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Stephanie Alexander, Assistant Professor
Office: Root Hall A249; E-mail: stephanie.alexander@indstate.edu
Stephanie Alexander earned her Ph.D. in English with a concentration in Gender Studies from Louisiana State University in 2014. She teaches a variety of courses, including British literature, literary theory, and composition. Additionally, she is an affiliated faculty member in the Gender Studies program, where she teaches courses on gender and popular culture. Her work has appeared in The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, New Hibernia Review, and Estudios Irlandeses. Her current research project looks at the intersection between gender and the pastoral in twentieth century and contemporary Irish poetry.
- PhD, Louisiana State University, 2014
- MA, Indiana State University, 2008
- BS, Indiana State University, 2006
Amy Ash, Associate Professor and Director of Creative Writing
Office: Root Hall A215; E-Mail: amy.ash@indstate.edu
Amy Ash directs the Indiana State University Creative Writing Program. She serves as the faculty advisor for the Creative Writing Society of ISU and for our student-run literary journal, Allusions. Ash holds an MFA in Creative Writing from New Mexico State University and a PhD from the University of Kansas. Her teaching and research interests include creative writing studies and pedagogy, contemporary poetry and poetics, 20th- and 21st-century American literature, collaborative writing, and hybrid genres. She is the author of The Open Mouth of the Vase, which won the 2013 Cider Press Review Book Award and the 2016 Etchings Press Whirling Prize for poetry. Her work has been published in various journals and anthologies, including Mid-American Review, Harpur Palate, Salamander, and 100 Word Story. Dr. Ash joined the English Department faculty in 2015 as an Assistant Professor.
- PhD, University of Kansas, 2014
- MFA, New Mexico State University, 2006
- BA, New Mexico State University, 2001
Patrick Barcus, Instructor
Office: Root Hall A254; E-mail: patrick.barcus@indstate.edu
Patrick Barcus (MFA, Butler University) is a full-time Instructor in the Department of English, specializing in first-year Composition courses and Creative Writing. His creative writing focus is in poetry, having published poems in such journals as The Cape Rock and Grasslands Review. He has also published scholarly work in Indiana English and focuses his scholarship on the novels of Kurt Vonnegut and the elements of historical fiction.
- MFA, Butler University, 2012
- MA, Indiana State University 2008
- BA, Indiana State University 2006
Laura Bates, Professor
Office: Root Hall A247; E-mail: laura.bates@indstate.edu
Laura Bates enjoys teaching a wide range of courses, from Children's Literature to World Literature, Shakespeare, and Crime and Punishment. With a PhD (University of Chicago, 1998) in Comparative Literature, her academic training involved classic world literature alongside contemporary texts and theory. Her dissertation focused on Shakespearean reception, directed by internationally respected scholar David Bevington. She is the author of “Shakespeare Saved My Life”: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard (2013: Sourcebooks).
- PhD, University of Chicago, 1998
- MA, The Shakespeare Institute, 1993
- MA, Northeastern Illinois University, 1992
- MA, Northeastern Illinois University, 1991
- BA, Columbia College of Chicago, 1990
Keith Byerman, Professor
Office: Root Hall A221; Telephone: 237.3208; E-mail: keith.byerman@indstate.edu
Having earned a PhD in American Studies at Purdue University, Keith Byerman joined the English Department faculty in 1987. He specializes in African American, Southern, and modern American literature. He is the author or editor of eight books, including, most recently, biographical studies of contemporary novelists Clarence Major and John Edgar Wideman.
- PhD, Purdue University, 1978
- MA, Indiana University, 1972
- BA, Anderson College, 1970
Emily Capettini, Assistant Professor
Office: Root Hall A228; Telephone: 237.3160; E-mail: emily.capettini@indstate.edu
Before joining the faculty at Indiana State University, Emily Capettini was the Literary Arts Director and Long-Term Resident for Sundress Academy for the Arts, an artist residency and arts collective in Knoxville, Tennessee. Capettini earned her PhD from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where she specialized in new fabulism and fiction writing. She is the author of Thistle, winner of Omnidawn’s Fabulist Fiction Chapbook Contest, and her work has also appeared in places such as Not Somewhere Else But Here: A Contemporary Anthology of Women and Place (Sundress Publications, 2014). Capettini teaches courses in creative writing, fiction writing, new fabulism, and ghost stories.
