Welcome to the English Department

The English Department at CGU is characterized by small seminars, multidisciplinary study, and independent learning in a student-centered environment. The department‘s objectives are to impart to students the ability to write clearly and effectively; an understanding of research in their field; a sense of the fields and subfields that shape primary and related disciplines; and the ability to undertake independent research and make an original contribution to their field.

The academic program emphasizes the breadth of American and British literatures, as well as critical theory, the development of research skills, and area expertise at the master’s and doctoral levels. Along with the interdisciplinary concentrations offered in the School of Arts & Humanities—American Studies, Early Modern Studies, Hemispheric & Transnational Studies, Media Studies, and Museum Studies—students may tailor distinct courses of study in cultural studies, gender studies, religion and literature, hemispheric Americas studies, U.S. Latino/a culture and literature, the graphic novel, and more.

As a result of its close ties to other Arts and Humanities departments, the English Department encourages transdisciplinary inquiry in graduate study. All degree tracks allow students to integrate topics in other humanistic disciplines with research in literature and the critical, cultural, and historical context of literary texts. Our program is particularly strong in interdisciplinary and transnational approaches to literature and culture.

CGU’s close-knit community nurtures an atmosphere of lively intellectual engagement while retaining the resources of a large, well-appointed university through membership in the Claremont University Consortium—with world-class professors and libraries and an active calendar of humanities-focused speakers and events.

Chair: Eric Bulson
831 N. Dartmouth Avenue • Claremont, CA 91711 • 909-621-8612 • Fax 909-607-9587

Eric Bulson profile image

Eric Bulson

Andrew W. Mellon All-Claremont Chair in the Humanities
Professor of English
Chair, English Department

 

Programs

 

Core Faculty

Eric Bulson profile image

Eric Bulson

Andrew W. Mellon All-Claremont Chair in the Humanities
Professor of English
Chair, English Department

Mark Eaton profile image

Mark Eaton

Research Associate Professor of American Literature

Lori Anne Ferrell profile image

Lori Anne Ferrell

Dean, School of Arts & Humanities
Director, Early Modern Studies Program
Director, Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Awards

David Luis-Brown profile image

David Luis-Brown

Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and English

Gideon Manning profile image

Gideon Manning

Research Associate Professor of Early Modern Studies

Wendy Martin profile image

Wendy Martin

Professor of American Literature and American Studies

Extended Faculty

Sumangala Bhattacharya

Pitzer College

Research Interests

English and world literature


Myriam Chancy

Scripps College

Research Interests

African diaspora with specialization in its literature


Kevin Dettmar

Pomona College

Research Interests

British and Irish modernism, and contemporary popular music


Kimberly Drake

Scripps College

Research Interests

Protest writing and rhetoric, American literature and culture, Disability literature, Prison writing, Short story and experimental fiction writing, Punk rock literature and subcultures, Writing pedagogy, Feminist theory, disability theory, queer theory, theories of race and class


Warren Liu

Scripps College

Research Interests

Contemporary American literature; Asian American literature


Aaron Matz

Scripps College

Research Interests

British fiction, 1850-present, history of the novel in England and France, literature and morality, realism, satire, and theory of genre


James Morrison

Claremont McKenna College

Research Interests

Film and literature


James H. Nichols

Claremont McKenna College

Research Interests

Political Philosophy


Sarah Raff

Pomona College

Research Interests

18th- and 19th-Century British literature, History and theory of the European novel, Jane Austen

Current Graduate Students


Holly Allen
MA Student, Concentration in American Literature

Research Interests

Queer literature, women’s literature, postmodernism, modernism, magical realism/ fabulism, surrealism, disabled/ mad studies and literature, Carson McCullers, Toni Morrison, American poetry


Michelle Arch
PhD Student

Research Interests

Psychopathological representations and the neurobiology of literary doubles in British/European and American literature of the nineteenth century; Gothic fiction; neuroscience; themes of consciousness, identity, and Being; Bakhtin; narratology


James Attwood
PhD Student

Research Interests

Anglo-Saxon Studies, Literary Theory for Fairy Tales and Fantasy


Nathan Bonar
PhD Student

Research Interests

Printing Press, Milton, Shakespeare, Keats, Charles I, Thomas Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell, Henry VIII, James I, mystics and heretics


