People
David Aers
James B. Duke Professor of English
Office: 402 Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-5065
Office Hours: Tuesday 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
David Aers works especially on medieval and early modern literature, theology, ecclesiology and politics in England. His publications range from studies of Augustine to studies of early 19th century writing and culture. Publications include: Piers Plowman and Christian Allegory (Arnold 1975);... Full Profile »
Monika Allison
Financial Assistant
Office: 303A Allen Building, Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-4289
James W. Applewhite
Professor Emeritus of English
Office: 308 Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-5444
James Applewhite is the author of Seas and Inland Journeys : Landscape and Consciousness from Wordsworth to Roethke (Georgia, 1985) and seven books of poetry, including River Writing: An Eno Journal (Princeton, 1988), and Daytime and Starlight (LSU, 1997). He has... Full Profile »
Nancy Armstrong
Gilbert, Louis, and Edward Lehrman Professor of English in Trinity College of Arts and Sciences
Office: 304C Allen Bldg, English Dept., Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 668-0314
Nancy Armstrong has served as editor of the journal Novel: A Forum on Fiction since 1996 and serves as co-organizer of The Novel Project at Duke, a faculty research seminar. Her scholarship explains how novels imagine a world that can be inhabited (or not) in specific ways by historically and... Full Profile »
Christina Askounis
Lecturer Emerita of English
Office: 314 Allen Building, 303H Allen Building, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-3094
Christina Askounis holds a B.A. from Mary Washington College of the University of Virginia and an M.A.from The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. Her writing experience encompasses newspaper journalism, television and film scriptwriting, poetry and fiction; her short... Full Profile »
Dominika M Baran
Assistant Professor in the Department of English
Office: English Department, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-2741
My work to date has focused on the relationship between language ideologies and the construction of social identities through linguistic practice. My PhD dissertation examined the intersection of language, ethnicity, gender and social class in the context of an educational institution in Taiwan.... Full Profile »
Catherine Beaver
Departmental Business Mgr II
Office: 303C Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-2772
Sarah Beckwith
Katherine Everett Gilbert Professor of English
Office: 302A Allen, Box 90014, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Duke Box 90014, Durham, NC 27708-0680
Phone: (919) 684-2741
Office Hours: Monday 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m; Tuesday 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. & by appointment.
Sarah Beckwith works on late medieval religious writing, medieval and early modern drama, and ordinary language philosophy. She is the author of Christ's Body: Identity, Religion and Society in Medieval English Writing (London: Routledge, 1993, pbk 1996); Signifying God: Social Relation and... Full Profile »
Neal C. Bell
Professor of the Practice in the Department of Theater Studies
Office: 03G Page, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90680, Durham, NC 27708-0680
Phone: (919) 660-3380
Taylor H Black
Assistant Professor of English
Office Hours: Wednesday 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Taylor Black is a native North Carolinian. He was born in Durham and split his time growing up between Winston-Salem and the Triangle. At 18, he left for New York, where he pursed a BA in Black Studies at Hunter College and later earned a PhD in American Studies at Rutgers University.... Full Profile »
Richard Brodhead
William Preston Few Professor of English
Office: 207 Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27710
Campus Box: Box 90001, Durham, NC 27708-0001
Phone: (919) 684-2424
Like many students of my generation, I had little formal training in American literature, so it was a minor act of personal rebellion in 1970 when I decided, in the middle of my graduate studies, to become an Americanist. It seemed a wonderfully young field, unencumbered by tradition, with little... Full Profile »
Ronald R. Butters
Professor Emeritus of English
Office: 314 Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90014, Durham, NC 27708-0014
Phone: (919) 684-6561
Ron Butters, who directed the Duke Linguistics Program for many years, publishes chiefly on (1) current American English and (2) linguistics and legal issues, with special interest in trademarks, contracts and statutes, and defamation. He also pursues his interest in language-and-law questions as a... Full Profile »
Lori Marie Carlson
Lecturer in the Department of English
Office: 401 Allen Building, Box_90015, Durham, NC 27708
Phone: (919) 684-6771
J. Kameron Carter
Associate Professor of Theology, English, and African American Studies