- PhD, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
- MA, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
- BA, Lake Forest College
Lillien Chew, Senior Instructor
Office: Root Hall A224; E-mail: lillien.chew@indstate.edu
Lillien Chew (MA, English, 2010) has been a full-time Instructor in the Department of English since 2011. She teaches primarily freshman and junior composition, along with an occasional themed literature course for freshmen. Her areas of interest include Folklore and American Realism and Naturalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, with a special concentration on Terre Haute native Theodore Dreiser.
- MA, Indiana State University, 2010
- BS, Indiana State University, 2007
Kathleen Coffey, Assistant Professor
Office: Root Hall A212; E-mail: kathleen.coffey@indstate.edu
Dr. Kathleen M. Coffey, Assistant Professor of English, joined the Department of English in 2019 after completing her PhD at Miami University of Ohio in Composition and Rhetoric. Throughout her graduate degrees, she worked with a wide variety of clients as a technical communicator, user experience (UX) consultant, and consumer insight researcher. Formerly the assistant director of the Famer School of Business writing center at Miami, she co-authored “Consulting with Collaborative Writing Teams,” Writing Center Journal (2016). Predominantly, Dr. Coffey’sresearch focuses on the activity of developing networked, mobile technologies for community engagement. Broadly, her interests include public rhetoric, digital rhetoric, user experience and usability, content strategy, as well as community engagement, and she enjoys incorporating these specialties into her courses at ISU.
- PhD, Miami University of Ohio, 2019
- MA, Miami University of Ohio, 2014
- BA, University of Dayton, 2011
Brendan Corcoran, Associate Professor
Office: Root Hall A227; E-mail: brendan.corcoran@indstate.edu
In 1989, Brendan Corcoran received his BA in the Humanities from Yale University. He then served in the Peace Corps in Guatemala from 1989-1991. On returning to the US, he completed an MA in poetry writing from The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars (1995). He received his doctorate in English from Emory University in 2003 and began teaching that same year in ISU’s Department of English. Corcoran works on twentieth-century and contemporary Irish and British poetry, Irish Studies, and literary representations of violence and loss. Current scholarship focuses on Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon and other contemporary Northern Irish poets. His research and teaching interests include modern and contemporary British literature, the elegy, environmental literature and writing about climate change, Romantic poetry, war literature, world literature, and poetry writing.
- PhD, Emory University, 2003
- MA, The Johns Hopkins University, 1995
- BA, Yale University, 1989
Chris Drew, Associate Professor and Department Advisor
Office: Root Hall A229; E-mail: chris.drew@indstate.edu
Chris Drew joined the ISU Department of English in 2014 after completing his PhD in English at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He also holds an MFA in creative writing from Oregon State University and an MA in teaching from Oakland City University. He has taught a variety of subjects in the department, including teaching methods, creative writing, literature, composition, and grammar. He also supervises the department’s English Teaching major, as well as its dual credit and NCTE accreditation programs. His writing and research have appeared in English Leadership Quarterly, The Journal of Creative Writing Studies, Mad River Review, Floyd Shine, The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Bellevue Literary Review, and Quarterly West. He was named a 2017–18 NCTE/CEL Emerging Leaders Fellow, and he co-edited the anthology Dispatches from the Classroom: Graduate Students on Creative Writing Pedagogy.
- PhD, University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee, 2014
- MFA, Oregon State University, 2007
- MA, Oakland City University, 2000
- BS, University of Evansville, 1999
Christine (Christy) Elkins, Administrative Assistant
Office: Root Hall A265; Telephone: 812.237.3164; E-mail: christine.elkins@indstate.edu
Christy Elkins began working for the Department in 2018. She assists the Chairperson in the daily operation of the main office; prepares required University forms, contracts, reports, and documentation; and manages the arrangements for the Schick lecture series. She also assists faculty in the preparation of course materials, coordinates travel contracts, and prepares materials for the Bash, Dreiser, Landini, and Schick speaker series. Most importantly, however, she is an invaluable resource person for teachers and students in the Department.
Elaine Farrugia, Instructor
Office: Root Hall A250; E-mail: elaine.farrugia@indstate.edu
Elaine Farrugia is a full-time Instructor in the Department of English. She earned her MFA in Fiction from Arizona State University in 2006 and has since taught a variety of courses in composition, creative writing, and creative nonfiction. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Puerto del Sol and Another Chicago Magazine, and her current writing projects reflect her experience as the child of Maltese immigrants.
