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Mr. Ralph Adamo
Lecturer of English
M.F.A., University of Arkansas, Fayetville
B.A.
Specialties: Composition, Creative Writing, Poetry
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A native New Orleanian Mr. Ralph Adamo earned his MFA from the writer's workshop at the University of Arkansas. He has published six collections of poetry, most recently the new and selected volume, Waterblind. He received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in Creative Writing in 2003, a Louisiana Division of the Arts Individual Artist Grant in 1998, and the first Marble Faun award in poetry from the Faulkner Society in 1997. In 2006, the Open Society Institute awarded him a Katrina Media Fellowshiop to pursue investigative journalism on the state of public education in the city. He has taught creative writing at Tulane, LSU and Loyola (where he also edited New Orleans Review for five years), as well as journalism at UNO. He and his wife Kay have a son Jack, seven, and a daughter, Lily, five.
Mr. Adamo may be contacted at: (504) 520-5245 or by e-mail at
radamo@xula.edu |
Dr. Thaddeo K. Babiiha
Associate Professor of English
Ph.D., Brown University, 1976
M.A., Brown University, 1973
B.A.(First Class Honors), Makerere University, Uganda, 1971
Specialties: Henry James, Hawthorne, African Literature, Law and Literature
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| Thaddeo K. Babiiha was born and raised in Uganda and has lived in the U.S. since July 1971. He has been in New Orleans and teaching at Xavier since August 1977. Also he has taught at Tougaloo College, 1976-77. He says that he wouldn't trade Xavier students for the world. He is a conservative in education who disdains fads and those who would have the humanities mimic the sciences. He met Theresa in Uganda in 1968, fell in love at first sight, and got married in New York in 1973. They are a family of two, both American citizens since 1988. Theresa is an operating room registered nurse in cardiology at Tulane, and the pride of his life. |
| Professor Babiiha may be contacted at: (504) 520-7632 or by e-mail at tbabiiha@xula.edu |
Dr. Thomas Bonner, Jr.
Professor Emeritus, Department of English,
Formerly Kellogg Professor of English, and Chair
Ph.D., Tulane University, 1975
M.A., Tulane University, 1968
B.A., Southeastern Louisiana University, 1965
Specialties: American Literature (Poe, Chopin, Faulkner), World Literature
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Thomas Bonner, Jr., who has taught at Xavier University since 1971, has interests in a wide range of literature, writing, and culture. The most challenging course that he teaches is World Literature I: Ancient through Renaissance literature. In his American surveys he has an interest in establishing both aesthetic and intellectual connections among the texts from different historical periods. In writing he enjoys helping students find their voices and choosing the forms to express their ideas. Like Chaucer's country parson, who practices what he preaches, Professor Bonner feels the same obligation as a teacher. As a result, he continues to discover new writing and to rediscover well established literary texts. Thus, he writes literary criticism, fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. He is often amused with himself, although he rarely admits it.
Professor Bonner can be reached at (504) 520-7481 or at tbonner@xula.edu |
Mrs. Danielle Bienvenue Bray
Lecturer of English
A.B.D., University of Louisiana at Lafayette
M.A., SUNY College at New Paltz, 2004
B.A., SUNY College at New Paltz, 2001
Specialties: Composition and Rhetoric, Children's Literature
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| Danielle Bienvenue Bray is originally from upstate New York. She came to Louisiana in August 2005 to pursue a Ph.D. in Children's Literature at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where she is currently completing her dissertation, Representations of Food and Motherhood in 20th Century Children's Fantasy. In addition to teaching composition at Xavier at researching children's literature, Mrs. Bray has been involved with theatre as a costume designer, stage manager, and director for productions in Lafayette.
