English & Communication
Head: Sharmain van Blommestein
Administrative Assistant: Laura L Peary
TEL: (315) 267-2005 Timerman Hall 205
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Trevor J. BlankAssociate Professor English & Communication
Trevor J. BlankAssociate ProfessorMorey Hall 119
blanktj@potsdam.edu
View CVFolklorist Trevor J. Blank's teaching and research centers on the study of folk and popular culture, humor, mass media, and the digital humanities. He is the author or editor of nine books, including Folklore and the Internet, Folk Culture in the Digital Age, and The Last Laugh: Folk Humor, Celebrity Culture, and Mass-Mediated Disasters in the Digital Age. His most recent research project, Slender Man Is Coming, examines the narrative genre of "creepypasta," the popularization of the Slender Man character and Mythos, as well as the formation and transmission of legends on the Internet. Follow him on Twitter @trevorjblank. More Info |
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Sara L CantwellAdjunct Instructor Center for School Partnerships and Teacher Certification, English & Communication
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Stephanie Coyne DeGhettAssistant Professor English & Communication
Stephanie Coyne DeGhettAssistant ProfessorMorey Hall 235
deghetsc@potsdam.edu
M.A. University of Vermont at Burlington M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts More Info |
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James J. DonahueProfessor and Assistant Chair English & CommunicationJames J. DonahueProfessor and Assistant ChairMorey Hall 130
donahujj@potsdam.edu
View CVJames J. Donahue is primarily interested in the study of narrative form, particularly with how authors construct their narratives to engage in social and political commentary. He introduces students to this work in his various classes, including his courses in Native American Literature, Young Adult Literature, and The Graphic Novel. In his scholarship, he works primarily at the intersection of narrative theory and identity studies, with a particular focus on race and representation. His other interests include historical fiction, experimental narratives, and The Beat Movement. More Info |
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Christine M. DoranAssociate Professor, English & Communication, Interdisciplinary Studies and Director, Potsdam Pathways General Education English & Communication, General Education Program - Potsdam Pathways
Christine M. DoranAssociate Professor, English & Communication, Interdisciplinary Studies and Director, Potsdam Pathways General EducationFlagg Hall 204B
dorancm@potsdam.edu
View CVMore Info |
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Judith FunstonProfessor English & Communication
Judith FunstonProfessorMorey Hall 143
funstoje@potsdam.edu
I have always been fascinated by American history and culture, and for me, the study of literature has been a way to understand the past as well as the present. My undergraduate and graduate degrees at Michigan State University focused primarily on literature and prepared me for my teaching career. My teaching at SUNY Potsdam has become the springboard to investigate politics, economics, music, art, and philosophy . . . and to convey the excitement of my discoveries to my students. More Info |
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Karen K. GibsonVisiting Instructor English & Communication |
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Jessica R HeffnerAssistant Professor English & Communication |
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Benjamin J LandryAssistant Professor English & Communication
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Derek C. MausProfessor English & Communication
Derek C. MausProfessorMorey Hall 244
mausdc@potsdam.edu
View CVI've been teaching at SUNY Potsdam for more than twenty years, having started in the fall of 2001. Since that time, I've taught 131 sections of 53 different courses, ranging from introductory courses in literature and composition to specialized upper-division and graduate seminars in various topics related to (mostly) contemporary fiction. A full list of what I've taught here can be found on my CV. Over the course of those two-plus decades, I've also kept myself busy with a range of scholarly projects, the majority of which have some connection to the topic of satire. My first book, Unvarnishing Reality: Subversive Russian and American Cold War Satire (Univ. of South Carolina Press, 2011), is a substantially revised version of my doctoral dissertation and remains the only scholarly book to compare Russian and American literature during the Cold War. My subsequent books -- Understanding Colson Whitehead (Univ. of South Carolina Press, 2014, rev. ed. 2021) and Jesting in Earnest: Percival Everett and Menippean Satire (Univ. of South Carolina Press, 2019) -- examine the work of a pair of brilliant contemporary American authors. My current work-in-progress -- Counteracting Erasure and "Unvisibility": Constructions of Empowered Black Identity in Contemporary American and Canadian Fiction -- will be the first comparative study of contemporary African American and Black Canadian authors upon publication. I have also edited or co-edited a number of other books that have opened the window through which I look at the contemporary world even wider. Along with the late and deeply missed Owen E. Brady of Clarkson University, I co-edited Finding a Way Home: Critical Essays on Walter Mosley (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2008). My SUNY Potsdam colleague James J. Donahue and I have co-edited a pair of collections of new scholarship on contemporary African American satire, Post-Soul Satire: Black Identity after Civil Rights (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2014) and Greater Atlanta: Blackness and Satire after Obama (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2023). Alongside these longer-form publications, I've also published dozens of journal articles, book chapters, and reference-work entries. I've produced more than fifty book reviews and have served as an external manuscript reviewer for more than a dozen scholarly journals and academic presses. I have been invited to give public lectures at institutions in Austria, Canada, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Russia, and Turkey, and have presented my work at conferences throughout North America and Europe. I have also served my department, my college, and SUNY Potsdam as a whole in a wide range of administrative capacities. My full CV and excerpts from my published and unpublished scholarly work can be found at https://potsdam.academia.edu/DerekCMaus. More Info |
