WHO ARE WE?
As befits our liberal arts setting, the Department of English at Defiance College is intimate and intensive, allowing for very close interaction between students and faculty. Students work closely with one another and with Drs. MC Harper and Todd Comer.
Mary Catherine (MC)
Harper
Ph.D., Bowling Green State University
Mary Catherine Harper teaches literature,
creative writing, and Global Civilization
at Defiance College. She has had poetry published
in The New England Review, WomenWriters.net, The Bozeman Er, and Masque,
and has had her poetic theater piece "A
Quarrel of Voices" performed at the Interdisciplinary
International Women's Studies Conference of
1996. She has just finished a cross-media
epistolary novel, Letters to Christian
Duval, which is set in Ohio and Iraq.
Professor Harper also publishes articles on
women’s science fiction and has been
published in Science Fiction Studies, Extrapolation, and FemSpec.
Her interests in language arts, cultural studies,
poetics, and social justice issues have taken
her to Cambodia to work on a language arts
and ethnography project, so she is currently
writing poetry about her experiences in Cambodia.
See the photo galleries and a sampling of her creative writing at her website.
email: mcharper@defiance.edu
Todd
Comer
Ph.D., Michigan State University
Todd Comer completed his MA and PhD in American literature and film at Michigan State University. Prior to his time at Michigan State University, Todd worked as a reporter, copy writer, and librarian. He earned his BA (English and History) at Taylor University and was born and raised West Virginia.
Todd
is writing a book provisionally titled, Mourning,
and the Day After, in which he argues
for postmodern subjectivity as essentially
riven by mourning. The book will trace the
ethical limits of the subject—its presumption
of beneficence, its diversity—and its
metaphysical cousins (community, city, nation,
and Humanism) and argue for a postmodern subjectivity
that is essentially communal.
Todd's strengths lie in the area of 20th century
American and British literature/film and postmodern
theory. One of the exciting perks of teaching
at Defiance is that it also allows him to
teach Postcolonial literature and Composition.
Todd
most recently published on Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren (The Journal of Narrative
Theory; Summer 2005) and Joel and Ethan
Coen's The Big Lebowski (SubStance;
Fall 2005). His essay,"Pacifism as Ideological
Complicity in The Big Lebowski,"
was just published in Reconstruction 7.3 (Summer 2007). His "A Mortal Agency:
Flann O'Brien's At Swim Two Birds"
is forthcoming in The Journal of Modern
Literature (Apr. 2008).
CV and additional information may be found on his website.
email: tcomer@defiance.edu