Office: 006D New Divinity, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Duke Box 90967, Durham, NC 27708-0967
Phone: (919) 660-3425
Professor Carter teaches courses in both theology and black church studies. Working as a theologian, he addresses the basic areas of Christian thought, especially attending to Christology (the person and work of Jesus Christ) and theological anthropology (the human being in Christian perspective).... Full Profile »
Brenna M Casey
Instructor* of English
Office Hours: Tuesdays, 1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. Wednesdays, 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Allen 321
Brenna M. Casey is a Lecturer in the Departments of English and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies. She specializes in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century U.S. literature and visual culture with an emphasis on intimate global networks of shared literary and artistic regard. Her research... Full Profile »
Michael F D'Alessandro
Assistant Professor of English
Michael D’Alessandro holds an M.F.A. in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from Yale University and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Boston University. His principal research focuses on American literature and theatre history in the long nineteenth century. Whether studying well-known works of... Full Profile »
Cathy N. Davidson
Ruth F. DeVarney Professor Emerita of Interdisciplinary Studies
Office: Box 90403, 114 S. Buchanan Blvd., Bay 5, B196, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Duke Box 90403, Durham, NC 27708-0403
Phone: (919) 684-8471
Cathy Davidson has published numerous books, including Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn (Viking, 2011); The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age (with David Theo Goldberg, MIT Press, 2010) ; Revolution and... Full Profile »
A Leigh Deneef, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus of English
Office: 127 Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90068, Durham, NC 27708-0068
Phone: (919) 681-1559
Joseph Donahue
Helen L. Bevington Professor of the Practice of Modern Poetry
Office: 304B Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Duke Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-2741
Oliver W Ferguson, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-2741
Thomas J. Ferraro
Frances Hill Fox Professor of English
Office: 323 Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-3718
Office Hours: M 3:30-4:45 pm, Th 3:30-4:45 pm, and by appointment
Professor Ferraro is an aficionado of the great American stuff--Emily Dickinson, Edward Hopper, the Marx Brothers, and Nina Simone--who writes on literature, film, and the performing arts. He is the author of Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America (NYU, 2005; winner of a 2006... Full Profile »
C Faulkner Fox
Lecturing Fellow* of English
Office: 321 Allen Building, Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, English Department, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-2692
Astrid Adele Giugni
Instructor* of English
Office: 114 South Buchanan Boulevard, Bay 9, Room A289, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90766, Durham, NC 27708-0014
George D. Gopen
Professor of Practice Emeritus of English
Office: 06A Social Sciences, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 660-4375
N. Katherine Hayles
James B. Duke Professor of Literature
Office: 101 Friedl Building, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90670, Durham, NC 27708-0670
Phone: (919) 684-9319
Digital Humanities; Electronic Literature; Literature, Science, and Technology; Science Fiction; Critical Theory
Quantá Holden
Web and Communications Specialist
Office: 302 Allen Building, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90017, Durham, NC 27708
Phone: (919) 684-2203
Tsitsi Ella Jaji
Associate Professor of English
Jaji is an associate professor of English at Duke University with expertise in African and African American literary and cultural studies, with special interests in music, poetry, and black feminisms. She previously taught at University of Pennsylvania and has received fellowships from the National... Full Profile »
Buford Jones
Associate Professor Emeritus of English
Office: 324 Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Duke Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-3873
Buford Jones is the bibliographer for the Hawthorne Society and supplements annually his basic checklist of Hawthorne scholarship. He has also published articles on Melville, Thoreau, and Poe as well as special studies of Hawthorne. He is currently completing The Great Romances: Hawthorne's... Full Profile »
Christophe Kennedy, Ph.D.
Senior Assoc Athletics Dir
Office: 304 Schwartz-Butters, 115 Whitford Drive, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90561, Durham, NC 27708-0555
Phone: (919) 684-2120
Ranjana Khanna
Professor of English
Office: 304D Allen Bldg, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Duke Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708
Phone: (919) 668-2548
Office Hours: Tuesday & Thursday 1:40 p.m. - 2:40 p.m.
