Curriculum Vitae
Curriculum Vitae
Stephen M. Mercier, Ph.D.
51 Polyana Place
Kerhonkson, NY 12446
845-626-8169
e-mail: Stephen.Mercier@marist.edu
Education
Ph.D. English, University of Rhode Island
Dissertation: “Revaluing the Literary Naturalist: John Burroughs’s Emotive Environmental Aesthetics.” This dissertation considers John Burroughs’s rhetorical strategies of persuading readers toward appreciating diverse aspects of the natural world. Burroughs’s texts have serious implications for environmental consciousness, and demonstrate profound means of personal identification with species, most particularly birds, and their habitats.
M.A. English, University of Rhode Island
Thesis: “Henry David Thoreau: Deep Ecologist in The Dial (1840-44).”
B.A. Psychology, Clark University
Teaching Experience
Courses Taught:
Writing 100 & 101
College Writing I & II
Writing for College
Composition & Literature
First Year Seminar: Imagining Wilderness & Greening America
Introduction to Literature
Literature and Gender: on ground and online
Latina Writers of the United States
Fundamentals of Speech
Writing about the Natural World
Special Topics: Authors of New England: Imagining Literary Places
Special Topics: American Romanticism, Transcendentalism, and Nature Writing
American Literature I: on ground and online
American Literature II: on ground and online
John Burroughs and Nature Writing
Nineteenth-Century American Literature
Hudson Valley Literature
Hudson River Valley Studies: Imagining Literary Places – Honors Course
Composition Courses
WRT100, University of Rhode Island Summer 1999 – Summer 2004
Introductory writing course for the University of Rhode Island’s summer Talent Development Program, a special services program for under-prepared college students. Students produced a five-page college-level research paper and engaged in critical reading and thinking. Class members kept a folder/portfolio of ongoing drafts and exercises, performed presentations, self-assessment and evaluations. Emphasis on thesis statements, topic sentences, transitions, integrating and documenting sources, revising introductions and conclusions. Reviewed effective paragraphs, focusing and linking ideas, subject-verb agreement, tenses, and fused sentences. Build confidence. Many ESL students.
WRT101, University of Rhode Island Fall 1996 – Spring 2003
Taught 16 sections of first-year composition. Emphasis placed upon use of experience, observation, rhetorical strategies, argumentation, analysis, readings, and library research. Thesis development, techniques of drafting, collaboration, peer criticism, and MLA format. Topics include ethnic literature of the United States, analysis of communities, interpretation of short stories, music lyrics and contemporary culture, gender formation, film analysis, place studies, nature writing, persuasive rhetoric and ethical debates, resumes and cover letters.
ENG116: COLLEGE WRITING I, Marist College
Writing-intensive course in which students draft and revise college-level essays. Students critically analyze and evaluate texts; construct strong thesis statements; develop writing processes, such as invention, drafting, organization, and revision; accurately summarize complex articles; identify critical issues in readings, discussions, and lectures; synthesize information from a variety of sources; organize ideas and communicate them clearly and concisely in written and oral form; write in various rhetorical modes with a minimum of surface and grammatical errors; identify values issues in texts. Students research academic databases and perform original research. Students wrote an Ethical Debate research essay. Texts: Charters’s The Story and Its Writer, The Longman Handbook, and Writing Matters.
ENG117: COLLEGE WRITING II, Marist College
Students required to perform research and become adept at locating information. Students read articles from multiple disciplines, including: Architecture, Art, History, Houses and Gardens, Industrialization, Literature, Memoir, Natural History and Bioregionalism, Military History, Poetry, and Politics. Critical thinking skills gained by students enabled them to comprehend complex ideas in academic discourse. Students developed research strategies and used academic databases. Pedagogical refinements include: various types of in-class free writing; creation of grammar exercises based on student work; new ways of blending quotations into paragraphs; methods of weaving in phrases and uses of set-off/block quotations. Students analyzed issues in music lyrics in contemporary culture and visual rhetoric in advertising campaigns. Course contained a speech component.