Ms. Bray may be contacted at: (504) 520-5160 or by e-mail at dbray@xula.edu |
Dr. Violet Harrington Bryan
Professor of English
Ph.D., Harvard University, 1981
M.A., Harvard University, 1972
B.A., Mount Holyoke College, 1970
Specialties: African American Literature, Medicine and Literature, New Orleans Literature, Black Women Writers, Women Witers of African Diaspora
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Violet Harrington Bryan is Professor of English at Xavier University of Louisiana. She has her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College and her Ph.D. from Harvard University. Her book, The Myth of New Orleans in Literature: Dialogues of Race and Gender (U of Tennessee P, 1993) has been read widely. She has contributed a literary biography of Lorenzo Thomas and an entry on African American Poetry Collectives to the Encyclopedia of American Poetry , edited by Jeffrey Gray, James McCorkle and Mary Balkun (Greenwood, 2005); she has also published an analysis of the writings of the New Orleans writer, Marcus Christian in Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana's Free People of Color , edited by Sybil Kein (LSU Press, 2000); and a discussion of the 20th century African American literary community in Literary New Orleans in the Modern World , edited by Richard Kennedy (LSU Press, 1998). She has published essays on a number of African American and Louisiana writers in journals such as WarpLand: A Journal of Black Literature and Ideas , the Xavier Review , and the CLA Journal .
At Xavier Dr. Bryan teaches classes in World Literature, African American Literature, African American Studies, and seminars in such areas as Women Writers of the African Diaspora, Medicine and Literature, and New Orleans Writers. She is sponsor of the Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society.
Professor Bryan may be contacted at: (504) 520-7635 or by e-mail at vbryan@xula.edu |
Dr. Ronald Dorris
Professor of English
Ph.D., Emory University, 1979
M.A., St. John's College, NM, 1979
M.A., Boston University, 1973
B.A., Xavier Univeristy of Louisiana, 1972
Specialties: Cultural and Intellectual History of the 1920s, African American Studies, Harlem Renaissance and Lost Generation Writers, Autobiography and Biography
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My life's goal continually is to set up the necessary environment and conditions so that those who are interested can embrace their own bios (life) to affirm autos (self) and their own autos (self) to enhance bios (life). I continue to reflect on having grown up in Garyville, a small sugar cane town that borders the east bank of the Mississippi River, thirty-five miles west of New Orleans. I firmly embrace the concept of living out time and place, not simply occupying space. Thus I never have wanted my life to be divorced from my work. My Ph.D. dissertation is on Cane , a book written by Jean Toomer, grandson of P.B.S. Pinchback. In this text, Toomer writes about life in the cane fields. I see my life and the life of the people in my town mirrored in this text. Wholeheartedly, I remain inspired by Toomer's philosophy: One should, I think, view an environment in terms of what it actually is, and not in terms of its possibilities—keeping in mind the essential fact that not the place itself but your ability to function in it is the important thing. Having done this, there are three main factors to be considered: first, the physical factor, the obvious physical geography of the place; second, the human factor, the people themselves, the obvious living conditions, the subtle human atmosphere; and third, the supernatural factor, the extraphysical, the extra-human, the soul of the place.
Professor Dorris may be contacted at: (504) 520-5154 or by e-mail at rodorris@xula.edu |
Dr. Donna Marie Gould, SBS
Assistant Professor of English
Director of English/English Education
Ph. D. University of Louisiana, Lafayette 2002
M.A. Notre Dame, Indiana 1989
B.A. Xavier University 1980
Specialties: Folklore, American Literature, Women's Literature
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Sister Donna's educational endeavors actually began at Xavier as a student. In subsequent years, she has taught at Xavier Prep in New Orleans and at St. Catherine's Native American School in New Mexico. After numerous years in the Southwest among the Pueblos and Navahos, Sister returned to Xavier to teach prior to beginning doctoral studies. She describes her recent return to Xavier University, "all doctored up," as a homecoming. The circular path that her education has taken has allowed her to live, to work, and to be enriched by different cultural communities. Her educational training is in folklore, early American, contemporary American, and Renaissance literature. Sister's special interest is in women's culture, American folklore, and cultural studies.
Professor Gould may be contacted at: (504)520-5162 or by e-mail at DGould9532@aol.com |
Dr. Nicole Pepinster Greene
Associate Professor, Chair Department of English
Editor, Xavier Review
Ph.D., Louisiana State University, 1998
M.A., George Washington, 1976
B.A., University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, 1969
Specialties: Late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and Irish literatures; basic writing/ composition theory and pedagogy; English education; writing in the sciences.
