“I’m not a teacher: only a fellow-traveller of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead—ahead of myself as well as you.”
George Bernard Shaw
Barbara Burkhardt
Associate Professor of English
Ph.D. English,University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Phone: (217) 206-8092
Office: UHB 3074
Teaching Concentration: American Literature from 1865 to 1915 with emphasis on the novel, postmodern fiction, Midwestern literature, Fiction of The New Yorker, Contemporary American fiction, and American women writers.
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Donna Alfano Bussell
Associate Professor of English
Ph.D. English, Columbia University
Phone: (217) 206-8091
Office: UHB 3072
Teaching Concentration: Chaucer, Anglo-Norman literature, medieval hagiography, medieval drama and liturgy, Women in the Middle Ages, Arthurian Literature and the Crusades, Insular politics and the rhetoric of devotion in the Middle Ages.
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Meagan Cass
Assistant Professor of English
Ph.D. English: The University of Louisiana
Phone: (217) 206-8358
Office: UHB 3062
Teaching Concentration: Creative Writing (with an emphasis in fiction), Contemporary American and British literature, Composition, ghost stories, Women’s Literature and Feminist Theory, sports literature.
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Sara Cordell
Associate Professor of English
Ph.D. English, University of Missouri
Phone: (217) 206-7213
Office: UHB 3066
Teaching Concentration: Nineteenth-Century British Literature, literary theory.
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Lan Dong
Associate Professor of English
Ph.D. Comparative Literature, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Phone: (217) 206-8334
Office: UHB 3074
*on sabbatical Spring 2013*
Teaching Concentration: World Literature, Composition, Asian American literature and film, Chinese Women, Chinese Literature and Film, the Graphic Novel, Children’s Literature
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Myrto Drizou
Instructor, English Department
Ph.D. Comparative Literature SUNY Buffalo
Phone: (217) 206-8332
Office: UHB 3069
Teaching Concentration: English Rhetoric and Composition (ENG 101 and 102). Her interests lie in nineteenth and twentieth century American literature (particularly realism and naturalism), literary theory and criticism, rhetoric and composition, and gender studies.
Tena Helton
Associate Professor of English
Chair, English Department
Director of First Year Writing Program
Ph.D. English (American Literature), Louisiana State University
Phone: (217) 206-7441
Office: UHB 3070
Teaching Concentration: American Literature and Culture, Writing, Film.
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Elizabeth L. Jones
Instructor, English Department
MA English, George Mason University
Phone: (217) 206-6779
Office: UHB 3050
Teaching Concentration: Freshman Composition
Ethan Lewis
Associate Professor of English
Ph.D. English, Boston College
Phone: (217) 206-7436
Office: UHB 3068
Teaching Concentration: Shakespeare, seventeenth-century literature, modern and contemporary poetry.
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Roger McNamara
Instructor of English
Ph. D. English, Loyola University Chicago
Phone: 217-206-8219
Office: UHB 3071
Teaching Concentration: Dr. McNamara’s research interests include 20th century South Asian literature, Marxism, Postcolonial Theory, and Modernity.
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James Ottery
Associate Professor of English
Ph.D. English, University of Missouri
Phone: (217) 206-7443
Office: UHB 3076
Teaching Concentration: History and theories of composition and rhetoric, literary theory, American Indian Literature.
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