Ranjana Khanna is Professor of English, Women's Studies, and the Literature Program at Duke University. She works on Anglo- and Francophone Postcolonial theory and literature, and Film, Psychoanalysis, and Feminist theory. She has published widely on transnational feminism, psychoanalysis, and... Full Profile »
Nathaniel Mackey
Reynolds Price Professor of Creative Writing
Nathaniel Mackey works in the areas of modern and postmodern literature in the U.S. and the Caribbean, creative writing, poetry and poetics, and the intersection of literature and music. He is the author of several books of poetry, fiction and criticism, most recently Nod House (New Directions,... Full Profile »
Melissa Malouf
Professor of the Practice in the Department of English
Office: 926 Monmouth Avenue, Durham, NC 27701
Campus Box: Duke Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0756
Phone: (919) 682-3119
Office Hours: Monday 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. Location arranged by email Mmalouf@duke.edu.
Melissa Malouf is Professor of the Practice of English. She teaches courses in creative writing and (mainly) contemporary literature. She is the author of two novels, More Than You Know and It Had to Be You (Avisson Press, 1997) and a collection of stories, No Guarantees (William Morrow, 1990... Full Profile »
Jarvis C McInnis
Assist Professor of English
Jarvis C. McInnis holds a BA in English from Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi, and a Ph.D. in English & Comparative Literature from Columbia University in the City of New York. Jarvis is an interdisciplinary scholar of African American & African Diaspora literature and... Full Profile »
Robert Edward Mitchell
Marcello Lotti Professor of English
Office: 304C Allen, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: 90015, Durham, NC 27708
Phone: (919) 668-2547
Office Hours: Mondays, 12:20-1:20
Robert Mitchell's research focuses on relationships between literature and the sciences in the Romantic era, as well as contemporary intersections among information technologies, genetics, and commerce, especially as these have been played out in the legal, literary, and artistic spheres. His most... Full Profile »
Toril Moi
James B. Duke Professor of Literature
Office: 114 S. Buchanan Boulevard, B184 Smith Warehouse, Durham, NC 27708-0403
Campus Box: Box 90403, B184 Smith Warehouse, Durham, NC 27708-0403
Phone: (919) 668-6407
Toril Moi has three broad areas of interest: feminist theory and women's writing; the intersection of literature, philosophy and aesthetics; and ordinary language philosophy in the tradition of Wittgenstein, Cavell and Austin. Toril Moi also works on theater. In her work on literature and theater... Full Profile »
Michael Valdez Moses
Associate Professor with Tenure
Office: 303G Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-8880
Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday 3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. & by appointment.
Michael Valdez Moses grew up in Los Angeles and was educated at Harvard, New College, Oxford, and the University of Virginia. He is the author of The Novel and the Globalization of Culture (Oxford UP, 1995), and has edited several collections of critical essays including The Writings of J. M.... Full Profile »
Maryscot Mullins
Staff Asst
Office: 316 Allen Building, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90017, Durham, NC 27708
Phone: (919) 684-5538
Mark Anthony Neal
Professor of African and African American Studies
Office: Science Building, 243F, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90252, Durham, NC 27708-0252
Phone: (919) 684-3987
Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of African & African American Studies and the founding director of the Center for Arts, Digital Culture and Entrepreneurship (CADCE) at Duke University where he offers courses on Black Masculinity, Popular Culture, and Digital Humanities, including signature... Full Profile »
Robert D Newman
AdjunctProfessor of English
Matthew Omelsky
Student
African and diasporic literature, film, music; phenomenology; time; French, Wolof, German languages.
Thomas Pfau
Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English
Office: 312 Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Duke Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 681-3098
Office Hours: Tuesday 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. & by appointment.