- MFA, Arizona State University, 2006
- BA, Knox College, 2001
James Greene, Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
Office: Root Hall A222; E-mail; james.greene@indstate.edu
James Greene joined the Department of English in 2018 after five years as an assistant professor at Pittsburg State University in Kansas. He teaches courses in American literature, literary analysis, and advanced composition. His research interests focus on the literature of the early republic, from the late 18th into the early 19th century. He is the author of The Soldier’s Two Bodies: Military Sacrifice and Popular Sovereignty inRevolutionary War Veteran Narratives (Louisiana State University Press, 2019). His current research project analyzes the first treaty between the United States and an indigenous tribe, the 1778 Treaty of Fort Pitt.
- PhD: West Virginia University, 2013
- MA: West Virginia University, 2005
- BA: University of Kentucky, 2003
Michael Harrold, Senior Instructor
Office: Root Hall A230; E-mail: michael.harrold@indstate.edu
Michael Harrold was an Instructor from 2012 to 2019 and became a Senior Instructor in 2020, but he has taught composition at Indiana State University since 1997. He graduated from Indiana State University in 1987 with a BS degree in English and minor in Creative Writing and in 1994 with an MA degree in English. His primary teaching responsibilities are English 105, English 107, and English 305 (both on campus and online). He was Associate Editor or Editor of Indiana English from 1999 to 2004. Michael won the Dean’s Educational Excellence Award in 2000 and the Residential Life Recognition for Excellence in Teaching First-Year Students in 2012.
- MA, Indiana State University, 1994
- BA, Indiana State University, 1987
Rosetta Haynes, Professor Emeritus
Office: Root Hall A226; E-mail: rosetta.haynes@indstate.edu
Rosetta Haynes is a Professor of English and Gender Studies. She received her Ph. D. in English from Cornell University in 1996. Her research interests include African American literature, Multicultural American literature, and Women’s literature. Some of her publications include: Radical Spiritual Motherhood: Autobiography and Empowerment in Nineteenth-Century African American Women, “Zilpha Elaw’s Serial Domesticity: An Unsentimental Journey,” “Voice, Body and Collaboration: Constructions of Authority in The History of Mary Prince,” and “Intersections of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Experimentation in the Autobiographical Writings of Cherríe Moraga and Maxine Hong Kingston.” In 2002, she received the College of Arts and Sciences Educational Excellence Award for teaching.
- PhD, Cornell University, 1996
- MA, Cornell University, 1993
- BA, Fisk University, 1986
Jake Jakaitis, Professor Emeritus
Office: Root Hall A266; E-mail: jake.jakaitis@indstate.edu
Jake Jakaitis earned his PhD in English at the University of Illinois in 1988 and joined the faculty at ISU in the same academic year. He has published articles on Don DeLillo and Philip K. Dick and, with James F. Wurtz, edited Crossing Boundaries in Graphic Narrative: Essays on Forms, Series, and Genres (2012). He teaches courses in science fiction, multicultural American literature, 19th- and 20th-century American literature, and literary theory and criticism.
- PhD, University of Illinois—Urbana, 1990
- AM, University of Illinois, 1976
- AB, University of Illinois, 1974
Kathleen (Kit) Kincade, Professor
Office: Root Hall A206; Telephone: 237.3173; E-mail: kit.kincade@indstate.edu
Kit Kincade is Professor of English and Gender Studies. Her books include an edition of Defoe’s Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions and the Valancourt Press edition of Clara Reeve’s The Old English Baron, as well as a co-edited collection of essays Topographies of the Imagination: New Approaches to Daniel Defoe. Her articles on Daniel Defoe, Jane Austen, and Maria Edgeworth have appeared in a number of recent essay collections. She is the Managing Editor of the Stoke Newington Daniel Defoe edition series, published by Bucknell University Press, and she is Book Review Editor for The Eighteenth-Century Novel.