Steven Camacho
PhD Student

Research Interests

Greek Tragedy, Shakespeare, Milton, Spencer, Hawthorne, Songs of Lamentation


Charmaine Cordero
PhD Student

Research Interests

Early Modern Studies, Shakespeare, Shakespearean adaptation, Chicanx Shakespearean adaptation


Leah Dopp
PhD Student

Research Interests

20th Century and Contemporary Novels, Hemispheric & Transnational Studies, Women & Gender Studies, Postcolonialism, Decolonial Theory


Rose Engelfried
PhD Student

Research Interests

Cultural studies, gender studies, the power of story to shape identity


Ann Wilson Green
PhD Student

Research Interests

Modernism, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, Dante


Malinda Hackett
PhD Student

Research Interests

Post-1800 American Literature, Detective/Crime Fiction, Gothic, Noir, Decolonial Studies, Ecocriticism, Gender and Trauma Studies, African American Studies, Film and Media, Popular Culture


Christopher Hines
PhD Student

Research Interests

Popular Culture, 21st and 20th Century American Literature, Asian American literature


Stephanie Jarrett
MA Student

Research Interests

American studies, American carceral literature, education with the American carceral system, resistance literature, African American literature and culture, women’s and gender studies, contemporary literature


Khalida Kareemi
PhD Student

Research Interests

Theory and Nineteenth-Century British Literature


Debilyn Kinzler
PhD Student

Research Interests

19th-century American Literature and History


Christina Kolias
PhD Student

Research Interests

Kolias Early Modern Studies; Women’s and Gender Studies; psychoanalysis, feminist theory, critical race studies, and female chastity and sexuality.


Taylor La Carriere
MA Student

Research Interests

Modern American Literature


Alex Lee
MA Student

Research Interests

American Romanticism, Immigrant Literatures, Metaphysics


Michael Lenke
PhD Student

Research Interests

Modern Literature


Summer Lizer
PhD Student

Research Interests

Medieval and early modern literature, literary theory, nature and ecology, mathematics and the natural sciences


Naomi Mageean
MA Student

Research Interests

Modernism, Literary & Critical Theory, and Theology


Camille Meder
PhD Student

Research Interests

Modernism, 20th century American literature, Federico García Lorca


Bess N Mobley
PhD Student

Research Interests

Female and queer voices, narratology, metafiction, fictional authors who appear in their own texts as characters, contemporary and postmodern literature; Gertrude Stein


Benjamin Momtahan
MA Student

Research Interests

Anthropological Approaches to Litrature including Myth, Folklore and Ritual


Sabrina Nesbitt
MA Student

Research Interests

British and American Literature, Dark Romanticism & Gothic, Victorian Age, American Modernism, Dystopian Literature, Christian Influence


Megan Person
PhD Student

Research Interests

Children’s Literature, Young Adult Literature, Literary Theory, Arab-American Literature, and Migrant Literature


Jeremy Quintero
MA Student

Research Interests

Expatriate writers, American Modernism, Literature between the wars, Queer literature, Queer theory, Latine poetry, American poetry, Popular culture, Decolonial literature, Soviet-era literature, Beat poets/poetry, Language poets/poetry


Christina Ramirez
PhD Student

Research Interests

Early Modern Studies: with particular interest in gender and the body, Feminist theory, Disability theory, and Aristotelian theory,


Maneesha Sarda
MA Student

Research Interests

British Gothic Literature, Monster Theory, Cultural Studies, Critical Theory


Monica Shaar
PhD Student

Research Interests

Feminist theory, queer theory, trauma theory, exploring identity, the family dynamic, and women in Islam


Bethanie Simms
MA Student

Research Interests

Feminism, Gender Studies, Female History of Warfighting, War and Conflict, Trauma, Creative Non-Fiction, Ethics


Philippe Thompson
PhD Student

Research Interests

Modernism; World Literature; European Art and History; Mythology & Folklore; Chicanx/Latinx Literature and Culture; New Media, Visual Culture, and Science Fiction


Andrea Tran
MA Student

Research Interests

19th Century Feminism & Rhetoric