English Faculty
Department Chairman
Brother A. Edward Wesley, OSF, Associate Professor
Education
BA, St. Francis College
MA, Ph.D., University of Notre Dame
Having joined the College staff in 1991, before teaching in the English Department, Bro. Edward Wesley served as Director of Freshman Studies at St. Francis. His long career in education started with teaching in elementary school, then high school and includes positions in secondary school administration and as an assistant principal and principal. Over the years his primary focus and academic interest in Nineteenth Century nonfiction British prose, particularly Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater, has broadened to include medieval literature as well as Modernism and its English and American practitioners in art and literature and contemporary American and British literature. His current professional interests are in curriculum design and instructional pedagogy where he is experimenting with technology in the literature and writing classroom. His membership in Christianity and Literature has influenced his professional research and writing to include articles on Victorian authors, John Henry Cardinal Newman and Gerard Manley Hopkins, as well as a recent interest in Geoffrey Hill. A member of the Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn, Brother Edward Wesley also focuses his attention on Franciscan ideals and uses some Franciscan principles to address an understanding of literature, art, and elements of popular culture in the classes that he teaches.
Virginia A. Franklin, Associate Professor
Education
BS, The City College of New York
Ph. D., New York University
Dr. Virginia Franklin is Director of the St. Francis College Honors Program. In 2001 Dr. Franklin was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand where she taught graduate and undergraduate courses and conducted research on issues of identity among African Americans and New Zealand Maori. She has presented scholarly papers in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand.
Dr. Franklin has served on the boards of the Kings County Shakespeare Company and the Academy of Mt. St. Ursula, her alma mater. Dr. Franklin is an avid photographer and held a solo exhibit of her work at St. Francis's Callahan Center gallery and was part of a national group exhibit at the Aotea Center in Auckland, New Zealand.
Ian Maloney, Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs, Associate Professor
Education
BA, Providence College
MA, Brooklyn College
M Phil, The CUNY Center
Ph.D. and Certificate in American Studies, The CUNY Graduate Center
Dr. Maloney enjoys the interdisciplinary study of American literature and culture. New York writing is his passion and particularly the writings of Herman Melville and Walt Whitman. Ian has been selected for the Speakers in the Humanities Program (2003-2005) by the New York Council for the Humanities and is currently the Managing Editor of the Arthur Miller Journal, which is published at St. Francis College. Ian’s first book, Melville’s Monumental Imagination (Routledge) came out in 2006. Dr. Maloney also wrote the Introductions for the Barnes and Noble editions of Herman Melville’s Israel Potter and Walt Whitman’s Specimen Days, as well as articles on William Apess and Saul Bellow for The Encyclopedia of Ethnic American Literature (Greenwood). Ian has also coauthored an article with Br. Edward Wesley, “The Orphic Quest for Contact and Collaboration across Disciplinary Lines,” which appeared in Collaborating, Literature, and Composition (Hampton Press, 2007). He is currently writing his first book of creative non-fiction.
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Gregory Tague, Associate Professor
Education
BA, Brooklyn College, cum laude (1979)
MA, Hunter College (1990)
M Phil, New York University (1996)
Ph.D, New York University (1998)
As a scholar, philosophical ideas often inspire Gregory F. Tague’s literary theory and criticism. His books include: Character And Consciousness: George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence (Academica, 2005); Ethos And Behavior: The English Novel From Jane Austen to Henry James (Academica, 2007). Dr. Tague also wrote the Introduction to Sea and Sardinia by D.H. Lawrence (Barnes & Noble, 2005), in addition to many other scholarly and literary essays.
Awarded honorary membership in the Duns Scotus Honor Society, Dr. Tague is typically active on various SFC standing and ad hoc committees and often initiates and directs numerous events, such as The Association for the Study of Ethical Behavior in Literature Journal and readings coordinated with The Walt Whitman Project. For more, check Dr. Tague's own website.