ENG120: WRITING FOR COLLEGE, Marist College
Themes: Cultural Diversity and Nature & Environment.Writing-intensive course in which students draft and revise college-level essays. Students critically analyze and evaluate texts; construct strong thesis statements; develop writing processes, such as invention, drafting, organization, and revision; accurately summarize complex articles; identify critical issues in readings, discussions, and lectures; synthesize information from a variety of sources; organize ideas and communicate them clearly and concisely in written and oral form; write in various rhetorical modes with a minimum of surface and grammatical errors; identify values issues in texts. Students research academic databases and perform original research.
ENG101: Composition & Literature, RISD (Rhode Island School of Design)
First-year writing course primarily geared to introduce students to literary genres and college research. Students analyzed essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, examined poetry of Emily Dickinson & Walt Whitman, applied concepts from environmental aesthetics to Annie Dillard, utilized literary terms and theory in relation to Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and produced a college-level research paper on rhetorical strategies in ethical debates. Focus on each stage of the composition process and enhancing college writing skills.
ENG101: Writing about the Natural World, Wheaton College
Students examined rhetorical and persuasive strategies in United States nature writing. Texts included: The Norton Book of Nature Writing, edited by Robert Finch and John Elder, and The Art of Seeing Things: Essays by John Burroughs, edited by Charlotte Zoe Walker. Students engaged in extensive drafting, revising, and editing. Wrote analytic, comparison and contrast essays, and a longer research paper. Students became adept at MLA format, modes of research, and coherently integrated summaries and paraphrases of academic sources. Worked on effective paragraphs, focusing and linking ideas, subject-verb agreement, tenses, and fused sentences. Students increased powers of critique and engaged in complex intellectual analysis.
FRESHMAN COMPOSITION 2: Latina Writers of the United States, SUNY New Paltz
Course demands careful reading, writing, and analysis. Interpretation of novels (In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez & Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street), short stories from Nicholasa Mohr’s Rituals of Survival: A Woman’s Portfolio, poems by Pat Mora & Carmen Tafolla, films (Mi Familia and Real Women Have Curves), and critical essays by Gloria Anzaldua & Judith Ortiz Cofer. Variety of issues concerning women from historical, political, racial, social, and cultural perspectives. Students gain proficiency in all aspects of writing. Focus on quoting, paraphrasing, use of MLA format to cite from text, developing original thesis statements. Strengthen abilities to construct well-constructed, well-organized, and clear paragraphs, to write in different rhetorical modes, and analyze and evaluate arguments. Interpret and evaluate information, and increase powers of critical thinking.
FYS101: FIRST YEAR SEMINAR: Imagining Wilderness & Greening America, Marist College
We will consider how a range of American writers frame human interactions with “Nature,” and explore their various representations of the natural world. How have cultural values shaped conceptions of nature? How has “Wilderness” been imagined? How do authors construct language to shape the way readers think about the environment? What vision do these texts offer about the relationship of individuals to society, and about progress, industrialism, and technology? As a multi-disciplinary course, we will ask: What occurs when findings from Natural History are combined with notions from Literary Transcendentalism and Romanticism? We will examine Native American stories, early accounts of natural history, diverse representations of flora and fauna, memoirs of the local, essays on urban nature, and narratives of exploration. “Nature Writing,” often combining rhapsody and science, runs the gamut of the scientific, philosophical, psychological, aesthetic, ethical, and spiritual. We will consider authors such as N. Scott Momaday, Joseph Bruchac, John James Audubon, Meriwether Lewis, Rachel Carson, Annie Dillard, John Muir, John Burroughs, Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry, Henry David Thoreau, Terry Tempest Williams, and Ann Zwinger. In this class you will keep Journals based upon the course readings, your own observations, your peers’ presentations, and academic research.
Speech Course
ENG1301: Fundamentals of Speech, Sullivan County Community College
Course objectives are for students to overcome fears of speaking: to write effective speeches; to deliver speeches with poise, comfort, and confidence; to orate speeches written by others; to use visual aids well during a speech; to engage in a question and answer session based on a speech. Students perform famous, demonstrative, informative, persuasive, and impromptu speeches. Rhetorical analysis of famous speeches. Focus on rhetoric and persuasive strategies.