- PhD, Louisiana State University, 1998
- MA, Louisiana State University, 1993
- Certificate Book Publishing—Howard University Press, 1993
- BA, University of California—Riverside, 1988
Katherine Lee, Associate Professor
Office: Root Hall A258; Telephone: 237.3276; E-mail: katherine.lee@indstate.edu
Katherine Lee earned her BA in English at Indiana University, and her MA and PhD at the University of Missouri-Columbia. An Associate Professor with research interests in American literature and popular culture, gender studies, and race studies, she has published essays on Asian American literature, women's autobiography, Chappelle's Show, The Sopranos, and Sex and the City. Her current projects include an analysis of sequels in popular culture inspired by "canonical" literature.
- PhD, University of Missouri—Columbia, 2001
- MA, University of Missouri—Columbia, 1995
- BA, Indiana University, 1992
Mark Lewandowski, Professor
Office: Root Hall A218; E-mail: mark.lewandowski@indstate.edu
Mark Lewandowski is the author of the short story collection, Halibut Rodeo released by All Things That Matter Press. His stories and essays have appeared in many journals, and have been listed as Notable in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Best American Travel Writing, and twice in The Best American Essays. He's also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Positioning, a short film based on his script, was produced by Cinemantrix in 2009. It premiered at the Short Film Corner of the Cannes Film Festival, and has since screened at eight other festivals. After graduating from Wichita State University with an MFA in Creative Writing, he joined the Peace Corps and taught English in Poland. In 1999, he received a Fulbright Grant to teach American Studies and Creative Writing at Siauliai University in Lithuania.
- MFA, Wichita State University, 1991
- BA, University of Kansas, 1988
Miriam Mattsey, Senior Instructor
Office: Remote; E-mail: miriam.mattsey@indstate.edu
Dr. Miriam (Maia) Mattsey earned a BS from the University of Michigan and an MD from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She worked as a medical doctor in Indianapolis before making a professional transition to English. She has been teaching English courses at ISU since 2008, when she began graduate studies. She obtained her MA in English with a Concentration in Literature from ISU in 2010. As a Senior Instructor, she teaches both composition and literature courses. Currently she teaches Technical Writing, but she has also taught Freshman Writing I and Freshman Writing II. Her interests also include modern American literature and poetry, and she also currently teaches a Literature and Human Experience course that explores the notion of taking people and things for granted. In 2010, Dr. Mattsey wrote “Growing Pains,” a review of a book of poetry by Susan Millar DuMars. Mattsey’s review was published in the South Carolina Review. Mattsey received the ISU Residential Life Award in 2012. In the ISU Class of 2018 First Destination Survey, she was recognized by students for her contribution to student success.
- MA, Indiana State University, 2010
- MD, University of Illinois—Chicago, 2001
- BA, University of Michigan, 1995
Mandy Reid, Associate Professor
Office: Root Hall A253; E-mail: mandy.reid@indstate.edu
Mandy Reid joined the Department of English in 2005 after earning a MA and a PhD from Rice University. She regularly teaches courses on popular literature, American women writers, composition, and Women’s Studies, and she is an Affiliate member of Gender Studies. Some of her work has appeared in Early Popular Visual Studies and Nineteenth-Century Contexts. In 2013, she was awarded the Caleb Mills Distinguished Teaching Award.
- PhD, Rice University, 2005
- MA, English, Rice University, 2003
- BA, Trinity University, 1999
Heather Roberts, Senior Instructor
Office: Root Hall A208; E-mail: heather.roberts@indstate.edu
Heather Roberts has been a full-time member of the Indiana State University English department as an Instructor since the fall of 2011. Heather Roberts earned her BA in English with double minors in Psychology and French in 2005 from Indiana State University and then earned her MA in English, emphasis in literature, in 2009 from Indiana State University as well. Currently, she teaches composition courses for freshmen and juniors as well as the Foundational Studies introductory literature course, Literature and Human Experience. She also is the English coordinator for the University’s LEAP program, an intense summer bridge course for incoming freshmen students. Heather Roberts has a book review in The Eighteenth-Century Novel and one forthcoming in The Journal of Monsters and the Monstrous.
- MA, Indiana State University, 2009
- BA, Indiana State University, 2005
Michael Shelden, Professor
Office: Root Hall A256; E-mail: michael.shelden@indstate.edu
Michael Shelden (PhD, Indiana University) is the author of several biographies, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist Orwell: The Authorized Biography, which was also a New York Times Notable Book. His study of Mark Twain’s final years, Man in White, was chosen as one of the best books of 2010 by the Christian Science Monitor and the Library Journal. For fifteen years, he was a features writer for the London Daily Telegraph, and for ten years he served as a fiction critic for the Baltimore Sun. His work has also appeared in The Shakespeare Quarterly, Victorian Studies, and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. His most recent book—Young Titan: The Making of Winston Churchill—was published in 2013 by Simon & Schuster.
