UAF Department of English Contact Information

Degrees:
BA (Hons), Bristol Polytechnic, now the University of the West of England (Humanities: English and Art History)
MA, University of East Anglia (Creative Writing)
MFA, University of Alaska, Fairbanks (Creative Writing)
PhD, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (English Literature)

Teaching:
Gerri Brightwell teaches graduate writing courses (Forms of Fiction, Writers' Workshop) plus undergraduate courses such as Introduction to Creative Writing, Intermediate Creative Writing: Fiction, and courses in novel writing. She also teaches world literature (with a focus on detective fiction) and women's literature.

Writing:
Gerri Brightwell's writing has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Southwest Review, Copper Nickel, Redivider, BBC Radio 4's Opening Lines and elsewhere. Her story "Williamsville" was featured in The Best American Mystery Stories 2017. She is the author of the novels Turnback Ridge (Torrey House Press), Dead of Winter (Salt, UK), The Dark Lantern (Crown) and Cold Country (Duckworth).

all pronouns

Degrees:
BA, Cornell University
MA, University of Southern California
Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies, University of Southern California
PhD, University of Southern California

Areas of Expertise:
European and American literary and visual culture, especially Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, H.D., James Joyce, Franz Kafka, and Claude Cahun; Theory; Gender and Sexuality Studies

Background:
Professor Coffman arrived at UAF in 2005 as the department’s specialist in twentieth-century British literature. As such, when not on sabbatical she teaches the department’s catalog listings in twentieth- and twenty-first century British literature. She also offers a variety of other courses about modernist literature, British literature, world literature, women’s literature, queer theory, literary theory, and writing; she served as Chair of the English Department from 2020-2024 and as Coordinator of UAF’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program from 2009-2011. Before moving to Fairbanks, she taught from 2001-2003 at the University of California, Santa Cruz and from 2003-2005 at California State University, Bakersfield.

Her research uses psychoanalytic, feminist, and queer theories to analyze twentieth and twenty-first century literature, visual art, and film from Europe and the United States. Her first book, Insane Passions: Lesbianism and Psychosis in Literature and Film (Wesleyan UP), appeared in December 2006; her second, Gertrude Stein's Transmasculinity (Edinburgh UP), was published in June 2018; and her third, Queer Traversals:  Psychoanalytic Queer and Trans Theories (Bloomsbury Academic), came out in February 2022. She has written articles on psychoanalytic queer and trans theory, Franz Kafka's The Trial, James Joyce's Ulysses, Gertrude Stein's experimental writings, Monique Truoug's The Book of Salt, Virginia Woolf's Orlando, and Djuna Barnes' Nightwood. A Fulbright Scholar in Austria from March-June 2019 and a past participant in a 2006 National Endowment for the Humanities seminar on “Modernist Paris,” Professor Coffman is currently at work on articles about agender in Claude Cahun and non-binary gender in H.D.. 

Degrees:
BA, Adams State College, Secondary Education (Concentration in Physical Education)
MA, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Creative Thesis in Short Fiction)
PhD University of Nebraska-Lincoln, English (Creative Dissertation in Nonfiction)

Areas of Expertise:
Creative writing, fiction and nonfiction; travel and nature writing; environmental literature; contemporary literature of the U.S. West

Background:
Daryl Farmer is the author of two books: Bicycling beyond the Divide, a nonfiction narrative that chronicles a bicycle ride across the US West, and Where We Land, a collection of short fiction. His work focuses on human/environment interactions. His recent work has appeared in a variety of literary journals including Terrain.org, Ploughshares, and Natural Bridge.

Degrees:
BA,  Boston College (Major: English; Minor: Ancient Civilization)
MA, University of Toronto  (Medieval Studies)
PhD, University of Toronto (Medieval Studies and Collaborative PhD Program in Women and Gender Studies)  

Background:
Eileen M. Harney received her BA in English with a minor in Ancient Civilizations from Boston College and her MA and PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto. She also completed the collaborative PhD program in Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto. Her research centers on the sacrificial woman in Western literature. A subsection of this interest was explored in her dissertation, which focused on the narratological developments and alterations of virgin martyrs' sex-specific or sex-emphasized tortures throughout the medieval period. Her current research areas include depictions of women's spirituality in the Middle Ages, gender motifs in the early and medieval Christian traditions, contemporary depictions of the tormented female body and heroic female character, and gender constructs in graphic novels and science fiction/fantasy television series and films. Other scholarly interests include Arthurian literature, the works of C. S. Lewis, and Old and Middle English heroic narratives.

he / him

Degrees:
BLS, University of South Dakota (Liberal Studies)
MA, University of North Dakota (English)
PhD, University of Southern Mississippi (English: Creative Writing)

