English Faculty
Assistant Professor
Email: abdelkar@grinnell.edu
Sherif Abdelkarim specializes in English historical linguistics and Old English, Middle English, and classical and early postclassical Arabic literature. He is the author (with Katherine Jacka, Ahmad Kzzo, and Matt King) of Al-Idrisi's Norman Kingdom in the South: The Book of Roger in Translation...
Associate Professor
Email: allenleah@grinnell.edu
Leah Claire Allen is Associate Professor in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies (GWSS) and English at 51²è¹İapp College. Professor Allen teaches Introduction to GWSS, Theory and Methods in GWSS, Masculinity in American Literature, the capstone Senior Seminar in GWSS, and Queer and Trans...
Associate Professor
Director, Center for the Humanities
Email: andrewss@grinnell.edu
I teach mostly 18th and 19th century American Literature, but I like to roam a little, especially if given the opportunity to team teach or supervise MAPs. During any four-year cycle I am likely to offer a seminar on Whitman and Dickinson; an American poetry seminar titled “Beat, Black, and...
Associate Professor
Email: barlow@grinnell.edu
George Barlow is a poet who earned a B.A. in English from California State University, Hayward, an M.A. in American Studies and an M.F.A. in Poetry, both from the University of Iowa. He specializes in African-American literature, poetry, and teaches Craft of Poetry and the Poetry Seminar most...
Assistant Professor
Email: dantasbru@grinnell.edu
Bruna Dantas Lobato is a fiction writer, translator of Brazilian literature, and Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at 51²è¹İapp College. Her debut novel, Blue Light Hours, was published in 2024 by Black Cat/Grove Atlantic in North America and is forthcoming in several languages...
Professor
Email: dobbs@grinnell.edu
Elizabeth Dobbs regularly taught courses on rhetoric and historical linguistics, and seminars on Chaucer and other English and European medieval writers. She co-taught a MAP Seminar, “Conceptions of Space and Place in Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-1650,†and has directed MAPs for the Linguistics...
Professor
Email: eklundhi@grinnell.edu
Hillary Eklund specializes in literatures of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and regularly teaches courses on Shakespeare, Renaissance poetry, and literature and environment. In her scholarship, she seeks to understand the moral attitudes and material practices of the era that gave rise to...
Associate Professor
Email: JOHNSOLA@grinnell.edu
Lakesia D. Johnson is Associate Professor of Gender, Women’s, & Sexuality Studies and English at 51²è¹İapp College. Johnson received a bachelor’s from Smith College. She earned her J.D., M.A., and Ph.D. in Women Studies from the Ohio State University. Her areas of teaching and research include Black...
Assistant Professor
Email: lavanmak@grinnell.edu
Makeba Lavan is an assistant professor in English at 51²è¹İapp College. Generally speaking, her research focuses on (African) American Studies, Afrofuturism/Speculative Fiction and Popular Culture. In the fall of 2018, Makeba was granted a fellowship in the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality department at...
Instructor
Email: montague@grinnell.edu
Clara Montague is a lecturer in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies at 51²è¹İapp College as well as a doctoral candidate in Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her dissertation project, Women’s Studies Worldwide, examines the transnational history of this interdisciplinary...
Associate Professor
Email: phanhai@grinnell.edu
Hai-Dang Phan has taught ethnic American literature, the craft of poetry, introduction to literary analysis, and studies in genre (the essay). He is a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Creative Writing . His poems have been published in The New Yorker , Poetry , Best American Poetry...
Professor
Email: savarese@grinnell.edu
Professor Savarese has been on the faculty at 51²è¹İapp for 21 years. He has also taught at Deerfield Academy, Keene State College, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland, the University of Florida, Duke University, and the Newberry Library in Chicago. In 2012-2013, he was a fellow at Duke University’s...
Professor
Samuel R. and Marie-Louise Rosenthal Professor of Humanities
Email: simpsone@grinnell.edu
Erik Simpson's literature courses focus on British writing from Shakespeare to the present, especially the literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His primary research field is British and transatlantic literature of the Romantic period. He was the Principal Investigator for 51²è¹İapp...
Professor
Email: smithp@grinnell.edu
Paula Vene Smith’s recent publications include “ Refashioning Diary Studies: The Tradition of Black Women’s Diaries †in a/b: Autobiography Studies and (forthcoming) “Day Today: Circadian Rhythms and the Sense of Unending in Poetic Diaries by Gertrude Stein and Harryette Mullen†in the Journal of...
Assistant Professor
Email: torralbas@grinnell.edu
Dr. stef torralba is Assistant Professor of English and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies at 51²è¹İapp College. Their pedagogy centers the intellectual lessons of queer studies; trans studies; queer and trans of color critique; crip and mad studies; critical and comparative race and ethnic...