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Nicole Pepinster Greene, born in London of Belgian parents, has taught in colleges and universities in the U.K. , Ireland , and the U.S. She enjoys the many opportunities that working at Xavier University has offered her as teacher, researcher, mentor, writer, administrator, and editor. Chair of the English Departmetn from fall 2008, Director of Composition from 2004-07 and editor of the Journal of College Writing 1999-07, her research on Irish writers and her scholarship in the pedagogy of basic writing have been published in Modern Irish Writers , Multicultural Education, New Hibernia Review , and Working Papers in Irish Studies . She is the co-editor of Basic Writing in American: A History of Nine College Programs , which includes her own chapter, to be published shortly by Hampton Press. Dr. Greene is now returning to her work on Irish women writers, Somerville and Ross. She has taught seminars on Irish Identity and Women and Work and particularly enjoys encouraging first-year students to read and enjoy poetry.
Professor Greene may be contacted at: (504) 520-5246 or by e-mail at ngreene@xula.edu
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| Dr. Oliver Hennessey
Assistant Professor of English
PhD, U. of Alabama, 2006
MPhil, Trinity College, Dublin, 2000
BA, Oxford University, 1999
Specialties: Shakespeare; Renaissance Literature and Culture
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| Oliver Hennessey is originally from England. After a brief stint in Ireland, he moved to New Orleans in 2000. In 2002, he relocated to Alabama to pursue his Ph.D., but is thrilled to now be back in the Crescent City. He is a literary historian by trade, and his work is influenced by contemporary theoretical work on the relationship between history and culture. He is currently working on a book about Shakespeare, Carnival Culture, and Hurricane Katrina.
Professor Hennessy may be contacted at 504 520-5150, or by email at ohenness@xula.edu |
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Ms. Katheryn Krotzer Laborde
Assistant Professor of English
M.F.A., University of New Orleans, 1993
B.A., University of New Orleans, 1985
Specialties: Composition, Feature Writing, Creative Non-fiction, Short Fiction
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Pen in hand, she has worked as a publicist, newsletter editor, freelance journalist, resume creator, script helper, grant application composer, and (finally! happily!) an English professor. Her stories and essays have appeared in various journals and anthologies. She is a recipient of a Louisiana Division of the Arts Artists Fellowship and, in support of her writing in the days that followed Katrina, a Louisiana Cultural Economy Grant. A book on the marked and messaged refrigerators of post-K New Orleans is forthcoming with McFarland.
Professor Laborde may be contacted at: (504) 520-5151 or by e-mail at klaborde@xula.edu |
Dr. David G. Lanoue
Professor of English
Ph.D., University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 1981
M.A., University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 1977
B.A., Creighton University, 1976
Specialties: Medieval and World Literature, Translation (Japanese Haiku)
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I was born in Omaha, Nebraska. I earned my Ph.D. in medieval literature, and so my dissertation and early articles all dealt with European works: Chaucer's Centerbury Tales ; 14th century Spanish poetry, including the Libro de buen amor ; 14th century French poetry, especially Guillaume de Machaut; and 17th century Spanish drama by Calderon de la Barca. In the mid 1980s I had a change of heart and mind. I decided to learn Japanese, go to Japan, and read everything I could on the one-breath art of haiku. I've been working on haiku ever since: translating and writing critical essays on it. I'm especially interested in Issa. My first book, Issa: Cup-of-Tea Poems, Selected Haiku by Kobayashi Issa , came out in 1991. My second book, Haiku Guy (2000) is a "how to write haiku" book disguised as a novel. Other "haiku novels" have followed: Laughing Buddha (2004), Dewdrop World (2005), and Haiku Wars (2006). I maintain the websites, HaikuGuy.com and The Haiku of Kobayashi Issa .
