Mr. Ralph Adamo
Associate Professor of English, Editor, Xavier Review
M.F.A., University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
B.A.
Specialties: Composition, Creative Writing, Poetry
Photo by: Dr. Biljana D. Obradovic |  | 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 two have children, Jack and Lily, who attend Lusher school. 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
Photo by: Dr. David Lanoue |  | | 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. Hannah Saltmarsh
Lecturer in English
Ph.D. Univ. of York (UK)2011
M.F.A, Univ. of Maryland, 2006
B.A., Univ. of Maryland, 2000
Specialties: Creative Writing, 20th Century American Poetry, Motherhood, and Writings of Intimacy
Photo by: Dr. Biljana D. Obradovic
|  | | Dr. Hannah Saltmarsh lived in England, Maryland, and Washington DC before coming to New Orleans. She has taught poetry, creative writing, and freshman writing. She has published poetry in The Times Literary Supplement, The Gulf Coast, The Denver Quarterly, and The New Republic, and is currently working on a manuscript of poems. Her dissertation is titled: "'I am made by her, and undone': Mother-son Relationships in Confessional and Post-confessional Lyric" and explores poetry by men about mothers. Her current research is on Thom Gunn's response to Confessional poetry.
Dr. Saltmarsh can be reached at (504) 520-5162 or at hsaltmar@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
Photo by: Dr. Biljana D. Obradovic |  | 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 | 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
Photo by: Dr. Biljana D. Obradovic |  | 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
Photo by: Lawrence Hanks
|  | 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 possibilitieskeeping 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
Photo by: Dr. David Lanoue |  | 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 dgould@xula.edu | Dr. Nicole Pepinster Greene
Associate Professor, Chair Department of English
Ph.D., Louisiana State University
M.A., George Washington
B.A., University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Specialties: Late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and Irish literatures; basic writing/ composition theory and pedagogy; English education; writing in the sciences.
Photo by: David Lanoue |  | 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 is currently Chair of the Department of English and African American Studies, Executive Editor of Xavier Review Press, and Chair of Xavier Endowment for the Humanities. She served as editor of the Journal of College Writing 1999-07 and editor of Xavier Review 2007-2010. Dr. Greene's research on Irish writers and her scholarship in the pedagogy of basic writing have been published in Modern Irish Writers, Multicultural Education, South Central Review, New Hibernia Review, Working Papers in Irish Studies, and Irish Literary Supplement. She is the co-editor of Basic Writing in American: A History of Nine College Programs (Hampton Press, 2007). A frequent contributor to The Tablet: the International Catholic Weekly published in London, she is current working on a book about Irish women writers, Edith Somerville and Martin Ross. Dr. Greene teaches composition and British and Irish literature and has taught seminars on Irish Identity, Women and Work, and Twentieth-Century Irish Drama; she particularly enjoys encouraging first-year students to read and enjoy poetry. Dr. Greene may be contacted at: (504) 520-5246 or by e-mail at ngreene@xula.edu | 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 Photo by: Dr. Biljana D. Obradovic |  | 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 reception during the Irish Literary Revival, but he also likes to write about the literature of carnival cultures.
Professor Hennessy may be contacted at 504 520-5150, or by email at ohenness@xula.edu |
| | Ms. Katheryn Krotzer Laborde
Associate Professor of English
Managing Editor, Xavier Review/Xavier Review Press; Advisor, New Voices
M.F.A., University of New Orleans, 1993
B.A., University of New Orleans, 1985
Specialties: Writing (general nonfiction, feature journalism, literary nonfiction, fiction, and good ol' comp). Literature: the works of Flannery O'Connor.
Photo by: self-portrait on a September afternoon
|  | | Before switching to academia, Professor Laborde worked as a publicist, newsletter editor, freelance journalist, and general writer-for-hire. Her short stories and literary essays have appeared in various anthologies and journals, and she sponsors and judges the Creative Nonfiction division of the Soul-Making Literary Competition. She is a recipient of a Louisiana Division of the Arts Artist's Fellowship, a Louisiana Cultural Economy Grant and, most recently, the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society Medal (novella division). She is the author of two books: The Story behind the Painting: Frederick J. Brown's The Assumption of Mary at Xavier University (Xavier Review Press, 2012) and Do Not Open: The Discarded Refrigerators of Post-Katrina New Orleans (McFarland 2010). 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)
Photo by: a friend |  | Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Dr. Lanoue earned his Ph.D. in medieval literature, and so his dissertation and early articles all dealt with European works: Chaucer's Canterbury 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 he decided to learn Japanese, go to Japan, and read everything he could on the one-breath art of haiku. He has been working on haiku ever since: translating and writing critical essays on it. He is especially interested in Issa. His first book, Issa: Cup-of-Tea Poems, Selected Haiku by Kobayashi Issa, came out in 1991. Other books have followed, including Pure Land Haiku: The Art of Priest Issa (2004) and a series of five "haiku novels" (2000 - 2013). He maintains the websites, HaikuGuy.com and The Haiku of Kobayashi Issa . He is currently the president of the Haiku Society of America.