Literature Courses
HONR331L-111: Hudson River Valley Studies: Imagining Literary Places – Marist College
This course asks students to examine literary, historical, and artistic representations of the Hudson River Valley. Famous authors associated with this region include: Myron Benton, William Cullen Bryant, John Burroughs, James Fenimore Cooper, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Henry James, Anya Seton, Sojourner Truth, Walt Whitman, and Nathaniel Parker Willis. We also explore texts by other writers, such as Robert H. Boyle, Carl Carmer, Thomas Cole, Andrew Jackson Downing, Alf Evers, Ben Lossing, and Roland Van Zandt, as well as works by several contemporary authors. Additionally, students look at various signifiers, such as maps, magazines, pamphlets geared toward tourism, paintings, photographs, web sites, and other visual images. Course acquaints students with Place Studies. Taught once as a traditional course and as an Honors course on four occasions.
ENG493.02: Authors of New England: Imagining Literary Places, SUNY New Paltz
I created this special-topics course in order for students to examine literary, historical, and contemporary representations of New England. Authors include Bradford, Bradstreet, Dickinson, Freeman, Frost, Hawthorne, Jewett, Longfellow, Lovecraft, Thaxter, and Thoreau. Consider how various types of signifiers shape conceptions of New England. Students engage in a wide range of methodologies, such as literary criticism, landscape geography, architecture, folklore and mythology, and electronic media. Course acquaints students with the emerging interdisciplinary field of Place Studies; how regional identity is historically grounded and culturally invented; the tension between pastoral, industrial, and postmodern climates; and the significance of different versions of New England’s sense of place. Students present upon literary criticism, as well as upon foundational works of Place Studies.
ENG492.03 American Romanticism, Transcendentalism, and Nature Writing, SUNY New Paltz
This self-designed course traces the ideologies of Romanticism and Transcendentalism through Emerson’s extraordinarily influential essays, Thoreau’s Walden, and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Explore how elements of Romanticism and Transcendentalism have become infused in various manifestations of US Nature Writing. Consider texts by Abbey, Berry, Burroughs, Carson, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Dickinson, Dillard, Muir, Snyder, Terry Tempest Williams, and Zwinger. Students examine how a range of American writers frame human interactions with “Nature,” and analyze various cultural representations of the natural world. Students consider persuasive rhetoric and environmental aesthetics nature writers employ toward appreciation.
ENG436: Nineteenth-Century American Literature, SUNY New Paltz
Focus on major authors of the Nineteenth Century, including John Burroughs, Rebecca Harding Davis, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Henry James, Sarah Orne Jewett, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman. Consideration of literary movements such as Transcendentalism, Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, Regionalism. Consider historical context and biographical material in depth. Students defined nineteenth-century sensibilities and how literature transformed the nation.
ENG331 and ENG210: American Literature I, SUNY New Paltz, URI, and Marist College
Three and four-credit general education courses designed to provide students with a historical perspective of the literature during the formative years of the United States. Readings reflect the cultural climate of America from the early colonial settlements through the Civil War. Students examine rhetorical strategies inherent in historical, social, and political contexts. Topics include Native American Trickster Tales and Narratives of Encounter (Columbus, de Vaca), Puritan Culture and Ideology (Bradford, Edwards, Crevecoeur), Slavery (Equiano, Stowe, Wheatley), Women’s Rights (Murray, Fuller, Fern), Antebellum Fiction (Hawthorne, Irving, Kirkland, Poe), Poetry (Bryant, Dickinson, Longfellow, Whitman), Romanticism and Transcendentalism (Emerson, Thoreau), Abolition (Douglass, Jacobs, Sojourner Truth). Text: Norton Anthology of American Literature. In Summer of 2010 I designed the initial shell for an online version of this course in the iLearn system at Marist College. I taught this course on ground and online.