Thomas Pfau is the Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English, with secondary appointments in Germanic Languages & Literatures and in the Duke Divinity School. A native of Germany, Prof. Pfau began his academic career in 1980 as a student of History and Literature at the University of Constance.... Full Profile »
Deborah Pope
Professor Emerita of English
Office: 304 B Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-2899
Deborah Pope has published A Separate Vision: Isolation in Contemporary Women's Poetry (LSU), Ties That Bind: Essays on Mothering and Patriarchy (University of Chicago Press), Fanatic Heart (LSU), Mortal World (LSU) and Falling Out of the Sky. She is currently co-editing a series of writings on... Full Profile »
Joseph A. Porter
Professor in the Department of English
Office: 304J Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-3884
Office Hours: Wednesday 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Author of ten books and editor or co-editor of nine others, as well as the New Variorum Othello in progress, of which he is Editor-in-Chief, Joseph A. Porter aka Joe Ashby Porter studied at Harvard (BA, 1964), Pembroke College Oxford (Fulbright Fellowship, 64-65) and UC Berkeley (PhD, 1972). After... Full Profile »
Kathy A. Psomiades
Associate Professor of English
Office: 308 Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 681-7609
Office Hours: Tuesday & Thursday 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Kathy Psomiades works on Victorian literature and culture. She is author of Beauty's Body: Femininity and Representation in British Aestheticism (Stanford, 1997), and co-editor, with Talia Schaffer of Women and British Aestheticism (Virginia, 1999). She has been the recipient of an NEH fellowship... Full Profile »
Maureen Quilligan
R. Florence Brinkley Professor Emerita of English
Office: 320 Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Duke Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 681-2149
Maureen Quilligan has as a primary field of interest in the Renaissance, with special attention to women and literature. She has published four books: The Language of Allegory: Defining the Genre (1979) Milton's Spenser: The Politics of Reading (1983), The Allegory of Female Authority:... Full Profile »
Dale B. J. Randall
Renaissance Literature Prof. Randall has worked in 16th, 17th, and 20th century English Culture and 19th century U.S. Culture. A native Ohioan, he accepted an instructorship at Duke in 1957 and proceeded through the ranks, teaching and publishing, especially in 17th-century English literature,... Full Profile »
Claire Ravenscroft
Student
Claire Ravenscroft is a doctoral candidate in the English department with research and teaching interests in contemporary literature, energy and climate.
Carol Renegar
Duke Temporary Service
Office: 302 Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90016, Durham, NC 27708-0014
Phone: (919) 684-6820
Judith Ruderman
Visiting Professor in the Department of English
Office: 3612 Alman Drive, Durham, NC 27705
Campus Box: Duke Box 90005, Durham, NC 27708-0005
Phone: (919) 684-2741
Judith Ruderman retired from her Duke University positions of Vice Provost and Adjunct Professor of English in 2009. With her current title of Visiting Professor she continues to teach seminars in literature for the English department once a year, as she has done since 1989. Her research and... Full Profile »
Cathy Shuman
Lecturing Fellow* of English
Office: 324 Allen Building, Box_90015, Durham, NC 27708
Phone: (919) 684-5767
Barbara H. Smith
Braxton Craven Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and English
Office: 9 Towhee Drive, Topsham, ME 04086
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 383-0840
Smith's research has been concerned with literary theory, poetry and poetics, ideas of value and judgment, and intellectual controversies over science and knowledge. Her current work focuses on developments in cognitive science and the philosophy of biology, intellectual issues involving science... Full Profile »
Kevin Spencer
Student
The Realism vs modernism debates in relation to novels and drama; Continental philosophy; Ordinary Language Philosophy
Michelle Sroka
Student
I'm currently writing about labor and working-class poetry during the Romantic period, roughly 1780-1820. I'm teaching a survey of Romanticism course this semester (Fall 2017), titled Human All Too Human. It explores the concept of the human being during this period, and how that relates... Full Profile »
Corina M Stan
Assistant Professor of English
Office: 311 Allen Building, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90014, Durham, NC 27708-0257
Phone: (919) 684-2741
Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday 10:15 a.m. - 11:45 a.m. & by appointment.
