The English department at Bridgewater offers a rich array of courses and programs that give our students broad introductions to the craft of writing and the exploration of literature, along with many opportunities for in-depth study.
English is a diverse and dynamic field, and our faculty bring their expertise and enthusiasm to everything from Beowulf to the Beat poets; from creative nonfiction to the teaching of writing; and from contemporary film to writings from around the world.
Research and Teaching Interests:
Native American literature
African American literature
American literature
Literary Theory
Multi-ethnic literature
BA, University of South Dakota
MA, PhD, University of Nebraska at Lincoln
Selected Publications:
Wordsworth and the Passions of Critical Poetics (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010)
Thinking strictly prohibited: Music, Language and Thought in [Joyce's] "Sirens", Twentieth-Century Literature 53: 4 (2007)
Metropolitan Wordsworth: Allegory as Affirmation and Critique in The Prelude, Romanticism on the Net 40 (2005)
Wordsworth and the Thought of Affection, European Romantic Review 16.4 (2005) (co-authored with Jon Roberts)
Wordsworth's Ear and the Politics of Aesthetic Autonomy, Romanticism 9.1 (2003)
Romanticism (especially Wordsworth and Shelley)
The Frankfurt School
Poetics
Feeling, attention, distraction
Joyce and Beckett
BA, University of Leeds
MA, University of Sussex
MSt, PhD, University of Oxford
First-year composition
Personal and Public Writing
Writing about Others
Composition/Rhetoric
English Language Learners
Cultural Rhetorics
Indigenous and Survivance Rhetorics
American Indian Boarding Schools
(Re)presentations of Indigenous Peoples
Vernacular Literacies
BA, MA, University of Massachusetts at Boston
PhD,University of New Hampshire at Durham, 2005, Composition And Rhetoric
Twentieth-Century Drama, Theater, and Performance
Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture Performance Studies
BA, Indiana University
MA, University of Iowa
PhD, University of Iowa, 2010, English (American Literature and Drama)
Queer Studies
Twentieth-Century American Literature
Prose Narrative
Film
Critical Theory
BA, University of California at Riverside
MA, PhD, Tufts University
Sixteenth- Century British Literature and Culture
Seventeenth- Century British Literature and Culture
BA, Albright College
PhD, The University of Texas at Austin
BA, MA, PhD, University of New Hampshire
BA, College of the Holy Cross
MA, PhD, University of Delaware
20th-century American literature
Film studies
Ethnic and African American literature
Reception studies
Whiteness studies
BA, Harvard University
MA, PhD, University of Virginia
Composition theory
Rhetoric
Business writing
Linguistics
The teaching of writing
Voice and authority in texts
Reading/writing connection
Discourse analysis
BA, Emmanuel College
MA, Boston College
PhD, University of Illinois at Chicago
Composition theory, including response to student writing
Qualitative research methods
Sociohistoric theory
Writing centers
WAC/CAC
BA, University of Chicago
MA, PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
BA, Boston University
MA, Washington University
PhD, Princeton University
In my dozen years of teaching at the college and secondary school level, and I've been continually fascinated watching how literature opens up the world for me and for my students. Literature jolts us out of our familiar assumptions and understandings, forcing us to confront the world anew. As a teacher, my focus has always been on giving my students the tools to refashion their understanding of the world, helping them attend to the nuances of language and the complicated cultural forces in which literature takes shape. My research in American literature has focused on how people have used writing to reshape their own environments, both natural and social, particularly across cultural lines, and I've brought the same perspective to the classroom. I use literature to challenge students (and teachers of students) to confront the limits of their assumptions and to wrestle with worlds of difference literature embodies.
19th century American literature
Teaching English
American spiritualism
Literature and the Environment
Multi-ethnic literature
BA, Williams College
MAT, Brown University
PhD, Tufts University
Fiction Writing
Narrative Craft
History of Short Fiction
Contemporary American Literature
BA, University of Houston
MFA, Ohio State University, English/Fiction Writing
BA, University of California
MA, PhD, Tufts University
AA, Dean College
BA, Suffolk University
MFA, New York University
As I look back on a teaching career that now spans over thirty years, twenty of which have been spent at Bridgewater State University, three things remain constant--my love of literature, my gratitude for the many students I have been privileged to teach, and my profound belief in the power of education to liberate the individual.
Women's Literature and Feminist Theory
The Literature of Aging a
Composition
Stages of Faculty Career Development
Issues in Higher Education
BA, MA, DA, The Catholic University
Early and nineteenth-century American literature and culture
Transnational American studies
U.S.-Middle East studies
U.S. religious culture
Race and domesticity in the nineteenth century United States
BA, St. Mary's College of Maryland, 2001
MA, Rice University, 2006
PhD, Rice University, 2009
Ellen Scheible's research interests include cultural modernity in British and Irish literature during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, aesthetics and literary theory, postcolonial Irish studies, the gothic and the sublime. She has published and presented papers on Edmund Burke, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and others, and her current book project is titled "The Sublime Moment: Confrontation, Colonization, and the Modern Irish Novel."
BA, St. Mary's College of Maryland, English
MA, PhD, Claremont Graduate University
When time allows, Dr. Sexton is a regular contributor to MassMedieval, the Massachusetts State Universities Medieval Studies Blog. He is also the co-President of the New England Saga Society (NESS), an academic society dedicated to promoting the study of medieval Icelandic literature and culture in North American academe.
Anglo-Saxon Literature
British Literature of the Medieval and Early Modern periods, 600-1649AD
Chaucer and the 14th century
Church History to 1600
Hagiography
Icelandic Sagas
Medieval Disability Studies
BA, Goddard College, 1996, Liberal Arts
MA, University of Connecticut, 2000, Medieval Studies
PhD, University of Connecticut, 2007, Medieval Studies
Member of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas
Member of the Society of Phenomenology and Literature
Member of the Society of Phenomenology, Aesthetics and Fine Arts
Member of the World Institute of Phenomenology
MS, Jagellonion University in Cracow Poland, Compararive European Literature
MA, Jagellonian University, English Phillology
PhD, Duquesne University in Pittsburg Pennsyvania, English
Language, identity construction, and power relations in multilingual contexts
Language contact, cross-linguistic influence, and word borrowing
ESL/TESL methodology
MA, Lenin Moscow Teaching Training University
PhD, University of Mississippi
BS, Ohio University
MA, University of Maine
PhD, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
18th-century British literature
Gender studies
Postcolonial theory
BA, Stanford University
MA, PhD, University of Maryland
Dr. Vejvoda has published essays on Christina Rossetti, Charlotte Brontë, gender and folklore in nineteenth-century Ireland, and contemporary Irish film. Her current book project is entitled Idolatry and the Victorian Novel and explores works by the Brontës, George Eliot, Wilkie Collins, and others.
Victorian literature and culture
The novel
Gender studies
Irish studies
Irish cinema
BA, University of Massachusetts at Boston
MA, The University of Texas at Austin
PhD, The University of Texas at Austin, 2000, British Literature
The department offers BA and MA degrees in English as well as a Master of Arts in Teaching (English). Majors can concentrate in secondary education or writing, and are encouraged to take advantage of internships and opportunities for independent study. Through exposure to culturally diverse and significant literary works, our students develop strong critical analysis and writing skills and an appreciation and knowledge of literature and the writing process.
Whether your goal is a career in teaching, writing or business, further graduate study, or a deeper understanding of the texts that shape our culture, we offer the flexibility to design a program of study that meets your individual needs.