ENG332: American Literature II, SUNY New Paltz and Marist College
Four-credit survey course examines texts from post-Civil War to present. Investigates the relationship between literary movements and the social climate during different historical periods. Students analyze and interpret how diverse authors represent dominant and marginalized cultures and address questions about race, class, and gender. Critique how diverse texts are rhetorically constructed for specific purposes. Consideration of criticism by leading scholars. Authors include Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Henry James, Robert Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros, Leslie Marmon Silko, Tim O’Brien, Robert Frost, Sarah Orne Jewett, Anya Seton, and John Burroughs. I taught this course on ground and online.
American Literature 294: John Burroughs and Nature Writing, Vassar College & SUNY Oneonta
Team taught this special-topics course in the summer of 2008, 2010, and 2012 with Daniel G. Payne and John Tallmadge. Intensive one-week course, offered in conjunction with the “Sharp Eyes” Conference at Vassar College and SUNY Oneonta. Students attended all presentations as members of a scholarly community and took detailed notes on each speaker. Participants also interviewed scholars and wrote responses and a research paper based upon essays in Charlotte Zoe Walker’s The Art of Seeing Things: Essays by John Burroughs and Jeff Walker’s edition of Signs and Seasons.
ENG255: Introduction to Literature, Marist College
Students examined a variety of genres, such as short stories (Sarah Orne Jewett’s “A White Heron,” Mary Wilkins Freeman’s “The Revolt of ‘Mother’”), poetry (Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson), a play (Shakespeare’s The Tempest), a novella (Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets), nature writing by John Burroughs, and a film (Mi Familia). Students analyzed and evaluated texts, identified critical issues in readings, synthesized information, and organized their ideas written in written and oral form. They also became familiar with literary terms and applied critical concepts to their writing.
ENG220: Literature and Gender, Marist College
Students asked meaningful questions: What kinds of representations does this text offer about gender roles? What versions of masculinity and femininity are promoted? How do men and women follow or resist “traditional” roles? How does the character’s gender role determine her or his experience? What images and “appropriate” behaviors are associated with women and men? How are men and women defined by their bodies? Class analyzed Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, films Boys Don’t Cry and Fight Club, as well as stories by Zora Neale Hurston, historical selections by Judith Sargeant Murray, and contemporary criticism. Students gave formal presentations on gender roles in popular media.
Writing Center Experience
URI Writing Center Tutor, University of Rhode Island Fall 1995 – Spring 1998
Assisted students at various skill levels in exploring writing assignments. Brainstormed and encouraged students to be creative and involved with their subject. Facilitated the development of a focused thesis, elaboration of details, and supporting examples. Helped revise drafts, proofread, check coherence, grammar, and overall organization. Population included first-year students through Ph.D. students. Designed and held Writers Workshop for graduate students.
Literature Teaching Assistant Development Committee
Core member of the Literature Teaching Development Committee from 1998-2001, which created a formal manual titled: Enhancing the Teaching Experience: A Program for Literature Teaching Assistants. This training manual for ENG 999: Methods of Teaching Literature includes specific workshop programs and pedagogical aids to support TAs in their teaching of literature courses. Members of ENG 999 learn practical instructional skills, such as designing course syllabi, planning actual classroom exercises, writing assignments, and constructing examinations.
Guest Lectures for English and Honors Courses
University of Rhode Island, Fall 2001 – Fall 2004
ENG 485: American Authors: Mark Twain, on Roughing It
ENG 385: Women Writers: Women and the Politics of Place, on Mary Ellicott Arnold and Mabel
Reed’s In the Land of the Grasshopper Song
ENG 260: Women and the Natural World, on American Indian authors Debra Earling, Janet
Campbell Hale, and Inez Peterson
ENG 241: American Literature I, on Henry David Thoreau’s Walden
NEW ENGLAND STUDIES 300, on Henry Beston’s The Outermost House
HONORS PROGRAM 107D: Literature & Environment, on Henry David Thoreau’s Cape Cod
HONORS PROGRAM 107F: Literature & Environment, on Terry Tempest Williams’s Refuge
SUNY New Paltz, Spring 2005
ENG 436.01: 19th C. AMERICAN LITERATURE, on The Great Works of Mark Twain, including “Old Times on the Mississippi,” “The Mysterious Stranger,” and “The Great Landslide
Case,” “Jim Blaine and His Grandfather’s Ram,” “How to Tell a Story,” and “The
Jumping Frog.”
