Position
Academic Background
Sample Courses   
Teaching Philosophy
Research & Interests   
Notable Academic Appointments & Awards
Publication Highlights   
Selected Scholarly Presentations

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• Professor of English and Women's Studies

Academic Background        

• University of Massachusetts - Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in Poetry, 1971
• University of Oregon - Candidate, Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in Poetry, 1968-69
• University of Massachusetts - Bachelor of Arts in English, 1968

Sample Courses Taught at Providence College

• Creative Writing in Poetry/ Poetry Workshop
• Women in Literature/ Cross-listed between English and Women's Studies
• Gender and Genocide: A Study of Holocaust Literature/ Cross-listed between English and Women's Studies
• Introduction to Women's Studies
• Capstone Seminar in Women's Studies: Women in World Civilizations
• Capstone Seminar in Women's Studies: Searching for Venus: Exploring Ideals of Female Beauty and Love in History, Psychology, and Literature

Teaching Philosophy

Teaching, to me, is not transmitting a body of knowledge from one person to another. It is dynamic interaction in which everyone teaches and everyone learns. I want students to reclaim their imaginations and see how human imagination is connected with the spark of the Divine in them. Learning is an exchange of one person's humanity with another's; the boundaries among us created by gender, race, class, ethnicity, religion, culture, physical condition, and age dissolve as we study the longing, the vulnerability, the strength of humanity set against the struggles in this world that literature captures.  I want students and faculty to come together as seekers and members of small communities in which compassion and rigor intermingle to create an active learning environment. Those hospitable communities further the spirit of sharing within the larger Providence College community. Therefore, teaching, to me, is interdisciplinary, multidimensional and multicultural, and the most rewarding, stimulating endeavor I know.

Research & Interests

As a poet, the imagination intrigues me and energizes me. My interest in language, its power, its beauty, and its capacity to state the monstrous is keen. My writing of poetry is a process that fascinates and compels me as does my reading and study of both verse and prose poetry, fiction, memoir, expository writing, and creative non-fiction written by writers from many centuries and many cultures. I constantly invent new strategies to allow students to give themselves permission to write about their experiences and their feelings, while we study literary production from around the world in many genres including literary theory and criticism.

The history and achievements of women in world civilizations draw me because so often in the past they have gone unnoticed or been taken for granted. Using the analytical categories of gender, race, class, ethnicity, religion, age and physical condition in studying how cultures change gives invaluable insight into human identity and the dignity of all human beings. It also helps us better understand how gender roles develop and change. 

The history of the Holocaust and its literature are strong interests of mine. I have in the past year done my own form of research at Dachau Concentration Camp outside of Munich and will do the same in Strasbourg, France this November. My study and research deepen my writing, but also inspire me to continue to help reveal to our students the need for them to transform the world through positive social change.

Working with the Feinstein Center for Public and Community Service is also an exciting interest; I have worked pairing P.C. students with senior citizens from the St Martin de pores Center in a "Writing to remember" project and have taught the Holocaust Literature course with a community service component within the course. I would like to work on more such collaborations.

Notable Academic Appointments and Awards

• Recipient of The Never Again Award of the Jewish Federation of Rhode Island, "in recognition of contributions to the reduction of anti-Semitism, racism, and prejudice through teaching and example," 2001
• First Director of Women's Studies Program at Providence College, 1995-96
• MacDowell Colony Residency for Creative Writing in Poetry, 1994
• Diamond Jubilee Faculty Award from Providence College, 1993
• Poetry Reading at the Library of Congress at the Invitation of Gwendolyn Brooks, then Consultant to the Library of Congress in her Young Poets Series, 1986

Publication Highlights

Volumes of Poetry

• The Sea is Not Full, Le Dory Publishing House, 1990
• Blowing Kisses to the Sharks, Copper Beech Press, 1978
• The Fishes, a Graphic Poetic Essay in Print co-created with James Baker, Providence College Press, 1977
• The Lone Ranger and the Neo American Church , Archival Press, 1975

Poetry in Contemporary Literary Journals

• Flights, 2005
• Sentence, 2003
• The Prose Poem, 1999 and The Best of the Prose Poem, 2001
• The Northwest Review, 2001
• Southern Poetry Review, 2000

Selected Scholarly Presentations and Activities

• Presenter, Workshop Member, Holocaust Pedagogy with a Community Service Component, Lessons and Legacies Conference, Northwestern University, 2000
• Museum Installation, The poem Deaf Sky Becomes Part of the Permanent Collection of the Holocaust Memorial Museum of Rhode Island, 1995
• Coordinator of Creative Writing Workshop Project for Providence College Students and Members of St. Martin de Porres Senior Center through the Feinstein Institute for Public and Community Service, Writing to Remember, 1995
• Presenter, Poetry Reading and Paper, Images of Victimization in the Poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks, Sylvia Plath, and Jane Lunin Perel, Women and Society Conference, Marist College, 1994
• Poetry Reading, The MacDowell Colony in Conjunction with a Show of Sculptor Ursula Clark's Work, 1994
• Planner, Instructor, Brown University Institute on Modern and Contemporary American Literature for Secondary School Faculty, The De-Mystification of Poetry, New Teaching Strategies, 1985

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