Faculty A-O

Allison Bakken

Allison Bakken photo Allison Wilkins Bakken is the author of Girl Who. Other poems and essays have appeared in Sierra Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry, Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Superstition Review, and The Lyric. She is the assistant director for Writing Workshops in Greece. She received her M.F.A from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and her B.F.A. at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. She is A.B.D from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. In addition to creative writing, her research interests include 20th and 21st century poetry, environmental and science writing, and American Literature. When not writing or in the classroom, she is a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT 500) through Yoga Alliance, with a practice that aims to unite body and breath for every body.

Contact Information:

allison.bakken@sru.edu

205 Spotts World Culture Building

724.738.2988

William Covey

William Covey Profile

Dr. William B. Covey, Jr., Professor, earned a PhD in English with area specialties in film studies and literary and cultural theory from Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN). Dr. Covey also holds an MA in English with a film studies focus and BA in English from Northern Illinois University (DeKalb), where he also earned his Illinois Secondary Teacher’s License (grades 6-12). His more than thirty-five years of university teaching encompasses various film, media studies, literary theory, literature, and writing courses at the undergraduate level for NIU, Purdue, Cal Poly State University (San Luis Obispo, CA), and Slippery Rock University, as well as graduate courses and theses for SRU’s MA in English. Dr. Covey has been nominated for and won various teaching awards from both Purdue University and Slippery Rock University.

Dr. Covey directs the SRU Film and Media Studies Program and serves as faculty advisor for the film and media studies journal The Roxy, published by the Department of Languages, Literatures, Cultures, and Writing. He has also organized and facilitated the Film Series for the Maridon Museum of Asian Art in Butler, PA since 2010.

He is a member of numerous academic associations such as the Asian Cinema Studies Society (ACSS), English Association of the Pennsylvania State Universities (EAPSU), Japan Studies Association (JSA), Modern Language Association (MLA), Pennsylvania College English Association (PCEA), the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS), and the University Film and Video Association (UFVA).

Dr. Covey’s current film studies research focuses on film theory, humor, neo-noir, Asian, and European film. He has presented over 40 conference papers. His international presentations include those for the MLA, the International Comparative Drama Conference, the International Society for Humor Studies, the International Beatles Celebration Conference, and Visions of the Future: Global Science Fiction Cinema. National presentations include those for SCMS, UFVA, the Violence, Cinema, and American Culture Conference, and the Point Blank: Tough Guy Film and Culture Conference. Regionally, he has presented for EAPSU, PCEA, the Northeast Popular Culture Association (NEPCA), and the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA).

His refereed essays have been published in books and journals such as CineAction, Film Noir Reader 2, Film Noir: The Directors, Film Noir: The Encyclopedia, Film Noir: Light and Shadow, Interdisciplinary Humanities, Journal of Film and Video, Mfs: Modern Fiction Studies, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Style, and others. Covey has published over 30 peer-reviewed academic book reviews in journals such as Film Criticism, film-philosophy, Film Quarterly, Genre, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, Humor, Journal of Film and Video, Journal of Popular Film and Television, Mfs: Modern Fiction Studies, Post Script, and Style. For more information go to: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6644-6732.

Dr. Covey, a Chicago native, is a proud union member and supporter and has been for almost forty years (APSCUF, CFA, UFCW, and the former URW). He collects media artifacts, including books, DVDs, Blu-Rays, vinyl LPs, and compact discs, regularly reading, watching, and listening to each. Any spare time he happily spends with his spouse and life partner Marnie Jo and his Siberian Forest Cat Fia.

Contact Information:

william.covey@sru.edu

317G Spotts World Culture Building

724.738.2362

Gisela González Dieter

Dr. Gisela Dieter received her PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of Pittsburgh in 2008, where she also minored in Spanish linguistics. Dr. Dieter also has an MA in History from Youngstown State University and two BS degrees from Clarion University of PA in Communications and Business.

Born and raised in Panama, her fields of expertise, interest and research include Panamanian and Cuban literature, women writers, national identity, African diaspora, second language acquisition, and pedagogy. Her dynamic classroom style is driven by a passion for learning and teaching, and she strives to offer students meaningful learning experiences to help them improve their Spanish language communicative and cultural competence.

Contact Information:

gisela.dieter@sru.edu

200D Spotts World Culture Building

724.738.4226

Danette DiMarco

Dr. Danette DiMarco is Professor of English at Slippery Rock University. She teaches across levels in first-year studies and British, World, and Environmental literatures, and is a past recipient of the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the President’s Award for Scholarly and Creative Achievement, and the President’s Award for Service. She was awarded “best article” by the Margaret Atwood Society for her essay “Going Wendigo: The Emergence of the Iconic Monster in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and Antonia Bird’s Ravenous.”

She has co-edited the collections Avian Aesthetics in Literature and Culture: Birds and Humans in the Popular Imagination and Inhabited By Stories: Critical Essays on Tales Retold, and has authored numerous journal articles and book chapters in publications like Teaching Literature in the Online Classroom, Sagetrieb, Mosaic, Papers on Language and Literature, College Literature, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, The Sea and the Literary Imagination, Misfit Children: An Inquiry into Childhood Belonging, Teaching Multiethnic American Literatures, and Eloquent Images. Forthcoming work will be included in Approaches to Teaching Margaret Atwood (MLA, 2024).

