From the Chair

In my February comments, I indicated that this month I hoped to be able to announce the names of the new tenure-track assistant professors who will be joining the Department of English this coming August, as well as the names of new staff members who will bring us to a full complement of administrative staff.

Tom Douglass, Contemporary Literature. Tom completed his doctorate at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1995; he has been serving as a visiting assistant professor at ECU since that time. Tom is editor of the University of Tennessee's Appalachian Echoes Reprint Series and has already published two books as part of that series, with two scheduled to appear shortly. 

Michelle Eble, Technical and Professional Communication. Michelle expects to complete her doctorate in Rhetoric and Composition at Georgia State University this May. She has had considerable experience with web design and editing. 

Gregg Hecimovich, Victorian Literature. Gregg completed his doctorate at Vanderbilt in 1997; since that time he has held assistant professor positions at Eastern Illinois University and Seattle University. Gregg has edited and provided an introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of Trollope's Phineas Redux and has published articles in such journals as ELH and Victorian Poetry. 

Nicole Nolan, Medieval Literature. Nicole expects to receive her doctorate this coming summer from Rutgers University, where she currently holds a Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Grant as well as a university dissertation fellowship. 

Maya Socolovsky, Hispanic American Literature. Maya received her doctorate from the University of Oxford in 2000. This year she has been a visiting assistant professor of English at Colorado College. Maya has an article that appears in the March issue of PMLA. 

David Wilson-Okamura, Renaissance Literature. David completed his doctorate in December 1998 at the University of Chicago. Since 1999, he has served as a visiting assistant professor at Macalester College. David has articles forthcoming from ELH and English Literary Renaissance. 

Two new staff members have also joined the department. Serving as receptionist, liaison for the Women's Studies Program, and assistant to the Director of Undergraduate Studies is Christine Bendle. Christine received her B.A. in History from East Carolina University this past May. Working with scheduling, faculty travel, and English Education is Lisa Santowasso, who also graduated this past May from East Carolina University, but with a B.A. in English. As an undergraduate, Lisa was one of the department's student workers. 

With the addition of these new colleagues, the department would seem to be poised to enter the 2002-03 academic year fully staffed, but flux within the Department of English seems to be a constant, for we now have two additional faculty searches underway. These searches are occasioned by Associate Professor Collett Dilworth's decision to retire at the end of the first summer session and by Assistant Professor Agnes Bolonyai's decision to accept a position at North Carolina State University. The department will greatly miss these two valued colleagues, but looks forward to identifying those who will be replacing them. I hope that the May issue of The Common Reader, the final issue for this academic year, will provide an opportunity for me to identify who these new colleagues will be.