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Donald J. McNuttProfessor and Editor of Blueline Magazine English & Communication
Donald J. McNuttProfessor and Editor of Blueline MagazineMorey Hall 247
mcnuttdj@potsdam.edu
View CVMy teaching and research specialties include early American literature, from the Age of Exploration to the Civil War. In each of my classes, I strive to teach my students how to interpret literature and culture with precision and to convey their ideas with vigor. I also want students to enjoy what they read and write as they realize how interpretive rigor fosters complex awareness of both ourselves and the world. I'm particularly interested in American writers' representations of places, real and imagined. I devote much of my scholarship to interdisciplinary analyses of cities and national geographies, as well as local environments such as the Adirondacks. My first book, Urban Revelations: Images of Ruin in the American City, 1790-1860 (Routledge Press 2006), examines the ways in which American writers rely on images of ruin to represent cities as sites of instability and cultural impermanence. The study focuses on fiction written by Philip Freneau, Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville. I'm currently composing a book on the environmental aspects of urban cellars and basements in nineteenth-century American literature. Chapter three of the book has been published in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment 20:2 (Spring 2013): 356-376. It's called "'From Some Unmentionable Cellar': The Natural World of the Urban Underground in Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Literature." I'm also the Editor in Chief of Blueline: A Literary Magazine Dedicated to the Spirit of the Adirondacks, as well as the Potsdam College Press. The Press publishes works relating to the Adirondacks, including writing that focuses on the literature and culture of northern New York, New England, and eastern Canada. My profile picture was taken in front of the Newgrange Monument, in County Meath, Ireland. The monument is a Neolithic temple and "passage tomb" built around 3200 B.C. near the Boyne River. One of the most important ancient sites in Ireland, the monument predates Stonehenge and the Pyramids at Giza. More Info |
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Jennifer K. MitchellAssociate Professor and Director, College Writing Center and Writers' Block English & Communication, College Writing Center / Writer's Block
Jennifer K. MitchellAssociate Professor and Director, College Writing Center and Writers' BlockMorey Hall 135
mitchejk@potsdam.edu
View CVCarson Hall 106 I primarily teach writing courses, and I direct the College Writing Center. My PhD is from the University at Albany's program in Writing, Criticism, and Teaching, which includes composition theory, critical theory, creative writing, and literary studies. My dissertation argues for a renewed debate about conventional writing instruction among composition teacher-scholars. My scholarship focuses on that argument, on writing center pedagogy, and on writing interns' experiential learning. I am happy to talk with students, whether we know each other or not, about your goals, questions, and opportunities at Potsdam. More Info |
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Linda MoerschellLecturer English & Communication
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Liberty S. StanavageAssociate Professor English & Communication
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Alan L. SteinbergProfessor English & Communication
Alan L. SteinbergProfessorMorey Hall 124
steinbal@potsdam.edu
Ph.D. Carnegie-Mellon University I was born and raised in New York City, then lived and taught for a number of years in the mountains of Idaho and Washington, and now have learned to love the North Country as a place of rugged beauty and challenge. I teach a variety of writing and literature courses, all with the aim of helping students appreciate the beauty and power of a story well-told whether that story is found in the Old Testament, in the Odyssey, in Shane, or in the students next assignment. More Info |
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Sharmain van BlommesteinAssociate Professor and Dept. Chair English & Communication
Sharmain van BlommesteinAssociate Professor and Dept. ChairMorey Hall 249
vanblos@potsdam.edu
http://www2.potsdam.edu/vanblos/Dr. Sharmain van Blommestein is an Associate Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English and Communication at SUNY Potsdam. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Florida and specializes in Medieval/Early modern literature, feminist theory, and women's and gender studies topics via British and American literary studies. Her research formulates a cultural and political context for the relationship/parallel between Medieval/Early Modern and contemporary issues on ideologies of the gendered body; the semiotic body; and the body/skin as book. She examines the cultural significations of, and the semiotic prescriptions deployed in, "writing" on, and reading of, the body/skin as an act of agency. These research interests also connect to topics pertaining to medieval medicine and the social approach to health and healing; the female body and prostitution; menstruation and reproduction; women and religious women; and disease from ancient to modern. Her present research involves partly writing/editing two encyclopedias: Women's Reproductive Lives: An Encyclopedia of Health, History, and Popular Culture; and Gynecology and Reproduction in Medieval/Renaissance Culture. More Info |
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John D. YoungbloodAssociate Professor English & Communication
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