Contact Information:

danette.dimarco@sru.edu

200E Spotts World Culture Building

724.738.2364

Elizabeth Geib Chavin

Dr. Elizabeth Geib Chavin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures, Cultures, and Writing and the Director of SRU Writing Center. She received her PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from Purdue University in 2022 while specializing in Writing Center Theory and Administration, as well as Public Rhetorics. Dr. Geib Chavin has MA in Rhetoric and Composition from Purdue University and a BA in English Literature from Western Illinois University.

Dr. Geib Chavin grew up in the Chicago land area and has spent most of her academic life in the midwest. Her research areas primarily reside in Writing Centers, specifically with consultant training and development, campus and faculty outreach, Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC), community writing and engagement, and public access writing centers.

Contact Information:

elizabeth.geib@sru.edu

316N Spotts World Culture Building

724.738.2360

Yukako Ishimaru (Assistant Chair)

Professor Yukako Ishimaru, a native of Saga, Japan, joined SRU in 2006. She teaches all levels of Japanese language and culture courses, as well as Intermediate Japanese I and Topics in Japanese.

She serves as the advisor for the Japan Club and study abroad programs in Japan. Professor Ishimaru received her Certificate of Japanese Teacher Training from Portland State University, an MA in English from Slippery Rock University, a Japanese Secondary Education Certificate in English as a Second Language, and a BA in Education from Saga University in Japan.

She has traveled extensively and studied abroad at University of Cambridge in the UK with a Japanese Government Scholarship by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Her research interests include foreign language pedagogy and foreign language acquisition.

Contact Information:

yukako.ishimaru@sru.edu

317A Spotts World Culture Building

724.738.2395

Jessica Jopp

Jessica Jopp received her M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and her B.A. from the State University of New York at Binghamton.

Jopp is the author of The History of a Voice, the recipient of the Baxter Hathaway Prize in Poetry from the journal Epoch at Cornell. The book is available from Headmistress Press. Individual poems appear in a wide variety of journals, including Poetry, Seneca Review, The Progressive, and Impost. Jopp is also the recipient of the Quill Prose Award from Red Hen Press. This is an award given annually to a book of prose written by a queer writer. Her novel, From the Longing Orchard, was chosen by judge Amber Flame and will be published in 2023.

In her classes at SRU, primarily Critical Writing and Critical Reading, Jopp focuses content around contemporary social justice issues. She is a longstanding member of SRU’s Gender Studies Committee. In her town of Indiana, she serves on the board of a non-profit, The Friends of White’s Woods, a group dedicated to protecting a forested park from the threat of timbering.

Contact Information:

jessica.jopp@sru.edu

316L Spotts World Culture Building

724.738.4686

Nicholas Katsiadas

Dr. Nick Katsiadas received his PhD in Literature and Criticism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2019, where he focused in graphic narratives and European Romanticism. Dr. Katsiadas is also an alumnus from Slippery Rock University, earning his Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature in 2008 and his Master’s Degree in the English—Traditional Literature Track in 2010. He teaches first-year writing, first-year reading, and Graphic Novels, and his classroom pedagogy is energized by ideas about literacy skillsets, collaborative learning, play, and how these activities are not irreconcilable.

His fields of expertise include Graphic Novels, English and German Romanticism, and this period’s echoes in later experimental narratology, from the Dark Age of Comics to early twentieth century fantasy literature. His forthcoming book from the Rochester Institute of Technology Press—Romanticism in Comics: Faith, Myth, and Mood—investigates the ways in which nineteenth-century Romantic writers invented myths to elevate ideas about the value of imagination and creativity, and he traces how these creative processes and ways of thinking about literature and the arts persisted up through twentieth and twenty-first century comics.

In addition, he is a board member of the Pennsylvania College English Association, and he was a finalist for SRU’s 2022 President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. His work in comics and Romanticism has been published and cited in international, national, and local journals.

A member of the Northeast Association for Pre-Law Advisors (NAPLA), Dr. Katsiadas serves as the pre-law advisor for any majors interested in the Widener University Commonwealth Law School 3+3 program.

Contact Information:

nicholas.katsiadas@sru.edu

317E Spotts World Culture Building

724.738.4498

Chris Kreiser

Dr. Chris Kreiser received both his PhD and MA from Texas A&M University in Discourse Studies with an emphasis on classical rhetoric. He received a BA as an English major from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.

His undergraduate courses include first-year writing and reading as well as rhetoric, literary theory, and the senior capstone course. He also teaches graduate courses on rhetoric, research, and the capstone course.

His research includes the Roman rhetorical educational goal of facilitas, which translates as modern-day improvisation. His research has been published by Duke University, the National Council of Teachers of English, the Conference of College Teachers of English and has been recognized with a United States Fulbright Grant.