Professor Lanoue may be contacted at: (504) 520-7477 or by e-mail at dlanoue@xula.edu | Dr. Bonnie Noonan
Associate 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
|  | 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
Professor of English, Director, Xavier Literary Reading Series, Webmistress
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, World Literature, Serbian Poetry, Playwriting, American Literature to the 1900
Photo by: John Gery |  | Biljana D. Obradovic, a Serbian-American, has lived in Yugoslavia, Greece, and India besides the US. Her books of poems include Le Riche Monde, Frozen Embraces and Little Disruptions (2012). Her poems also appear in Three Poets in New Orleans. 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, 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 and in the US through Mellon Press as MIlanovic's poems apepared as Doors in a Meadow in 2011. In 2012 she also published a biligual translation of poems into Serbian by Patrizia De Rachewiltz's, Dear Friends/ Dragi Prijatelji.Forcoming are Serbian translations of collections of poems by Bruce Weigl and Nigerian-born poet, Niyi Osundare. 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 | Dr. Linda Rodriguez
Lecturer of English Degrees: B.A. University of New Orleans, 2001 M.A. University of New Orleans, 2003 Specialties: African American Literature, American Literature
Photo by: Dr. Biljana D. Obradovic
|  | Linda Rodriguez moved here from Montana in 1991 and stayed to pursue her degrees in English. She is currently working on her Ph.D. in English at the University of Southern Mississippi.
Dr. Rodriguez may be contacted at: (504) 520-7549 or by e-mail at LRodrig1@xula.edu
|
Dr. Robin Runia Assistant Professor of English Ph.D. University of New Mexico M.A. State University of New York at Buffalo B.A. University of Minnesota-Duluth Specialties: Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture, Gender Studies, Development of the Novel |  | Robin Runia, was born and raised in Minnesota where she pursued her undergraduate degrees in English and Philosophy. She has since crossed and re-crossed the country in pursuit of further educational and career opportunities. She spent 2009-2012 teaching at Angelo State University, but is delighted to have joined the English department at Xavier in Fall 2012. Dr. Runia serves as Review editor for ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830, and her work exploring gender, genre, and the body in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century literature been published in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research, Eighteenth-Century Women: Studies in their Lives Work and Culture; and Religion in the Age of Enlightenment. She is currently developing a body of work exploring the periods representations of religion and spirituality in womens writing.
Dr. Runia may be contacted at: (504) 520-5002 or by e-mail at rrunia@xula.edu
| Mr. James H. Shade
Assistant Professor of English
M.F.A., University of New Orleans,
B.A., Xavier University of Louisiana,
Speciaizaties: Screenwriting, Playwriting
Photo by: Dr. Biljana D. Obradovic
|  | 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.
Professor Shade may be contacted at: (504) 520-5157 or by e-mail at jhshade@xula.edu
| Dr. Jason Todd
QEP 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 Photo by: Dr. Biljana D. Obradovic |  | 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
Continuing Lecturer
B.A. University of Alabama, 1994
M.F.A. Creative Nonfiction, University of New Orleans, 2008
Specialties: Composition and Rhetoric, Basic Writing. Photo by: Dr. Biljana D. Obradovic |  | Jeremy teaches composition and literature with an emphasis on bringing basic writers into the larger academic curriculum. His scholarship on the pedagogy of basic writing is influenced by Mike Rose and David Bartholomae, who argue that basic writers must fully engage in exercises of critical thought regardless of their grammatical or mechanical competency. To this approach he incorporates the added charge of Xavier and other HBCUs and Catholic schools to teach a moral and social imperative for critical thought. Jeremy has designed and led service-learning initiatives with community partners involved in literacy outreach and in post-Katrina rebuilding. Jeremy is a 2012-2013 Mellon FaCTS Fellow, a fellowship to promote social justice and civic engagement in the classroom. Jeremy is the editor of Xaviers freshman essay journal.
Mr. Tuman may be contacted at: (504) 520-5703 or by e-mail: jtuman@xula.edu | Dr. Robin Vander
Assistant Professor
Degrees: Ph.D., Comparative Literature, Chapell Hill University
M.A., Comparative Literature, Chapell Hill University
Specialties: Poetics of Anthropology, Ethnography, Carribbean and African Diaspora | (not pictured) |
Dr. Vander can be reached at (504) 520-5158 or at rvander@xula.edu
| 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 | (not pictured) | 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
| Ms. Cocoa Williams
Lecturer
B.A., Clemson University, 2007 M.A., Valdosta State University, 2005 (English and Philosophy)
Specialties: African American Literature, Harelem Renaissance Literature and Culture and Modernist Poetry Photo by: Dr. Biljana D. Obraodovic
| | | Cocoa Williams is a native of New Orleans, LA. After living in South Carolina and Georgia, she is excited to be back in the Big Easy after 19 years. She has taught Freshman Composition, World Literature, African American Literature, and Business Communications. Her research focuses on how art in its various forms should function in a society and whether an artist's autonomy is compromised in service to that society. her current reseach is on Claude McKay's recently published sonnet sequence The Cycle. In her research, she explores McKay's commitments to the theoretical and formulaic characteristics of the traditional sonent sequence. Ms. Williams may be contacted at: (504) 520-5501 or by e-mail at cwilli47@xula.edu |
Staff
Ms. Allison J. Pitcher
Administrative Assistant, Department of English
Photo by: Dr. David Lanoue |  | | Ms. Allison Pitcher may be contacted at: (504) 520-5158 or by e-mail at apitcher@xula.edu | |