Marist College, Fall 2009 & Fall 2012
Visiting Lecturer for Richard Grinnell and Richard Feldman’s course: HONR351/354-111: Environmental Literature. Gave a formal presentation on the life and writings of John Burroughs. Students also embarked upon a free write and shared their ideas.
Publications
“Epic Narratives of Evolution: John Burroughs and Loren Eiseley.” Chapter 12 of Artifacts and
Illuminations: Critical Essays on Loren Eiseley. Tom Lynch and Susan N. Maher, eds. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2012. 251-69.
“John Burroughs and the Sentimental: Revaluing the Literary Naturalist.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary
Studies in Literature and Environment 17.3 (Summer 2010): 507-25. Published by Oxford University Press.
“John Burroughs and The Hudson River Valley: An Introduction.” The Hudson River Valley
Review (Autumn 2008): 1-9.
“John Burroughs and The Hudson River Valley in Environmental History.” The Hudson River
Valley Review (Autumn 2008): 57-77.
“John Burroughs and the Nineteenth Century: Introduction.” ATQ: 19th C. American Literature
and Culture New Series 21.3 (September 2007): 151-64.
“John Burroughs’s Transpersonal Identity with Place.” Book Chapter in Writing the Land: John
Burroughs and his Legacy. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008.
Book Review of Priscilla Coit Murphy’s What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of
Silent Spring. Amherst, MA: U of Massachusetts P, 2005. ISLE (Summer 2007): 280-81.
“Ornithological Testimonies: Letters to John O’Birds.” ATQ: 19th C. American Literature and
Culture New Series 21.4 (December 2007): 273-99.
“When Congress Debated Migration: John Burroughs, Henry Ford, Ernest Thompson Seton, and
the Congressional Debate over the Weeks-McLean Law.” Wake-Robin: Newsletter of the
John Burroughs Association at the American Museum of Natural History 39.2 (Winter 2007): 6-10.
“Moving Day: Protecting migratory birds ‘on a continental scale’ takes sentiment.” Wake-Robin
(Winter 2008): 10-13.
“Into the Pond-Lily’s Heart: The Influence of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass on John
Burroughs.” Wake-Robin 38.3 (Spring 2006): 4-8.
“Letters to John O’Birds.” Wake-Robin 38.1 (Spring 2005): 3-7.
Editorial Experience
Guest Editor of The Hudson River Valley Review for Special Issue titled John Burroughs in The
Hudson River Valley (Autumn 2008). I wrote the Introduction titled “John Burroughs and The
Hudson River Valley” and a full article titled “Burroughs and The Hudson River Valley in Environmental History.” Issue includes articles by H. R. Stoneback, Jeff Walker, James Perrin Warren, and Frances F. Dunwell.
Editorial Board Member of ATQ: 19th C. American Literature and Culture (2008-2009)
Special Editor of ATQ: 19th. C. American Literature and Culture for Double Special Issue titled: John
Burroughs and the Nineteenth Century (September and December 2007). I wrote and authoritative Introduction “John Burroughs and the Nineteenth Century” and a full article titled “Ornithological Testimonies: Letters to John O’Birds” for this special issue. Issue includes leading Burroughs scholars and ecocritics, such as John Tallmadge, Charlotte Zoe Walker, Jeff Walker, Daniel G. Payne, James Perrin Warren, and Julianne Lutz Newton Warren.
ATQ: 19th C. American Literature and Culture, Assistant Editor September 1998 – May 2001
Proofread, prepared copy for typesetting, oversaw actual printing of quarterly academic journal. Evaluated manuscripts and performed research. Checked quotations, bibliographic data, organized Works Cited, Notes, and MLA format. Made corrections to the title page, cover verso, contents, contributors, and Special Issue announcements. Provided authors with readers’ comments. Coordinated all aspects of production and distribution.
