Department of English
Faculty & Staff
Faculty
Vidhu Aggarwal
Professor, Theodore Bruce and Barbara Lawrence Alfond Chair
Carnegie Hall - Room 102
407.646.2387
B.A. University of Chicago
M.A. University of Southern California
Ph.D. University of Southern California
Dr. Aggarwal’s poetry and multimedia practices engage with world-building, video, and graphic media, drawing mythic schemas from popular culture, science, and ancient texts. Their poetry book, The Trouble with Humpadori (2016), imagines a cosmic mythological space for marginalized transnational subjects. Avatara, a chapbook from Portable @Yo-Yo Labs Press, is situated in a post-apocalyptic gaming world where A.I.’s play at being gods. They have published in the Poetry, Boston Review, Black Warrior Review, Aster(ix) Journal, Leonardo, among other journals. Aggarwal is currently engaging in a “cloud poetics,” as a way of thinking about personal, collective, and digital archives as a collaborate process with comic artists, dancers, and video artists. Daughter Isotope appeared with Operating System in 2021. A Djerassi resident and Kundiman fellow, they teach creative writing and postcolonial/transnational literature.
Katie Avagliano
Visiting Assistant Professor
Orlando Hall - Room 104
407.646.2620
B.A. Florida State University
M.F.A. American University
Katie Avagliano holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing with an emphasis in fiction and non-fiction/memoir from American University. Her writing focusing on themes of coming of age in a world shaped by changing climate and technologies. She has taught writing at all levels at a half dozen community colleges and universities across the country, and uses this experience to teach courses focusing on misinformation and anti-racism. She has also contributed to mental health initiatives at several colleges, pioneering therapy dog programs in conjunction with the student wellness group Active Minds.
William Boles
Professor, Hugh F. and Jeannette G. McKean Chair
Carnegie Hall - Room 106
407.646.2216
B.A. Wake Forest
M.A. University of Maine
Ph.D. University of Tennessee
Dr. Boles teaches courses in dramatic literature and film. He is the author of The Argumentative Theatre of Joe Penhall (McFarland, 2011) and Understanding David Henry Hwang (University of South Carolina, 2013). He is the editor of After In-Yer-Face: Remnants of a Theatrical Revolution (Palgrave, 2020) and Theater in a Post-Truth World: Texts, Politics and Performance (Bloomsbury, 2022). He is currently writing a monograph on Mike Bartlett for Routledge’s Modern and Contemporary Dramatists–Stage and Screen series. He is the co-editor of Methuen Drama’s Agitations series and director of the annual Comparative Drama Conference.
Victoria Brown
Associate Professor
Carnegie Hall - Room 138
407.646.2047
B.A. Vasser College
M.A. University of Warwick
MFA Hunter College
Professor Brown is the author of numerous short stories and the novel, Minding Ben (Hyperion). Her current fiction explores the intersection between the self and the story, relentlessly interrogating Tim O’Brien’s assertion that “story truth can be truer than happening truth.” Professor Brown’s nonfiction essays exploring issues of race and racial belonging, parenting, and relationships have appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, Harper's Bazaar, Apogee Journal, and elsewhere. Her more critical writing has been published in Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies. She teaches fiction, creative nonfiction, and transnational/postcolonial literature. She was recognized for her teaching with a 2022 Arthur Vining Davis Excellence in Teaching Award.
Martha Cheng
Professor
Carnegie Hall - Room 104
407.646.2603
B.A. Christendom College
M.A. Carnegie Mellon University
Ph.D. Carnegie Mellon University
Dr. Cheng holds a PhD in Rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon University. Her research investigates discourse as constitutive of identity and community in the public sphere, most recently focusing on governmental apologies for historic wrongs. She teaches courses on political speech, crisis communication, language and culture, and writing. She has been recognized for her teaching, research, and service with a Cornell Distinguished Faculty Award in 2018.
