Faculty Expertise
Throughout your time at 蜜桃传媒, you will work with faculty in classes, lab and field work, internships, and more. Faculty serve as teachers and mentors, and as advisors for your Senior Capstone Experience (SCE). Explore the research interests of our faculty below.
English Faculty
Elizabeth O'Connor
Co-Chair of the Department of English
Associate Professor of English
Director of the Gender Studies Program
Elizabeth O'Connor
Co-Chair of the Department of English
Associate Professor of English
Director of the Gender Studies Program
Areas of Expertise
Modernism, twentieth century British literature, postcolonial literature, composition, and journalism
Research
My research focuses on modernism, twentieth century British literature, postcolonial literature, composition, and journalism.
Sean Meehan
Co-Chair of the Department of English
Professor of English
Director of Writing
Director of the Sophie Kerr Endowment
Sean Meehan
Co-Chair of the Department of English
Professor of English
Director of Writing
Director of the Sophie Kerr Endowment
Areas of Expertise
Emerson and Transcendentalism, environmental literature and writing, nonfiction (autobiography, documentary, and the essay), writing and technologies, rhetoric
Research
I regularly teach writing and rhetorical knowledge that engages with media, both older (such as photography and film) and newer (such as digital text and AI). These are technologies that might help us compose but also help us think about writing, which is itself a technology. Documentary film and literature are a particular area I teach for exploring writing in relation to media and technology.
I also teach and advise projects on environmental literature and writing, what is now more broadly called environmental humanities, and have focused on authors such as Henry David Thoreau, Annie Dillard, Wendell Berry, and Leslie Marmon Silko.
Katherine Charles
Associate Professor of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literature
Katherine Charles
Associate Professor of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literature
Areas of Expertise
Transatlantic literature, 18th- and 19th-century literature
Research
I teach and study transatlantic literature of the long eighteenth century, with a special focus on the history of the novel and gender studies.
Richard De Prospo
Ernest A. Howard Professor of English and American Studies
Director of American Studies
Richard De Prospo
Ernest A. Howard Professor of English and American Studies
Director of American Studies
Areas of Expertise
American culture
Research
I have for some years been introducing a topic into American Studies and English courses at 蜜桃传媒, and into my scholarship as well, that is usually confined to demographics. Generation is central to AMS/ENG 376 鈥淐ulture of the Old/Cultures of the Young,鈥� as well as to my latest book, Exceptionally Backward: Economic, Racial, Gender, and Generation Inequality in a Neo-Colonial US. Now that I'm old, I'm eager to collaborate with current and future 蜜桃传媒 students to instruct me on ever younger cultures of the young about which I, ever aging, have lost touch.
James Hall
Associate Professor of English
Director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House
James Hall
Associate Professor of English
Director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House
Areas of Expertise
Literature and writing, LGBTQIA+ Issues, free expression, contemporary poetry
Research and Creative Work
I mostly advise SCE topics in queer literature and in contemporary poetry. My SCE advisees have broken new ground in analyzing polyamory and science fiction, transgender as transgenre, and what we mean by the post-human (particularly at the intersections of literature, environmental studies, and artificial intelligences).
Advising campus writing groups is a joy because I get to help students to find not only their voices as writers and editors, but also as a tight-knit community. The community of writers at 蜜桃传媒 is exceptional in that we care for one another, and we help each other to develop the skills necessary for a successful post-Washington College life, whether that be graduate school or careers in writing, editing, and publishing.
Courtney Rydel
Associate Professor of English
Courtney Rydel
Associate Professor of English
Areas of Expertise
Arthurian Legends; Book History and Material Culture; Chaucer; Feminist, Gender, and Queer Theory; Global Middle Ages; Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend and Its Female Saints; Literature and Religion; Reception of Mythology and Medievalism in Contemporary Culture; Women Writers and Readers from Antiquity to 1800
Research
My current book project focuses on the British reception and translation of the Golden Legend, a collection of saints' lives that became one of the most popular medieval books. This is the first study to give a sustained consideration to the English translations of the Golden Legend together, and to explore the role of women and gender specifically in the Golden Legend. My publications include pieces on pedagogy and teaching medieval literature; reception of medieval saints; feminist approaches to medieval literature; and gender and authorship.
Roy Kesey
Visiting Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing
Associate Director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House
Roy Kesey
Visiting Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing
Associate Director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House
Areas of Expertise
Fiction, translation, travel writing, creative writing instruction
Research and Creative Work
My latest books are the short story collection Any Deadly Thing (Dzanc Books), the novel Pacazo (Dzanc Books/Jonathan Cape), and my translations of Pola Oloixarac's novels Savage Theories and Dark Constellations (Soho Press). I am the winner of an NEA grant for fiction and a PEN/Heim grant for translation. My short stories, essays, translations and poems have appeared in over a hundred magazines and anthologies, including Best American Short Stories and New Sudden Fiction.
Amber Taliancich
Lecturer in English
Assistant Director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House
Amber Taliancich
Lecturer in English
Assistant Director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House
Areas of Expertise
Fiction, essays, creative writing instruction
Research and Creative Work
I am the winner of the Leonard Trawick Prize for fiction, as well as a two-time recipient of the Golden Apple Award for Teaching Excellence. My essays and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Creative Nonfiction, Ninth Letter, The Pinch, Entropy, Hobart, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. Currently, I teach creative writing at Washington College and serve as coordinator for the Cherry Tree Young Writers' Conference and as assistant director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House.
Meredith Hadaway
Sophie Kerr Poet in Residence
Meredith Hadaway
Sophie Kerr Poet in Residence
Areas of Expertise
Poetry, ecopoetics, criticism
Research and Creative Work
My writing focuses on the seamless connection between inner and outer landscapes, the principles of ecopoetics, and the healing space at the intersection of the arts and medicine. In addition to teaching creative writing and literature, I teach private ecopoetry workshops and plays celtic harp on stage as well as in therapeutic settings. I have five published collections of poetry. My recent projects include a collaborative volume of miniature poems and paintings with artist Marcy Dunn Ramsey, entitled Small Craft Warning.