We were finishing our discussion of the Joe Sacco book Safe Area Gorazde in my First Year Seminar at Kalamazoo College the other day when the conversation got around to scapegoating—maybe in part because Art Spiegelman’s The Complete Maus was next up on the schedule.

I’m pretty sure the following thought is original—it came to me, at any rate, last year, when I was teaching the same two books back to back. I’d thought of saving it for a piece of fiction where it would become a bit of dialogue, but this time I told my seminar, “Almost everything you need to know about human nature you can learn from Shakespeare and the Three Stooges.”

I’m usually not the professing type of professor. But that I believe.

Alpha Lambda Delta initiates Anna Cooperrider, Anne Jefferson, Rachel Dallman, and Myles Sanford all recognized me as a “Favorite Professor” at 2008’s Kalamazoo College chapter initiation ceremony, held Oct. 30.

Eligibility for membership in Alpha Lambda Delta is determined by the first-year academic record, and is limited to those maintaining a grade point average of at least 3.5 and class standing in the top 20 percent.

Myles was a member of my first-year seminar on graphic narrative, Anna and Rachel were introductory creative writing workshop members, and Anne thrived as the only first-year in my class on Victorian literature.

Thank you Anna, Anne, Rachel and Myles for associating me with your success.

“Hoyer Lift,” a work of prose nonfiction, appears in the Summer 2008 issue of Memoir (and). 

Specs, a journal of contemporary culture and arts at Rollins College, has accepted a poem-essay titled “Homologizing primates” for publication in their debut Fall 2008 print edition.

The journal’s aim is “to create sympathetic interfaces between artistic and critical practices.”

I have been chosen by Kalamazoo College Alpha Lambda Delta chapter initiate Heather Weatherly as a “Favorite Professor.” Thank you, Heather.

This isn’t a blog so much as a place to see samples of my writing and a bit of information about my teaching.

Also, here’s a link to an autobiographical narrative appearing on the Kalamazoo College Department of English homepage.

Thanks for visiting.