Professor Lanoue may be contacted at: (504) 520-7477 or by e-mail at dlanoue@xula.edu |
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Dr. Bonnie Noonan
Assistant Professor of English
Ph.D., Louisiana State University, 2003
M.A., University of New Orleans, 1991
B.G.S., University of New Orleans, 1984
Specialties: Composition & Rhetoric, Business & Technical Writing, Film Theory & Criticism, Gender Theory, African American Literature
Photo by: Dr. Biljana D. Obradovic
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Bonnie Noonan, proud to be a native New Orleanian, received her Ph.D. in English from Louisiana State University in May 2003 with an emphasis in composition, technical writing, African-American literature, and feminist theory. Her teaching experience includes developmental, first and second levels of freshman composition, non-fiction writing, business and technical communication, introduction to world literature, and honors English. Her book, Women Scientists in Fifties Science Fiction Films, was published by McFarland in August 2005. She is currently at work on Gender in Sixties and Seventies Science Fiction Films.
Professor Noonan may be contacted at: (504) 520-7355 or by e-mail at bnoonan@xula.edu |
Dr. Biljana D. Obradovic
Associate Professor of English, Director, Xavier Literary Reading Series
Ph.D., University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 1995
M.F.A., Virginia Commonwealth University, 1991
B.A., University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1987
Specialties: Creative Writing, Poetry, Translation (Serbian), Contemporary American Poetry, Serbian Poetry, Playwriting, American Literature to the 1900
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Biljana D. Obradovic, a Serbian-American, has lived in Yugolsavia, Greece, and India besides the US. Her books of poems include Le Riche Monde, a bilingual edition (Raska Skola, Belgrade, and Cross-Cultural Communications, Merrick, NY, 1999), and Frozen Embraces, a bilingual edition (Center of Emigrants from Serbia, Belgrade, and Cross-Cultural Communications, Merrick, NY, 1997), which won the Rastko Petrovic Award for the Best Book of 1998, and was in its second edition (2000). Her poems also appear in Three Poets in New Orleans (Xavier Review Press, New Orleans, 2000). She is also a translator of John Gery's, American Ghost: Selected Poems, (Cross-Cultural Communications, Merrick, NY, 1999), and editor and translator of the bilingual, Fives: Fifty Poems by Serbian and American Poets, (Cross-Cultural Communications, Merrick, New York 2002). Her translation of US Poet Laureate, 2000-2001, Stanley Kunitz's selected poems into Serbian The Long Boat (Dugi camac) as well as a translation of Bratislav Milanovic's poems into English, entitled The Unnecessary Chronicle, appeared in Belgrade, Serbia in the fall 2007. She has also translated Desanka Maksimovic's poems into English. Her work has also appeared in several anthologies, and such magazines as: Prairie Schooner, Bloomsbury Review, Poetry East, The Plum Review and Knjizevne Novine. She reviews books for World Literature Today. She is married to John Gery, poet and Research Professor at the University of New Orleans and they have a son, Petar Malcolm Obradovic Gery. Check her website for further details: personal website .
Professor Obradovic may be contacted at: (504) 520-5155 or by e-mail at bobradov@xula.edu |
Ms. Robbie Pounds
Instructor of English
Degrees:
Specialties:
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Ms. Pounds may be contacted at: (504) 520-5002 or by e-mail at robbipounds@yahoo.com
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Mr. Carlton Powell
Lecturer
Lecturer
Degrees:
Specialties:
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Mr. Powell may be contacted at: (504) 520-5754 or by e-mail at cpowell3@xula.edu
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Dr. Leslie Richardson
Assistant Professor of English
B.A., Florida State University, 1990
Ph.D., Tulane University, 1998
Specialties: Women's Studies and women writers, critical theory, eighteenth-century literature
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Before she fell in love with New Orleans, Leslie Richardson lived in Tallahassee, Florida. At Xavier she teaches courses in World Literature, Critical Theory, and Women Writers. She also does research on eighteenth-century literature.