Media Interviews
Orvil Norman, Alderman Teetsel, and Fred Wadnoia. WGHQ Radio (NBC). Kingston, NY.
30 minute piece (live) on John Burroughs. Aired 28 February 2008. 7:30-8:00a.m.
Applebome, Peter. “Rustic Roots, Sprouting Enduring Truths from a Century Ago.” (On John
Burroughs.) New York Times 25 March 2007: YT26.
Barnett, Susan. 12 minute piece (prerecorded) on John Burroughs. WAMC (NPR). Aired 13
November 2007 during “The Roundtable.”
Academic Conferences & Invited Presentations
*June 21, 2001 Flagstaff, Arizona
“Persuasive Strategies in United States Nature Writing: Toward a Taxonomy for the Twenty-First Century” delivered at the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment’s (ASLE) Fourth Biennial Conference at Northern Arizona State University.
*June 6, 2003 Boston, Massachusetts
“John Burroughs’s Ecological Sublime View of Evolution” delivered at ASLE’s Fifth Biennial Conference at Boston University.
*February 21, 2004 Saratoga Springs, NY
“The Emotive in Environmental Aesthetics” delivered at the Fourteenth North American Interdisciplinary Conference: Environment and Community.
*May 15, 2004 West Park, NY
Guest speaker for Slabsides Day at the John Burroughs Sanctuary. Talk titled “Intimate Ornithological Testimonies: Letters to John O’Birds.”
*June 9, 2004 Oneonta, NY
“Intimate Ornithological Testimonies: Letters to John O’Birds” also presented at “‘Sharp Eyes’ III: John Burroughs and his Contemporaries, Near and Far: A Summer Conference on John Burroughs and Nature Writing” at SUNY Oneonta.
*May 21, 2005 West Park, NY
Guest speaker for Slabsides Day at the John Burroughs Sanctuary. Talk is titled “Into the Pond-Lily’s Heart: The Influence of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass on John Burroughs.”
*June 5, 2006 Oneonta, New York
“John Burroughs Transpersonal Identity with Place” delivered at “‘Sharp Eyes’ IV: Writing the Land: John Burroughs and his Legacy” at SUNY Oneonta.
*April 14, 2007 (morning) New Paltz, NY
“John Burroughs’s Rhetoric of Evolution: Poetry, Science, and Spirituality” delivered at the New York College English Association (NYCEA) conference on “Literature and Evolution/Literature and Revolution” at SUNY New Paltz.
*April 14, 2007 (afternoon) West Park, NY
“The Life and Writings of John Burroughs” delivered at Slabsides, Burroughs’s cabin. Invited to speak by Dean Jerry Wyant to his Honors students from Mount Saint Mary College.
*June 2007 Spartanburg, South Carolina
“John Burroughs and the Sentimental” delivered at ASLE’s Seventh Biennial Conference
at Wofford College.
*October 27, 2007 West Park, NY
“John Burroughs, Environmentalism, and The Hudson Valley” delivered at Pond House. Invited to speak to Honors students from Mount Saint Mary’s College.
*February 29, 2008 Port Ewen, NY
“John Burroughs: An Overview” delivered at Town of Esopus Library. Community Lecture Series.
*April 29, 2008 Albany, NY
“The Life and Writings of John Burroughs”
Invited Lecture by coordinator, David Fitzjarrald
The Falconer Natural History 2008 Spring Lecture Series
John J. Sullivan Auditorium, CESTM Building
Sponsored by the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at the University of Albany
*June 10, 2008 Kingston, NY
“John Burroughs in The Hudson Valley”
Invited Lecture by the Public Education Director, Linda Chassman
Husdon River Maritime Museum
*June 18, 2008 Poughkeepsie, NY
“‘Sharp Eyes’ V: John Burroughs and Nineteenth-Century Science.”
Affiliated with the leading organization in my field, Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE).
Presentation title: “John Burroughs and the Passenger Pigeon.”
Local Organizing Committee Member
Vassar College
*June 27, 2008 Doylestown, PA
Presentation: “Edenic Images in United States Nature Writing.”
“The Keyboard in the Garden: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Literature and Mediated Nature.”
