Come fall, there will be new faces in the halls of Robert Bell. Here are three of them!
Poetry: Dr. Katy Didden
Katy Didden grew up in Washington D.C., and has lived in many cities across the U.S., including Seattle, Chicago, St. Louis, and Eugene. She holds degrees from Washington University, the University of Maryland, and the University of Missouri, and she has taught courses in creative writing, composition, literature, and film.
Her first book, The Glacier’s Wake, won the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize from Pleiades Press and is available for purchase here or here or here. Her poems and reviews appear in journals such as Ecotone, Bat City Review, The Kenyon Review, Image, The Missouri Review, Smartish Pace, Poetry, and the Best New Poets Anthology (2009). She won the Beulah Rose prize from Smartish Pace, three Dorothy Sargent Awards, and an Academy of American Poets Prize, and her work has been featured on Verse Daily and Poetry Daily.
She has received scholarships and residencies from The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, the Hambidge Center, and the MacDowell Colony.
After earning her PhD, she held a Post-Doctoral Fellowship with the Micah Program at St. Louis University, and she co-curated the Observable Reading Series with the poet Rickey Laurentiis for the St. Louis Poetry Center. She held a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University (2013–2014), and she is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the MFA Program at the University of Oregon.
Learn more about her at http://www.katydidden.com/
What is she teaching in Fall 15?
- ENG 285-018 Introduction to Creative Writing, 11 MWF
- ENG 408-002 Advanced Poetry, 5 MW
Literature: Dr. Emily Rutter
Emily Rutter earned her M.A. at North Carolina State University in 2008 and her Ph.D. in Literature at Duquesne University in 2014. This year, she taught at Oberlin College as a Visiting Assistant Professor of English.
About her teaching, Rutter says:
In the classroom, as in my research, I engage students in considering the various kinds of sociopolitical and cultural work that American literature and African-American literature in particular performs in the world. I am especially invested in helping students to think within and across boundaries of genre as well as race and gender. To assist them in this process, I bring a range of critical lenses—theories of race and gender, celebrity studies, and cultural studies, to name a few—to bear on our readings and encourage students to become active participants in literary and sociocultural discourses.
Currently under review, her book manuscript, Constructions of the Muse: Blues Tributes in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century American Poetry, engages in this interdisciplinary, cross-cultural work by examining poetic representations of five blues icons: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Huddie Ledbetter (Leadbelly), and Robert Johnson.
At present, she is at work on a multi-genre project that explores literary representations of Negro League baseball produced by a diverse array of African- American and Anglo-American writers. Her research in African-American poetry has either appeared in or is forthcoming in African American Review, South Atlantic Review, The CEA Critic, and MELUS (the journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States).
What is she teaching in Fall 15?
- ENG 230-002 Reading and Writing about Literature 9:30 T/Th
- ENG 215-001 Introduction to African American Literature 12:30 T/Th
Screenwriting: Prof. Kathryn Gardiner
Born in Muncie, Ind., Kathryn S. Gardiner was raised with three older brothers, two dogs, and two cats. She received her bachelor’s degree in Telecommunications from Ball State University, and earned her master’s degree in Screenwriting from Hollins University in Roanoke, Va.
As a magazine editor for the Hoosier Times’ special products in Bloomington, Ind. from 2007 to 2015, Kathryn spearheaded The South-Central Indiana Wedding Guide, H&L, INstride, BizNet, and Adventure Indiana, the latter a publication that let her try out roller derby, spelunking, gymnastics, contemporary dance, and a GORUCK Challenge.
She spent over three years as an active amateur mixed martial arts fighter, “retiring” in 2011 with a record of 2-2 (or 3-2, if you count her Muay Thai bout in Las Vegas, which she likes to), and she has a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
She has a deep love of The Lord of the Rings, Captain America and Marvel comics, Star Wars and Star Trek, as well as Abraham Lincoln, Jane Austen and William Shakespeare.
What is she teaching in Fall 15?
- ENG 310-001 Screenwriting 9 am MWF
- ENG 310-002 Screenwriting 11 am MWF
- ENG 310-003 Screenwriting 1 pm MWF
- ENG 410-002 Advanced Screenwriting 3-4:15 pm MW
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