The Department Welcomes Five New Professors

Join us in welcoming Professors Enoch, Gaycken, Kill, Taylor, and Wible.

Dr.Jessica Enoch joins us as Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Composition.  Professor Enoch received her PhD from Pennsylvania State University in 2003.  Since then, she has taught English at University of New Hampshire, and English and Women’s Studies at University of Pittsburgh.  Professor Enoch is the recipient of numerous honors for her writing and teaching.  Additionally, she has received various grants and fellowships, including Harvard University’s Schlesinger Library Research Support Grant.  Professor Enoch is the author of Refiguring Rhetorical Education: Women Teaching African American, Native American, and Chicano/a Students,1865-1911 (Southern Illinois University Press, 2008).  She is currently working on a second book project, Claiming Space:  Feminist Rhetorical Investigations of Educational Geographies.  This fall she will teach “ENGL458R: Literature by Women after 1800: History of Women's Rhetoric.”

Dr. Oliver Gaycken joins us as Assistant Professor of Film.  He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 2005; he has been a Visiting Scholar at the Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science and Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and York University.  Professor Gaycken has been the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including the Andrew W. Mellon Regional Faculty Fellowship (2010-2011).  Between 2005 and 2011, Professor Gaycken served as an assistant professor of English at Temple University.  He has written numerous articles and been invited to deliver papers across the country and abroad.  His book, Devices of Curiosity: Early Cinema and Popular Science, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.  This fall he will teach two film studies courses:  “ENGL329D: Early Cinema” and “ENGL245: Film Form and Culture.” 

Dr. Melanie Kill also joins the English Department this fall as Assistant Professor in Rhetoric and Composition.  She has arrived from Texas Christian University, where, from 2008-11, she taught English and Women’s Studies.  During those years, Professor Kill received grants toward her work on Wikipedian writing practices.  She also won fellowships and awards while working on her PhD at University of Washington (2008).  Professor Kill has a series of publications in progress.  Her co-authored article, “Tracing Discursive Resources: How Students Use Prior Genre Knowledge to Negotiate New Writing Contexts in First‐Year Composition,” came out in the July 2011 issue of Written Communication.  And her chapter, “Teaching Digital Rhetoric: Wikipedia, Collaboration, and the Politics of Free Knowledge in Teaching Digital Humanities: Principles, Practices, and Politics," is forthcoming from University of Michigan Press.  Professor Kill is teaching “ENGL488A: Web Authoring: Text, Image, and Design” and one section of “ENGL301: Critical Methods in the Study of Literature” in fall 2011.

Dr. Jesse Oak Taylor joins the department as Visiting Assistant Professor and ACLS/Mellon Fellow.  Dr. Taylor received his PhD in 2010 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.   He has spent the last year lecturing at Georgetown University.  Over the last decade Professor Taylor has won awards for his scholarship and teaching.  Early in his career, Professor Taylor has already published a number of papers.  His co-written book, Empowerment on an Unstable Planet: From Seeds of Human Energy to a Scale of Global Change, is due out from Oxford Univeristy Press this October.  He also has a second book project in progress: Imagining a Manufactured Climate: Atmosphere, Emergence, and the Metropolitan Novel from Charles Dickens to Virginia Woolf.  In fall 2011 Professor Taylor will teach “ENGL456: The 19th Century English Novel: England, Empire, and the Great British Novel.”

Dr. Scott Wible joins the English Department as Director of Professional Writing and Associate Professor in Rhetoric and Composition.  Professor Wible received his PhD from Pennsylvania State University (2006).  At Penn State he won multiple awards and fellowships for his work, including The Penn State College of the Liberal Arts Dissertation Fellowship.  Since then, he has been Assistant Professor of English at West Virginia University.  His book, Language Policy Work in Composition Studies, is forthcoming from Southern Illinois University Press.  In addition to many published articles, Professor Wible has a book chapter (“‘Talk about how your language is constructed’: Kenneth Burke’s Vision for University-Wide Dialogue”) under review.  He also has a second book project in progress: The Rhetorical Activity of Global Citizenship.  Professor Wible will spend the fall semester directing the department’s busy Professional Writing Program.