Matthew Forsythe
Associate Professor
Carnegie Hall - Room 135
407.691.1341
B.A. Calvin College
M.A. University of Tennessee
Ph.D. University of Georgia
Dr. Forsythe specializes in writing fiction and creative nonfiction. In addition to writing workshops, he teaches courses on Editing Essentials, The Plots of PIXAR, and Writing Books for (& with) Children. He directs the first-year writing program and serves as the Faculty Director of the Honor Council. His research interests include collaborative writing, and his co-authored stories with Rollins undergraduates have appeared in Sky Island Journal and The Headlight Review.
Ben Hudson
Assistant Professor
Carnegie Hall - Room 136
407.646.2605
B.A. New York University
M.A. New York University
Ph.D. University of Georgia
Dr. Hudson's research and teaching focus on nineteenth-century British literature; his secondary interests are in aestheticism, sexuality studies, and the intellectual history of amateurism. His current manuscript Exquisite Amateurs explores dilettantism as a crucial intellectual ideal at the fin de siecle. His research has appeared recently in Victorian Poetry and The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation.
Suzanne Jamir
Visiting Assistant Professor
Carnegie Hall - Room 101
407.646.2839
B.A. Clemson University
M.A. Texas State University
Ph.D. Florida State University
Dr. Jamir specializes in creative writing, and her own writing is largely in fields fiction and creative nonfiction with a focus on the second-generation immigrant Iranian-American experience. Her writing has been recently published or is forthcoming in journals like Bennington Review, Cincinnati Review, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, and Notre Dame Review. Dr. Jamir is the author of the story collection In the Middle of Many Mountains (2013, Press 53).
Jill Jones
Professor
Carneige Hall - Room 103
407.646.2528
B.A. University of New Hampshire
M.A. University of New Hampshire
Ph.D. Tufts University
Jill Colvin Jones is Professor of English at Rollins College where she teaches courses that include American Literature, popular culture, and African-American Literature; also, Monsters in Literature and Film, Mean Girls, and Breaking Bad and the Great American Novel. Jones has published articles and chapters on mystery novels, Zora Neale Hurston, Harriet E. Wilson, Toni Morrison, Majorie Kinnan Rawlings, James Weldon Johnson, Connie May Fowler, and Jerry Springer and the Puritans. She also pops off in the press from time to time, from The New York Times to the Orlando Sentinel, and you can find her on podcasts and local television stations giving her opinions on Hurston, Hemingway, Huckabee, and hair products.
Isabelle Karleskint
Visiting Assistant Professor
Orlando Hall - Room 102
407.646.2616
H.B.A. University of Toronto
M.A. University of Central Florida
Ph.D. Indiana University of Central Florida
Dr. Karleskint holds a Ph.D. in English Composition and Applied Linguistics from IUP, and she specializes in rhetorical theory. Her research centers on camp style, particularly in terms of how it intersects with the popular music industry, mainstream media, internet culture, and composition pedagogy. In the classroom, she bridges writing with performance studies, including stage and screen. During her time at UCF, she helped judge the Knights Write showcase and earned the 2019 Department of Writing and Rhetoric Award for Graduate Student Excellence. She has presented her pedagogical work at NCPTW and CCCC, and will again at PAMLA in Fall 2023.
Lucy Littler
Senior Lecturer
Carnegie Hall - Room 115
407.646.2502
B.A. North Carolina State University
M.A. Appalachian State University
Ph.D. Florida State University
Dr. Littler’s research and teaching interests include the dynamics of race in American culture, composition studies, and the science of teaching and learning. Her work has been published in The Southern Literary Journal, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, and the Associated Colleges of the South's Open Access Resources. She is Director of Rollins Foundations in the Liberal Arts (rFLA), the college’s general education program.