- PhD, Indiana University, 1979
- MA, Indiana University, 1975
- BA, University of Nebraska, 1973
Jessica Singleton, Instructor
Office: Root Hall A281; Telephone: 237.4444; E-mail: jessica.singleton@indstate.edu
Jessica Singleton joined the Department as an Instructor in 2012 after receiving her BS in English Education, with a minor in History, from the University of Evansville (2009) and her MA in English, with a concentration in English and American literature, from Indiana State University (2012). While at ISU, she has taught freshman composition courses that focus on developmental writing skills and research methods.
- MA, Indiana State University, 2012
- BA, University of Evansville, 2009
Brian Stone, Assistant Professor and Director of Writing Programs
Office: Root Hall A220; Telephone: 237.3506; E-mail: brian.stone@indstate.edu
Dr. Brian James Stone received his PhD in English with a specialization in Rhetoric and Composition from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, in 2014. His research interests are eclectic, but primary focuses include the history of the rhetorical arts in the late antique and medieval west, especially Ireland, and critical composition pedagogy. Dr. Stone has published widely on a variety of topics such as medieval Irish literature, composition pedagogy for under-represented students, and the history of rhetoric. He teaches courses in all of these areas. Dr. Stone also has active professional and research interests in writing program administration, writing across the curriculum, and writing in the disciplines.
- PhD, Southern Illinois University—Carbondale
- MA, Southern Illinois University—Carbondale
- BA, Southern Illinois University—Carbondale
Robin Voll, Instructor and TA Coordinator for the Writing Center
Office: Root Hall A213; E-mail: robin.voll@indstate.edu
Robin Voll is an Instructor for the Department of English and the Director of the ISU Writing Center. She oversees the functions and activities of the Writing Center, and she teaches Freshman Writing, Advanced Expository Writing, Grammar for Teachers and Writers, and History of the English Language. Her research interests include writing center pedagogy, medieval literature, language change, and English language varieties.
- MA, Indiana State University, 2012
- BS, Indiana State University, 2005
Maggie Wheeler, Senior Instructor
Office: Root Hall A282; Telephone: 237.3170; E-mail: maggie.wheeler@indstate.edu
Maggie Wheeler is a graduate of the Butler University MFA program and has had fiction published in Punchnel’s, Word River, and Indiana English. She is an Instructor in the Department of English at Indiana State University where she teaches Advanced Composition and Creative Writing. In addition to writing and teaching, she is a volunteer with the Terre Haute Humane Society where she is the Outreach/Education Coordinator. She resides in Terre Haute, Indiana, with her husband and three rescue dogs.
- MFA, Butler University, 2012
- MA, Indiana State University, 2001
- BA, Indiana State University, 1990
J. D. Wireman, Instructor
Office: Root Hall A225; E-mail: j.d.wireman@indstate.edu
J. D. Wireman is an Instructor in the Department of English and has taught composition courses at Indiana State University since 2004.
- MA, University of Wyoming, 1995
- BS, Eastern Michigan University, 1992
James Wurtz, Associate Professor and Chairperson
Office: Root Hall A207; Telephone: 237.3135; E-mail: jamesf.wurtz@indstate.edu
James F. Wurtz received his PhD from the University of Notre Dame, where he wrote his dissertation on Irish modernism and the Gothic. He teaches courses on 19th- and 20th-century British and Irish writing, as well as literary theory and criticism, and rhetoric and composition. He has published articles on James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, World War I and graphic narrative, and Batman. He has also edited a new critical edition of the Irish writer J. S Le Fanu’s first novel, The Cock and Anchor: Being a Chronicle of Old Dublin City, published by Valancourt Books, and co-edited a collection of essays on graphic narrative, published by McFarland Books. His current research interests include graphic narrative, Steampunk, and Neo-Victorian writing and art.
- PhD, University of Notre Dame, 2005
- MA, University of Notre Dame, 2003
- BA, John Carroll University, 1999