Professor Richardson may be contacted at: (504) 520-5156 or by e-mail at larichar@xula.edu
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Linda Rodriguez
Instuctor of English
Degrees:
Specialties:
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Ms. Rodriguez may be contacted at: (504) 520-7549 or by e-mail at LRodrig1@xula.edu
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Mr. James H. Shade
Assistant Professor of English
M.F.A., University of New Orleans,
B.A., Xavier University of Louisiana,
Speciaizaties: Screenwriting, Playwriting
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James Shade is a New Orleans native and a Xavier graduate. After stints in journalism (The Times-Picayune, WWL-TV), local politics and doing grunt work on movie sets on the West coast, he returned to his hometown to recieve a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of New Orleans. His play First Firday has been performed onstage and he is currently working on both a novel and a screenplay about the desegregation of New Orleans. After attempts at three different careers, he hopes this one sticks.
Profssor Shade may be contacted at: (504) 520-5157 or by e-mail at jhshade@xula.edu
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Dr. Jason Todd
Writing Center Director
Assistant Professor of English
Ph.D., University of Southern Mississippi, 2006 M.A.,The University of Southern Mississippi, 2003 B.A. Webster University, 1996 Specialties: Composition & Rhetoric, Fiction Writing, Literary Journalism
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Without knowing it, Jay Todd has been working his way towards New Orleans for years. After growing up in Chicago, he moved to St. Louis for college and stayed to work as a web designer. Well-paid but dissatisfied, he continued south to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to study fiction writing at The University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers. After graduating and getting married, he moved to Bogalusa, Louisiana, and spent a year teaching at Southeastern Louisiana University. In 2006, he gladly accepted his current position at Xavier. He hopes some day to both work and live in New Orleans so that he can stop packing and unpacking all of the books he has amassed along the way.
Professor Todd may be contacted at: (504) 520-7484 or by e-mail at jtodd1@xula.edu |
| Mr. Jeremy Tuman
Lecturer
M.F.A., University of New Orleans, 2008
B.A., University of Alabama, 1994
Specialties: Creative Nonfiction: essays, short stories, music writing, film writing, travel writing
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Jeremy is a writer, teacher and musician. He first novel (in progress) is about his experiences playing and traveling with an underground punk rock band. His music writing has appeared in Gambit Weekly. He has also published film and music reviews. Jeremy teaches composition.
Mr. Tuman may be contacted at: (504) 520-5703 or by e-mail at: jtuman@xula.edu |
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Dr. Robin Vander
Assistant Professor
Ph.D., Comparative Literature, Chapell Hill University
M.A., Comparative Literature, Chapell Hill University
Specialties: Poetics of Anthropology, Ethnography, Carribbean and African Diaspora
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Dr. Vander may be contacted at: (504) 520-5003 or by e-mail at rvander@xula.edu
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Dr. Daniel J. Webre
Lecturer
M.A.,English,McNeeseStateUniversity
Ph.D., Chemistry, Princeton University
M.A., Chemistry, Princeton University
B.S., Chemistry, Duke University
Specialties: Environmental studies, composition, and fiction writing.
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| Dan Webre is a firm believer in forging connections across disciplinary boundaries, so much so that he entered an MFA program in creative writing at McNeese State University after finishing his doctoral work on protein biochemistry and bacterial chemotaxis in the Departments of Chemistry and Molecular Biology at Princeton. Dan also served as a graduate lecturer in environmental studies for the Princeton Environmental Institute and was a writing partner with the Princeton Writing Center. He currently teaches composition and rhetoric at Xavier and is completing a collection of short fiction.
Dr. Webre may be contacted at: (504) 520-5162 or by e-mail at dwebre@xula.edu
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Mr. Mark Whitaker
Director, Minor in Creative Writing
Assistant Professor of English
M.F.A., University of New Orleans, 1993
B.A., University of Florida, 1980
Specialties: Fiction Writing
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Mark Whitaker was born and raised in Fort Walton, Florida. He worked a variety of jobs between college and graduate school, and has published several short works of fiction. He is associate editor of the Xavier Review , the university's literary/scholarly journal, and also associate editor of the Hogtown Creek Review, a literary annual published in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Gainesville, Florida.
Professor Whitaker may be contacted at: (504) 520-5153 or by e-mail at mwhitake@xula.edu |
Staff
Ms. Allison J. Pitcher
Administrative Assistant, Department of English
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Ms. Allison Pitcher may be contacted at: (504) 520-5158 or by e-mail at apitcher@xula.edu |
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