ASLE off-year symposium
Delaware Valley College
*June 7, 2010 Oneonta, NY
“Sharp Eyes” VI: Old lessons for a New Millennium: Nature Writing and Environmentalism in the 21st Century.
Affiliated with the leading organization in my field, Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE).
Presentation: “John Burroughs’s ‘The Long Road,” Loren Eiseley’s The Immense Journey, and the Genre of Literary Natural History.”
State University of New York at Oneonta
*October 13 & 14, 2010
The Big Read Program, coordinated at Marist by Dr. Angela Laflen.
Presentation: “Edgar Allen Poe and The Gothic.” The well-attended event was open to the community and held in the Performing Arts Room.
Second Presentation: “Poe and the Gothic Genre” delivered to local middle and high schools as they came to Marist as part of The Big Read event at the Nelly Golletti Theater.
*October 20, 2011 I was a presenter for The Big Read Poughkeepsie 2011 at Marist’s
“Improvising Wilder” component titled “How Do You Imagine Literary Places?” I developed a PowerPoint presentation that asked 200 local high school students, “How do you conceive of the place you inhabit?” We also looked closely at passages in Thornton Wilder’s famous play Our Town through the lens of Place Studies. I also gave local teachers and assignment I developed titled, “Writing About Place,” that they may use with their high school students. Dr. Angela Laflen was the lead organizer.
*June 4-8, 2012. Oneonta, NY
"'Sharp Eyes' VII: Is Nature Writing Dead?" SUNY Oneonta.
Affiliated with the leading organization in my field, Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE).
Opening Keynote Address: "John Burroughs: Life & Works."
State University of New York at Oneonta
*June 2-5, 2014, Oneonta, NY
“‘Sharp Eyes VIII: The Practice of Natural History in Science, Literature, and Art.”
SUNY Oneonta.
Opening Address: “John Burroughs: Life & Works.”
State University of New York at Oneonta
NEH Workshop Attended
*July 9-15, 2006 Concord, MA
Selected to participate in National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshop titled, “Concord, Massachusetts, and American Utopian Thought in the Early 19th Century.” A Workshop sponsored by the Community College Humanities Association (CCHA). Attended scholarly lectures by Robert Gross, David Wood, Lawrence Buell, Lawrence Foster, and Sterling Delano. Visited the Old Manse Museum, the Emerson Home Museum, Brook Farm, Fruitlands, Walden Pond, the Alcott House, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Canterbury Shaker Village, Concord Free Library, Massachusetts Historical Society.
College Composition and Communication Conference Attended
*March 25, 2006 Chicago, IL
“Composition in the Center Spaces: Building Community, Culture, Coalitions.”
Fifty-Seventh Annual Convention
Faculty Development Workshops at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson
*November 9, 2007
Bard Institute for Writing and Thinking. Attended workshop titled: “Biography as Literary and Historical Text. Mark Lytle’s The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement.
*December 7-9, 2007
Bard Institute for Writing and Thinking. Attended three-day workshop titled: “Writing and Thinking.”
*April 18, 2008
Bard Institute for Writing and Thinking. Attended workshop titled: “Why Write? Vision and Purpose in the Classroom.”
*November 7, 2008
Bard Institute for Writing and Thinking. Attended workshop titled: “Self-Invention and Emily Dickinson” as part of Writer as Reader: Making Connections to the Text
Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) Workshops at Marist College
I have attended many workshops through the Center for Teaching Excellence, all of which were very helpful and enlightening.
*September 20, 2007
“Introduction to PowerPoint.”
* October 24, 2007
“Grading and Assessment: Strategies to Enhance Student Learning, Faculty Satisfaction, and Institutional Success.” Dr. Virginia Johnson Anderson
* January 8, 2008
“Introduction to E-Educator.” E-Learning Institute.
* September 23, 2009
“Team Teaching” workshop hosted by Donald Anderson, Rose DeAngelis, and Lou Zuccarello.
September 30, 2010*
“Writing Recommendations Letters for Students.” Workshops leaders included Pat Taylor, Judy Ivanovic, Missy Alexander, Jocelyn Nadeau, Judith Saunders, and Dierdre Sepp.