Jana Mathews
Professor
Carnegie Hall - Room 113
Ph.D. Duke University
M.A. University of Colorado
B.A. Brigham Young University
Dr. Mathews' primary research and teaching focus on the literature and culture of medieval and early modern England, with concentrations in legal studies, material culture, and the history of kingship. Recent essays appear in Material Religion; the Journal of Illustration; and the Journal for the Study of British Cultures. Her secondary research–collegiate sororities and fraternities–emerged as a surprising but exciting outgrowth of serving as a longtime faculty advisor of several Greek-letter organizations. She is the author of The Benefits of Friends: Inside the Complicated World of Today’s Sororities and Fraternities (UNC Press, 2022). She is honored to have received the Arthur Vining Davis and Cornell Distinguished Faculty awards for excellence in teaching, research, and service; the McKean Award (nominated by the senior class); and Cornell Distinguished Teaching Award.
Paul D. Reich
Professor
Carnegie Hall - Room 105
407.691.1273
A.B. Rollins CollegeM.A. Purdue University
Ph.D. Purdue University
When he’s not running marathons, Dr. Reich teaches classes in literature and media studies, including courses on Asian literature and film, contemporary television, and adaptation. His essay, “Precious Resources: Cultural Archiving in the Post-Apocalyptic Worlds of Mr. Burns and Station Eleven,” has recently appeared in Text & Presentation. With Rollins undergraduate Emily O’Malley, he has authored two essays on critically acclaimed television shows Westworld, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Watchmen.
Emily Russell
Department Chair / Professor, Kenneth Curry Chair of Literature
Carnegie Hall - Room 114
407.691.1340
B.A. Cornell UniversityM.A. University of California, Los Angeles
Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles
Dr. Russell's field is American literature with an emphasis in 20th and 21st century fiction, the multiethnic novel, and medical humanities. She is the author of Transplant Fictions: A Cultural Study of Organ Exchange (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019) and Reading Embodied Citizenship: Disability, Narrative, and the Body Politic (Rutgers University Press, 2011).
Anne Zimmermann
Lecturer
Orlando Hall - Room 108
407.691.1705
B.A. Westminster College
M.F.A. Purdue University
Professor Zimmermann’s areas of teaching are introductory composition, American literature and creative writing. Her areas of interest and research include trauma, generational culture and Disney‘s global influence.
Staff
Work Study Assistants
Asha Budhai
Work Study Assistant
Kelsey Grace Kidd
Work Study Assistant
Emeritus Faculty
Barbara Carson
Theodore Bruce and Barbara Lawrence Alfond Professor of English (1979-2007)
B.A., Florida State UniversityM.A., Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University
Ed Cohen
Professor
B.A. University of Maryland
M.A. University of Iowa
Ph.D. University of New Mexico
Margaret "Maggie" Dunn
Professor of English, and Coordinator of English Major and Minor in the Hamilton Holt School (1989-2008)
B.A. and M.A. Stetson UniversityPh.D. Indiana University at Bloomington
Carol Frost
Professor Emeritus (2008-2022)
B.A. SUNY, OneontaM.A. Syracuse University
Frost taught poetry and directed Winter with the Writers. Along with essays in aesthetics, her poetry publications include Honeycomb (2010), The Queen's Desertion (2006), I Will Say Beauty (2003), Love and Scorn (2000), New and Selected Poems (2000), Venus and Don Juan (1996), and Pure (1993).
Alan Nordstrom
Professor
A.B. Yale University
M.A. University of Michigan
Ph.D. University of Michigan
Maurice O'Sullivan
Professor of English (1975-2020)
A.B. Fairfield UniversityM.A. Case Western Reserve University
Ph.D. Case Western Reserve University
Professor O'Sullivan specialized in 18th-century English literature, minority literature, popular culture, and Florida studies.
Kenneth Curry Professor of Literature
Steve Phelan
Professor of English (1971-2007)
B.A. and M.A., Stetson UniversityPh.D., Indiana University at Bloomington.
Thaddeus Seymour
Professor of English and President Emeritus, (1978-1990)
A.B., The Pontifical College JosephinumPh.D., The Ohio State University
Jean West
Irving Bacheller Chair of Creative Writing (1972-1997)
B.A. University of California at BerkeleyM.A., Ph.D.,
Lezlie Laws
Professor Emerita of English
Ph.D., University of Missouri-Columbia