English Department

Faculty

Jay Dickson

Professor of English and Humanities
ETC 218 | 503-517-7906 | Email

A.B. 1988 Harvard College; Ph.D. 1996 Princeton University. Reed College 1996-99, 2001-.

Academic Focus: The novel, British modernism, Victorian literature, queer studies, postcolonial studies.

Michael Faletra (Chair)

Professor of English and Humanities
Vollum 219 | 503-517-7729 | Website | Email

B.A. 1994 Boston University; Ph.D. 2000 Boston College. Reed College 2001–04, 2007–09, 2010–.

Academic Focus: Medieval British literatures, Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, Arthurian literature, narrative theory, Celtic studies, folklore studies, and children's literature.

Maureen Harkin

Professor of English and Humanities
Vollum 303 | 503-517-7939 | Email
On sabbatical 2024-25.

B.A. 1983 University of Melbourne; M.A. 1986, Ph.D. 1994 Johns Hopkins University. Reed College 2002-.

Academic Focus: Eighteenth-century British literature and visual art, Romanticism, nineteenth-century novel, literary theory, Irish literature, film.

Sara Jaffe

Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing
Vollum 130 | Email

Reed College 2014-2015, 2018-2020, 2023-

Academic Focus: Fiction, non-fiction

Joan Naviyuk Kane

Associate Professor of Creative Writing
Vollum 219 | Email

Reed College 2023-.

Academic Focus: Poetry

Nathalia King

David Eddings Professor of English and Humanities
Vollum 305 | 503-517-7697 | Email

B.A. 1978 University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Ph.D. 1992 New York University. Reed College 1987-.

Academic Focus: Literary, narrative, and rhetorical theory, the novel, text-image relations, and theories of consciousness.

Robert S. Knapp (Emeritus)

Reginald F. Arragon Professor of English and Humanities
Email

B.A. 1962 University of Colorado; M.A. 1963 University of Denver; Ph.D. 1968 Cornell University. Reed College 1974-.

Academic Focus: Shakespeare, Renaissance literature, literary theory.

Laura Leibman

William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English and Humanities
Greywood 115 | 503-517-7329 | Website | Email
On leave 2024-25.

B.A. 1989 University of California, Davis; M.A. 1993, Ph.D. 1995 University of California, Los Angeles. Reed College 1995-.

Academic Focus: Early American literature and culture, American poetry, poetics and ethnopoetics, Native American literature and culture, postcolonial theory, gender theory, American studies.

Lucía Martínez Valdivia

Associate Professor of English and Humanities
Eliot 205A | 503-517-4946 | Email

BM 2005 Florida State University. MA 2007 Columbia University. MA 2008, PhD 2014 University of Pennsylvania. Reed College 2014–.

Academic Focus: Early modern lyric and poetics, Reformation literature and culture, book history, music and literature, aesthetics, cognitive poetics.

Peter Miller

Visiting Assistant Professor English & Humanities
Greywood 117 | Email

Reed College 2023-.

Academic Focus: Poetry and poetics, critical prosody, Romanticism and its legacies, postcolonial poetry, media and sound studies, music and literature, digital humanities and textual studies.

Roger J. Porter (Emeritus)

Professor of English and Humanities
503-517-7466 | Email

B.A. 1958 Amherst College; M.A. 1959, Ph.D. 1967 Yale University. Reed College 1961-.

Academic Focus: Modern drama, modern fiction, Shakespeare, autobiography as a literary form, nonfiction prose.

Kritish Rajbhandari

Assistant Professor of English and Humanities
Greywood 117 | 503-517-4758 | Email

Ph.D. 2019 Northwestern University, B.A. 2012 Reed College. Reed College 2019-.

Academic Focus: Twentieth- and twenty-first-century postcolonial and diasporic literatures, Indian Ocean literature and culture, postcolonial theory, critical theories from the global South, translation.

Robert Ribera

Visiting Assistant Professor of English
Greywood 115 | Email

BA 2005, MA 2006 Saint John’s University. MFA 2008, PhD 2016 Boston University. Reed College 2024-. Reed College 2024-.

Academic Focus: Documentary, animation history, adaptation studies, Italian Cinema, class and labor in American cinema, sound and music in film.

Peter Rock

Professor of Creative Writing
Vollum 127 | 503-517-7659 | Website | Email

A.A. 1988 Deep Springs College; B.A. 1991 Yale College; Stegner Fellow 1995-97 Stanford University. Reed College 2001-.

Academic Focus: Fiction and non-fiction.

John Sanders

Visiting Assistant Professor of English and Humanities
Greywood 115 | 503-517-4782 | Email

B.A. 2015 University of Massachusetts Amherst; PhD 2022 Syracuse University. Reed College 2022-.

Academic Focus: Film and media studies, Classical Hollywood film, new media, game studies, literary adaptation, US popular culture.

Pancho Savery

Professor of English and Humanities
Vollum 137 | 503-517-7622 | Email
On sabbatical 2023-25.

B.A. 1972 Stanford University; Ph.D. 1980 Cornell University. Reed College 1995-.

Academic Focus: African American literature; American literature and cultural history; modern and contemporary drama, poetry, and fiction; creative writing; American Indian fiction.

Gail Berkeley Sherman (Emerita)

Professor of English and Humanities
Email

B.A. 1975 Barnard College; M.A. 1977, Ph.D. 1982 Princeton University. Reed College 1981-2022.

Academic Focus: 20th-century American fiction, graphic narrative, medieval literature, gender studies, biblical narrative.

Dustin Simpson

Visiting Assistant Professor English & Humanities
Eliot 125 | 503-517-7488 | Email

B.A. 1996 University of Arizona; M.A. 2001 Miami University of Ohio; Ph.D. 2012 University of Chicago. Reed College 2012-.

Academic Focus: American modernist poetry, 19th century French poetry, contemporary poetry in English, theories of lyric, history and forms of lyric, love poetry.

Ellen Keck Stauder (Emerita)

Professor of English and Humanities
Email

B.M. 1973 Eastman School of Music; M.A. 1975 College of St. Rose; Ph.D. 1982 University of Chicago. Reed College 1983-.

Academic Focus: Modern poetry, Victorian literature, prosody, literature and the arts.

Lisa M. Steinman (Emerita)

Kenan Professor of English and Humanities
Email

B.A. 1971, M.F.A. 1973, Ph.D. 1976 Cornell University. Reed College 1976-2022.

Academic Focus: Modern and contemporary poetry, creative writing, Romanticism, eighteenth-century poetry.

Additional links: Hubbub

Sarah Wagner-McCoy

Associate Professor of English and Humanities
Greywood 114 | 503-517-7663 | Email

B.A. 2002 Columbia University. M.A. 2003 University College Dublin. Ph.D. 2011 Harvard University. Reed College 2011-.

Academic Focus: Nineteenth- and twentieth-century American fiction, transatlantic literature and culture, Irish drama and Irish studies, pastoral and environmental writing, the politics of classical education in postbellum America.

Simone Waller

Assistant Professor of English and Humanities
Greywood 110 | 503-517-4848 | Email

B.A. 2011 Miami University, Ph.D. 2019 Northwestern University. Reed College 2020-.

Academic Focus: Early modern drama and prose, Shakespeare, English Reformation literature and culture, Tudor political literature, historiography, performance studies, publics and the public sphere.