Areas of Expertise:
Fiction Writing, Flash Forms, Editing and Publishing, Technical and Professional Writing

Background:
Joseph Holt teaches courses in creative writing and technical writing, and he is faculty advisor for the campus undergraduate journal Ice Box. His fiction has appeared in Gulf Coast, New Ohio Review, and Beloit Fiction Journal. His nonfiction and critical writing has appeared in The Sun, Colorado Review, and Prairie Schooner. Holt studied in the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he received an AWP Intro Journals Award in fiction. His debut story collection, Golden Heart Parade, was published in Fall 2021 by Santa Fe Writers Project. His personal website is holt.ink.

she / her

Degrees:
BA, Cornell University (English)
MFA, University of Oregon (Creative Writing)
PhD, University of Utah (Literature & Creative Writing)

Areas of Expertise:
Creative Writing, Poetry and Poetics, Horror Literature and Cinema, Eco-Literature and Cinema

Background:
Sara Eliza Johnson's first book, Bone Map, was selected for the 2013 National Poetry Series and published by Milkweed Editions. Her second book of poetry, Vapor, is forthcoming with Milkweed in Fall 2022. Her poetry has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, New England Review, Boston Review, Copper Nickel, Ninth Letter, Blackbird, Crazyhorse, Pleiades, the Best New Poets series, Salt Hill, Cincinnati Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day program. Her nonfiction has appeared in AGNI, Bright Wall/Dark Room, and Alaska Quarterly Review. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, two Winter Fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and a residency from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. You can find more information and updates at www.saraelizajohnson.com.

Degrees:
BA, Colby College (English and American Studies)
MSEd, Nova Southeastern University (Secondary Education)
MA, University of Miami
PhD, University of Miami

Areas of Expertise:
Shakespeare, Early Modern English Law and Literature,  Doris Lessing, Thomas Pynchon, Adaptation Theory and Studies

Background:
Terry Reilly teaches the Shakespeare courses at UAF and graduate seminars in Early Modern Law and Literature. Occasionally, he teaches survey courses in British Literature, World Literature, and graduate seminars in Twentieth and Twenty-first century British and American literature. He has published articles on Shakespeare's plays, and other medieval and Early Modern English authors and topics (Chaucer, Lyly, Harrison, Sackville and Norton, inheritance law, and clandestine marriage). He has also published numerous articles on the works of Doris Lessing and Thomas Pynchon as well as articles on the works of Joseph Conrad, Jack London, Jenny Diski, and James Joyce.

Degrees:
BA, Emory University (Anthropology)
MA, University of Georgia (English)
PhD, University of Pittsburgh (English/Critical and Cultural Studies)

Background:
Jennifer Schell received her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in the English Department's Critical and Cultural Studies Program. Her specialties include American literature, Arctic writing, animal studies, and environmental humanities.  Her book entitled, "A Bold and Hardy Race of Men":  The Lives and Literature of American Whalemen was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2013. She recently completed a series of articles on the ecogothic. Highlights include, "Ecogothic Extinction Fiction: The Extermination of the Alaskan Mammoth" and "Polluting and Perverting Nature: The Vengeful Animals of Frogs." She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Ghost Species: North American Extinction Writing and the Ecogothic, 1820-2017.

she / her

Degrees:
BA, Creighton University (Creative Writing, Poetry)
MA, University of Kansas (English Language and Literature)
PhD, University of Massachusetts Amherst (Rhetoric and Composition)

Areas of Expertise:
Pedagogy, Community Writing, and Metaphor

Background:
Sarah Stanley teaches courses in composition and occasionally rhetoric and pedagogy. Stanley also works directly with writers who write from carceral settings and is co-founder of the Learning Inside Network. In order to make more visible the impact of sharing resources, her current practitioner case study research is investigating how newly available resources get taken up within small activity systems such as a local Playback Theatre group. She is currently behind a new project called the InsideOut StoryLab, a way of increasing more story exchanges between isolated groups of people.

he / him

Degrees:
BA, Winthrop University (English)
MA, University of Alaska Fairbanks (English)
PhD, West Virginia University (English)

Areas of Expertise:
American Literature, African American Literature, Author Studies & Biography, Genre Studies & Literary Movements, and Regional Literatures

Background:
Jericho Williams teaches early and nineteenth-century American literature courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels at UAF, as well as other composition and literature classes. His research has appeared in Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, The James Fenimore Cooper Society Journal, The New Centennial Review, Studies in American Naturalism, Studies in American Culture, South Atlantic Review, Supernatural Studies, and The Thoreau Society Bulletin. He is the editor of three books: Critical Insights: Frederick Douglass, Critical Insights: The Color Purple, and Critical Insights: Ralph Waldo Emerson.