Corina Stan grew up in Romania, studied in Germany, France, and the US, and taught for several years in the Netherlands. Trained as a comparatist, she works at the intersection of literature and the arts, with interests in continental philosophy and the sociology of intellectuals. Her first... Full Profile »
Jessica Stark
Student
Jessica Q. Stark is a PhD Candidate in English at Duke University, where she is studying the presence of community, collaboration, and popular culture across literary genres. Her dissertation project explores the intersections between modern to contemporary poetry and American comic books in... Full Profile »
Victor H. Strandberg
Professor with Tenure
Office: 315 Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-3976
Victor Strandberg has published The Poetic Vision of Robert Penn Warren (Kentucky, 1977), Religious Psychology in American Literature: The Relevance of William James (Studia Humanitatis, 1981), and A Faulkner Overview: Six Perspectives (Kennikat Press, 1981), together with numerous essays on... Full Profile »
Charlotte S. Sussman
Associate Professor of English
Office: 310 Allen Building, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-2741
Leonard Tennenhouse
Professor of English
Office: 304GH Allen Bldg, English Department, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-2203
Len Tennenhouse teaches courses in British and American literature that look at earlier formulations of our most deeply held assumptions about who we are, how to live with other people, and what we pursue in the name of happiness. What changes, he asks, do these ideas of the purpose and... Full Profile »
Julie A. Tetel
Professor in the Department of English
Office: 307A Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 681-7610
Julie Tetel (Andresen) writes in the field of linguistic historiography, focusing on French, German, and American theories of language from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. She is the author of Linguistics in America 1769-1924: A Critical History (Routledge, 1990, paperback edition... Full Profile »
Marianna Torgovnick
Professor of English
Office: 302E Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Duke Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-2110
Marianna Torgovnick writes on the novel and novel theory, film, postcolonialism, modernism, and the twentieth century more generally, and especially on contemporary American culture. Her work is broadly interdisciplinary and has been taught in Art History, Anthropology, and Religion courses as well... Full Profile »
Aarthi Vadde
Assistant Professor in the Department of English
Office: English Department, Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: English Department, 315A Allen Building / Box 9001, Durham, NC 27708
Office Hours: Wednesday 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Aarthi Vadde works in the field of 20th-21st century Anglophone literature with particular interests in the history of migration and globalization, theories of internationalism, the environmental humanities, and media studies. Her book Chimeras of Form: Modernist Internationalism beyond... Full Profile »
Hannah VanderHart
Student
Office Hours: By appointment
Early Modern Studies - Currently writing my second dissertation chapter on Aemilia Lanyer's poetry.
Priscilla Wald
R. Florence Brinkley Professor of English
Office: 327B Allen Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-6869
Priscilla Wald teaches and works on U.S. literature and culture, particularly literature of the late-18th to mid-20th centuries, contemporary narratives of science and medicine, science fiction literature and film, and environmental studies. Her current work focuses on the intersections among the... Full Profile »
Julianne Werlin
Bacca Foundation Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, Culture and Society
My teaching and research interests include early-modern poetry and prose, literary stylistics, state formation, utopianism, the history of technology, and the sociology of literary forms. My current project, entitled Paperworks: Bureaucracy and Literature in Early Modern England, explores the... Full Profile »
George W. Williams
Professor Emeritus
Office: 07A West Duke, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90015, Durham, NC 27708-0015
Phone: (919) 684-5827
Susan Willis
Associate Professor Emeritus of Literature
Office: Literature, Durham, NC 27708
Campus Box: Box 90670, Durham, NC 27708-0670
Phone: (919) 668-6204
Associate Professor of English and The Literature Program. She teaches courses in minority writing and popular culture. She is the author of "Specifying: Black Women Writing the American Experience" and "A Primer for Daily Life." She is coauthor of "Inside the Mouse: Work and Play at Disney World... Full Profile »
Joseph Richard Winters
Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies
Office: 710 Sidepark Street, Durham, NC 27703
Campus Box: 118 Gray Building, Box 90964, Durham, NC 27708
Phone: (919) 423-1911
Joseph Winters is an assistant professor of Religious Studies with a secondary position in the Department of African and African American Studies. His interests lie in African-American Religious Thought, Religion and Critical Theory, Af-Am Literature, and Continental philosophy. Overall, his... Full Profile »