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Athena Devlin, Assistant Professor
Education
BA, Barnard College
MA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, Amherst
John Lennon, Assistant Professor
Jason Dubow, Lecturer
Maria Finn, Lecturer
Education
MFA, Sarah Lawrence College
Prior to coming to New York City, Professor Finn spent several seasons as a crewmember on all-female commercial fishing boats and in remote field camps for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. She also traveled extensively in Latin America.
Professor Finn taught a study-abroad course in Cuba and published her students' writing projects online. Among her work, Professor Finn compiled and edited Cuba in Mind, an anthology of essays, poems, novel excerpts and short stories in English on Cuba (Random House, 2004) and Mexico in Mind (2006). A memoir on learning how to dance tango is forthcoming from Algonquin Books. Her essays have appeared in The Best Food Writing 2006 and The Best Women's Travel Writing 2007 as well as Audubon, Metropolis, The New York Times, Wilderness Magazine, Gastronomica, Saveur, Lexus Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, The Chicago Review, New Letters, Exquisite Corpse and The Anchorage Daily News, among others.
Read more on her own website.
Wendy Galgan, Lecturer
Education
BA, CUNY Baccalaureate Program
MLS, Pratt Institute
Wendy Galgan is a doctoral candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York. Her dissertation, She’s Poetry in Motion, focuses on the metaphors of movement in the work of some contemporary American women poets. In addition to contemporary poetry and women’s studies, Professor Galgan’s research interests include such popular culture topics as philosophy and film, science fiction in literature and movies, graphic novels, American Westerns, film noir, and horror fiction and film. Her most recent publications include the poem “Sarah” in The AFCU Journal, an entry on Grace Schulman for The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry, and the chapter “Dale Evans: Girlie-Girl With a Six-Gun,” which appears in Westerns: Paperback Novels and Movies from Hollywood, edited by Paul Varner (Cambridge Scholars Publishing).
Professor Galgan is interested in the nexus of reading, writing and critical thinking, and the ways in which those activities are inextricably linked in both her students’ and her own academic work. She believes that fostering a sense of community within her classroom allows her students to help each other come to the realization that they are not just passive vessels to be filled with information, but are active learners, members of a larger academic community engaged in academic inquiry and study. Professor Galgan is also working to integrate technology into her literature and freshman composition courses.
Learn more at her
website.
Elizabeth Albrecht, Adjunct Lecturer
Julia Cho, Adjunct Lecturer
Allen Durgin, Adjunct Lecturer
Noelle Kocot-Tomblin, Adjunct Lecturer
Alex Kustanovich, Adjunct Lecturer
Mitchell Levenberg, Adjunct Lecturer
Francis Mescall, Adjunct Lecturer
Lauren Novarro, Adjunct Lecturer
James "Terry" Quinn, Adjunct Lecturer
Terry Quinn works in a variety of mediums, sometimes including his students in the creative process. The best example of this is the publication of Volume I and II of
From the Heart of Brooklyn, a collection of poems and short stories written and edited by the students in his creative writing classes. On his own, Quinn has published two novels, a biography and book of poetry:
The Great Bridge Conspiracy (St. Martin's Press; Allen & Unwin),
A Death In Brooklyn (Vivisphere Publishing),
Second Daughter: Growing Up in China, 1930-1949 (Little, Brown; Holt, Rinehart) and
Mad for NewYorkTown: Dark Verse and Light (Straw House Press). His short stories, memoir pieces and plays have appeared in many literary journals and national magazines. Quinn also wrote the book, score and lyrics for two full-length music theater works,
A Second Chance and
Rasputin that have received numerous Off Broadway and regional productions. He has also written, directed and performed in several dramas, comedies and dramatic dialogues, including:
Love Hurts,
Wilde Nights,
Bad Evidence and, co-authored with George Plimpton,
One Sunday at the Fitzgeralds,
Zelda, Scott and Ernest (featuring Norman Mailer in the role of Ernest Hemingway and
Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Friendship and the Feud. Professor Quinn has also written the libretto for two chamber operas,
Hester Prynne at Death and
John Adams in Amsterdam: A Song for Abigail.
Check out his website for
more information.
Sister Louise Sheehan, Adjunct Professor