St. Francis College, Brooklyn Heights, NYC

Department Chairman
Brother A. Edward Wesley, OSF, Associate Professor
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 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
BS, The City College of New York
Ph. D., New York University

Dr. Virginia Franklin has served as director of the St. Francis College Honors Program and is a Fulbright Senior Scholar. As a Fulbrighter, she taught graduate and undergraduate courses at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand and conducted research on issues of identity among African Americans and New Zealand Maori and how these connect to the U.S. Constitution and the Treaty of Waitangi. She has presented scholarly papers in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand and helped establish a study abroad relationship between St. Francis College and the University of Waikato. Dr. Franklin's teaching and scholarly interests are interdisciplinary and international, including drama, indigenous cultures and literatures (ex. Native American, Inuit, Maori, Aborigine, Tahitian, Samoan), law and literature, science and literature, photography and literature. She is currently working on an anthology of world indigenous literature. Dr. Franklin has served on the boards of the Kings County Shakespeare Company and the Academy of Mt. St. Ursula, her alma mater. In 2006 Dr. Franklin received the St. Francis Distinguished Faculty Award.

Dr. Franklin is an avid photographer and has had two solo exhibits of her work at Rio II Gallery in Manhattan and St. Francis College’s Callahan Center gallery. Her work has also been part of a national group exhibit at the Aotea Center in Auckland, New Zealand, as well as a group exhibit at Weill-Cornell Medical Center in NYC, and accepted in the International Image Salon Oldenzaal competition in the Netherlands. Dr. Franklin serves on the Advisory Council of Rehabilitation Through Photography and is a member of the Waikato Photographic Society (New Zealand) and the New York Botanical Zoological Photographic Society. .

Gregory Tague, Professor
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, Gregory F. Tague’s work leans toward reader-response ethical criticism and the history of ideas by examining major English novels during the years 1720-1930. His books include: as author, Character and Consciousness: George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence (2005); Ethos and Behavior: The English Novel from Jane Austen to Henry James (2008); as Editor and Contributor, Origins of English Literary Modernism, 1870-1914 (2009); as Co-Editor (with Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe) and Contributor, Origins of English Dramatic Modernism, 1870-1914 (2010). Dr. Tague’s scholarly studies and reference articles have appeared in a number of important journals and books, and he has presented papers (nationally) twice at the esteemed Modern Language Association annual convention (2002, 2006) and (internationally) at the University of Lincoln, U.K. (2011). Professor Tague’s current work will focus on the philosophical notion of the moral sense in terms of brain science (consciousness and mind) and biology (evolution, ethology, and social emotions).

As a sometime literary writer, Professor Tague’s creative work (two nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize), on subjects such as pain, responsibility, adoption, and nature have appeared in an array of many notable print and online journals. He is also the General Editor of Editions Bibliotekos (www.ebibliotekos.com), a petit literary press of literary anthologies that publishes work from respected writers from all over the world. For each Bibliotekos anthology, Professor Tague typically commissions a St. Francis College English colleague to write a Foreword and a St. Francis College student to act as an editorial assistant. Professor Tague has also organized readings on campus by important writers (who have contributed to a Bibliotekos anthology): such writers include Nahid Rachlin and John Guzlowski.

Among his many teaching and professional activities, Gregory Tague is the recipient of various grants from The New York Council for the Humanities and St. Francis College. He serves on the Editorial Board of Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, and as such he has authored numerous reader reports, (as well as acting as a peer-referee for other respected journals such as College Literature, Comparative Literature, and the D.H. Lawrence Review). Dr. Tague has served on the Board of The D.H. Lawrence Society of North America and is currently on the Editorial Board of a European publisher, Rodopi (for their series on consciousness, literature and the arts). From the college, Prof. Tague edits ASEBL Journal – writing by other academics, scholars, and students devoted to the broadly conceived theme of ethical readings of literature (from both humanistic and scientific perspectives).

Awarded honorary membership in the Duns Scotus Honor Society and inducted into Phi Alpha Theta (a national history honor society, by virtue of his historical and cultural approach to teaching literature), Dr. Tague is typically active on various SFC standing and ad hoc committees and often initiates and directs numerous events. Click for more information about Gregory F. Tague on his website.

Wendy Galgan, Assistant Professor
BA, CUNY Baccalaureate Program
MLS, Pratt Institute
Ph.D. CUNY Graduate Center

Wendy Galgan received her doctorate from CUNY Graduate Center in New York for her dissertation, She’s Poetry in Motion, which 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

 

Robert Bove, Lecturer

Mitchell Levenberg, Adjunct Lecturer

Francis Mescall, 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