has appeared or is forthcoming in journal such as IthacaLit, Slippage Lit, Still Point Arts Quarterly, and Thimble Literary Magazine. Her research interests include first-year composition, inquiry-based learning, global literature, and decolonizing pedagogies. 

Arlene Wilner
Dr. Arlene Wilner

Visiting Lecturer

Office: Crocker Hall 315
Phone Number: Available By Appointment
Email: awilner@framingham.edu

B.A. Cornell University; M.A., Ph.D., Columbia University

Arlene Wilner is the author of Rethinking Reading in College: An Across-the-Curriculum Approach (NCTE 2020), as well as articles on eighteenth-century British literature, children’s literature, twentieth-century American literature, and pedagogies for literature and composition. A Fellow of the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, she has led a faculty-development program in SoTL and, as director of a team-taught honors program, has supported the development of interdisciplinary curricula.  

Sarah Young
Sarah Young

Visiting Lecturer

Office: May Hall
Phone Number: Available By Appointment
Email: syoung11@framingham.edu

B.A., Bridgewater State University; M.F.A., University of Massachusetts Boston

Teaching and Research Interests: First year writing, Neuro-divergent Writing Strategies, Fiction Writing, Creative Nonfiction Writing, Feminist Studies

Thomas Grove
Dr. Thomas Grove

Associate Professor, Retired

Office:
Phone Number:
Email: tgrove@framingham.edu

After teaching at the College of St. Scholastica and Virginia Tech, Dr. Thomas Grove joined the English Department at Framingham State College in 1980 where he has offered courses in folklore and mythology, linguistics, and writing. After presenting several studies of Korean and Navaho mythology to The Society of Korean Oral Literature, he is now exploring the interplay of phonology with semantics in the Korean myth, "The Abandoned Princess." This work is leading to a monograph on the ultimate power of words to revive the dead in not only early Asian and North American cultures, but also Finnish, Greek, Egyptian.  

B.A., Harvard College; M.A., Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley

Claudia Springer
Dr. Claudia Springer

Professor, Retired

Office:
Phone Number:
Email: cspringer@framingham.edu

B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Northwestern University

Teaching and Research Interests: Film Studies, Cultural Studies, Contemporary World Literature

FSU Walkway
Francesca Cerutti-Harris

Administrative Assistant

Office: May Hall 107 & Whittemore Library C-203
Phone Number: 5086264683
Email: fceruttiharris@framingham.edu

B.A. Framingham State University