* October 7, 2009
“What is ‘Higher’ Education For? Purpose, Praxis, and Public Good—A Case for Equipping Students for Public/Global Citizenship.” Presenters included Mar Peter-Raoul, Bruce Luske, and Joseph Zeppetello.
* November 14, 2010
“Introduction to I-Learn (Basic/Intermediate Level).”
* November 18, 2009
“Open Discussion on Grade Integrity.”
* February 3, 2010
Kevin Gaugler’s “Falling Flat: Designing a Curriculum for the 21st Century Student.”
* March 24, 2010
Tommy Zurhellen’s “Every Lecture Needs a Story, Don’t it? Using Narrative to Enhance Pedagogy Details.”
* September 15, 2010
Teaching with The New York Times in the Classroom.
* November 10, 2010
“Dr. Strangeglove, or How We Learned to Love the Core: Skill Building and Application in a College Writing II and Themes in Modern History Cluster.”
*September 21, 2011. Dr. Bruce Luske’s “Entering the Light: The Socialist Project as Mystical
Society.”
*October 5, 2011. Dr. Joseph Zeppetello’s “Using Writing as a Way of Learning: Developing a
Writing Intensive Course.”
*October 23, 2013. Dr. Sherry Dingman’s “How to Best Treat Victims of Human Trafficking.”
*December 10, 2014. Dr. Eileen Curley’s “Tired of Being Bored: Gilded Age Amateur
Theatricals.”
*February 18, 2015. Dr. Kristin Bayer’s “Art and The Real: representational truths about China
through 19th century photography.”
*April 22, 2015. Dr. John Knight’s “Compassion, Religion, and Rationality: A Reading of
Sophocles’ Philoctetes.”
*September 30, 2015. Dr. Angela Laflen’s “What’s Still Wrong With Women’s Images.”
*October 28, 2015. Lisa Neilson’s titled “Immersed: The Writer’s Life.”
Fellowships & Awards
*School of Liberal Arts Faculty Member of the Year, Liberal Arts for 2014-2015. Presented by the Marist College Student Government Association
*Certificate of Recognition Award from the Office of Special Services. April 23, 2014.
*School of Liberal Arts Faculty Member of the Year, Liberal Arts for 2011-2012. Presented by the Marist College Student Government Association
*School of Liberal Arts Faculty Member of the Year, Liberal Arts for 2010-2011. Presented by the Marist College Student Government Association
*Special Recognition Award, School of Liberal Arts, Marist College, 2009
*Recipient of the Hudson River Valley Institute’s 2008 Thomas W. Casey Fellowship
*One of only three graduate students university-wide to be awarded the University of Rhode Island Graduate Student Fellowship for the entire 2003-2004 academic year
*Recipient of the University of Rhode Island Graduate Student Research Fellowship in the Humanities, the James Duffy Fellowship, for Spring 2004.
Designed and Lead Two Formal Workshops for Primary and Secondary Teachers
*Instructor for workshop titled: “The Hudson River Becomes a Corridor of Commerce: The Transition from an Agrarian to an Industrial Economy.” This one-day workshop included trips to historical sites such as the Trapps Mountain Hamlet on the Mohonk Preserve and the D & H Canal Museum. Workshops were designed to help teachers utilize primary and secondary sources in their classrooms. (July 14, 2009)
*I was the Instructor for “The Heritage of the Hudson River Valley: How its Compelling Beauty Inspired the Creation of Distinct Forms of American Art, Architecture and Landscape Design.” This Teaching American History Workshop was intended for Secondary teachers of American History. I led participants on a field trip to Locust Grove, Springside, Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery, and the Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. Participants learned about American Romanticism, the Hudson River School of Art, as well as landscape design and architecture of the region. A major goal of the workshop was to make important links between the local, national, and international movements. Both workshops were sponsored by Dutchess BOCES and the Hudson River Valley Institute at Marist College. These workshops allowed secondary teachers to explore important aspects of the Hudson River Valley and its history. (July 15, 2009)