BERGER, JASON - Assistant Professor of English, Ph.D., University of Connecticut. Jason comes to us from the University of South Dakota, where he was an Assistant Professor of English. His research and teaching in early American literature is wide-ranging; he is the author of Antebellum at Sea: Maritime Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century America, situating American literature within the field of oceanic studies; he also the co-editor of the major journal, Literature in the Early American Republic. In his ongoing research he places early American literature within a global context; his new book project is "Electrical Subjects: Counter-Humanist Politics in Antebellum America ".
COLOMBE, AUDREY - Visiting Associate Professor in English and Creative Writing, comes back to the University of Houston (she did her PhD here in English and Creative Writing) from the University of Tampa, where, in addition to being a much-published fiction writer (her collection of short stories, "The Apology Machine'', and her novel. '"Visitors'' are currently under review for publication), she has been the Coordinator of their Writing Major; the Director of their Writers at the University series, and their Internship coordinator. Audrey will spearhead the development of new courses in Creative Writing pedagogy for our doctoral and MFA students, and will be the Faculty advisor for our award-winning Undergraduate journal, Glass Mountain, and the Boldface Emerging Writers Conference.
EHLERS, SARAH - Assistant Professor of English, Ph.D., University of Michigan. Sarah was an Assistant Professor at the University of South Dakota. Sarah works on modern American literature within the framework of literary radicalism, African American and ethnic American literature, visual culture and new media studies; her current book project is· “Left of Poetry: Depression America and the Formation of Modern Poetic; which considers the formation of art in relation to histories of globalization and crises of capitalism.
MAJUMDER, AURITRO – Assistant Professor of English, B.A. and M.A., Jadavpur University, India; Ph.D., Syracuse University. Auritro works in the area of South Asian literatures in English with interests in internationalist autobiography, and the interactions between indigenous and local literature and transnationalism in India and the US. His book project and the subject of his dissertation is titled "Insurgent Imaginations: Culture, Postcolonial Planetarity and Maoism in India” provides the first book-length study of the Maoist Naxalite movement in India.
SINGH, KAVITA - Assistant Professor of English. Studied at Princeton University, the University of Paris, and took her Ph.D., Cornell University. She comes most directly from the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto, where she was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow. Working in areas of Caribbean and Caribbean Diasporic literatures, her current book project and the subject of her dissertation is "Translative Carnivalism: Performance and Language in the Caribbean Text” contributes to research into race, theories of translation, and their intersection with postcolonial and Caribbean studies.
TEJADA, ROBERTO - Joins us as the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of English. He took his Ph D in an interdisciplinary track at SUNY Buffalo, working in art, English, media studies, and Comparative Literature. Roberto's work is far-ranging; he is a poet (and author of five books of poetry), he is also the editor of Mandorla: New Writing for the Americas; a prominent art historian his book National Cameru: Photography and Mexico's Image Environment considers how Mexican and US cultures transform each other through their visual imagery. He is also a translator and essayist whose research agenda encompasses comparative media in Latin America and US/Hispanic art and cultural politics. He comes to us from Southern Methodist University, where he held Distinguished Endowed Chair and Professorship in Art History, and more directly, from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, where he was a senior fellow.
2014 -2016 HOUSTON WRITING FELLOWS
CLAIRE ANDERSON Brings a background in English and Linguistics from Rice University to her teaching and writing. Claire completed her MFA in our outstanding Creative Writing Program: her thesis, an historical novel, "'The Invited", set in Amarillo, Texas. Clair is trained and experienced in a range of pedagogical practices, including ESL and bilingual education; she won the competitive Outstanding Teaching Fellow Award for Excellence in Core Curriculum Teaching.
JESSICA LEE Has done her undergraduate and Master’s work in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Hawaii, and comes to us from the University of Arizona, where she did her PhD in their Rhetoric, Composition, and Teaching of English Program. Her dissertation, ''Too Much Information: Agency and Disruptions of Power in Personal Narratives of Mental Illness and Suffering,” shows her multi-disciplinary training and explores the intersection between medicine, mental illness, and rhetoric.
RAMESH POKHAREL Was trained in English and Economics from Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal, before going on lo the University of Texas at El Paso to earn his PhD in Rhetoric and Composition with a dissertation on “( Re-) Mapping the Rhetorical Situation: Toward a Transactional Networked Ecology”. His research interests in the impact of new media and technology on writing pedagogy has led to innovative classroom practices and publications on digital teaching and learning in today’s classroom.
KRISTIANE STAPLETON Comes to us from the University of Wisconsin at Madison; there she completed her dissertation in Renaissance Studies, with a dissertation on “Authorial Agency and Visual Authorship I Works by Early Modern Englishwomen”. Her work on theories of authorship and writing in the Renaissance has carried over into areas of writing pedagogy and writing center administration, and she publishes widely on aspects of technology and interdisciplinarity in the writing classroom.