Contact Information:

christopher.kreiser@sru.edu

317K Spotts World Culture Building

724.738.2376

J. Seth Lee

Dr. J. Seth Lee is an Assistant Professor of English and earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of Kentucky. A native of southwestern Virginia, Dr. Lee joined SRU in 2019. He is a scholar of the literature of exiles and a digital humanist. He has published on Early Modern exile in SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 and Reformation. Lee’s monograph, The Discourse of Exile in Early Modern English Literature, is available as part of the Routledge Research in Early Modern History series. It examines questions about the formation of subjectivity and nationalism in the minds of exiles and the development of exile from a “nation” in its modern sense.

Additionally, he researches and writes on interdisciplinary approaches to literary studies informed by digital technology, including how eye-tracking cameras revealed insights into student engagement with medieval illuminated manuscripts recently published in Medieval Perspectives. Many of his classes, including Critical Writing and Critical Reading, include digital projects and conversations about technology, identity, and digital literacy.

Contact Information:

seth.lee@sru.edu

316K Spotts World Culture Building

724.738.4736

Damarys Lopez

Dr. Damarys López

Dr. Damarys López received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Spanish from The Pennsylvania State University. Her specialization is in Spanish Peninsular Literature (Medieval through Modern) with a focus on 19th and 20th Spanish Peninsular Literature. She earned her B.A. in Hispanic Studies from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras campus.

Fields of expertise, interest, and research for Dr. López include modern and contemporary Spanish Peninsular literature, Puerto Rican literature, Hispanic women writers, and Spanish and Latin America theater, films, and cultures. She is a native of Puerto Rico and her passion is teaching Spanish and Hispanic cultures in the United States to overcome stereotypes and help students to understand that Spanish is not really a foreign language anymore. Rather, Spanish is highly valued in the workplace. Considering the already large Hispanic population in the U.S, learning Spanish will help students to stand out in today's competitive job market and expand their future career options.

Contact Information:

damarys.lopez@sru.edu

317C Spotts World Culture Building

724.738.4473

Patrick McGinty

Patrick McGinty received his MFA in Fiction from Portland State University and his B.A. in English--Writing from Denison University.

Born in Pittsburgh, Patrick 's first novel, Test Drive, tells the story of workers in Pittsburgh's driverless car sector. His recent works of creative nonfiction and feature-length criticism have focused on similar topics--the tech sector, Pittsburgh, labor, and, crucially, how fictional narratives can help society envision the unforeseen collisions and collaborations amongst these topics. In the classroom, he prides himself on helping students use writing as a transformative tool in their own lives. Sometimes, this transformation entails helping students in first-year writing courses use reflection and revision as a way to chart their paths through Slippery Rock. In upper-level English courses like Creative Writing: Fiction or Healthcare Writing, students not only depict and appraise the contemporary human experience through various forms of writing but also produce a portfolio of creative and professional work that transforms them from successful undergraduate writers into desirable job or graduate-school candidates. In all courses, Patrick is eager to help students transform their own private, personal writing habits into published creative work.

Contact Information:

patrick.mcginty@sru.edu

317D Spotts World Culture Building

724.738.4683

Julie Naviaux

Dr. Julie Naviaux is Associate Professor of English in African American Literature and American Studies. She teaches courses in African American literature, American literature, Latinx literature, literary and cultural theory, professional writing, and science fiction.

Her research publications include articles “When Unruly Women Authors Make Students Uncomfortable” and “A Distinctly American Performance in James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.” She has published introductions and edited works on Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man in Children’s Literature Review and James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain in Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. She is a contributor to the edited book Code Meshing as World English and co-authored African American Review’s e-project on film director Marlon Riggs.

Contact Information:

julie.naviaux@sru.edu

316G Spotts World Culture Building

724.738.4297

Mark O'Connor

Dr. Mark O’Connor received his PhD and MA in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. His BA in English is from Georgetown University. His areas of expertise and interests are fiction, creative nonfiction, book arts, apocalyptic texts, magical realism, graphic novels, film, and visual art. He advises the literary magazine SLAB, directs the Writers in the Schools program, and takes students to Italy each summer for a Food and Travel writing course. Recent publications include book chapters about Lynda Barry and Avian Imagery in Early American Newspaper Comics.

Contact Information:

mark.oconnor@sru.edu

317L Spotts World Culture Building

724.738.2548

Timothy Oldakowski (Department Chair)

Dr. Tim Oldakowski (T.O.) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures, Cultures, and Writing and is a resident of Pittsburgh, PA. Tim taught English and Communications courses to high school students in Florida before earning his Ed.D. in English Education from the University of Pittsburgh in 2011. He also has a BA in Communications and English from Duquesne University. He teaches courses such as Critical Writing and Critical Reading for all students and teaches Young Adult Literature, Writing for Nonprint Media, and Practicum Teaching Writing for English Education majors. Tim also teaches ENGL 389 Stratford Shakespeare in the summer session which culminates with a trip to the Stratford Festival in Canada. He also teaches in the online graduate program.

Tim’s research lies in multimodal pedagogy and assessment and in the study of young adult literature. His book chapters include Lights! Camera! English Class!: The Twenty-Shot Short Story Assesses Comprehension and Analysis of Literature, and Developing a student-centered, discussion-based online course. His articles “She knows me…she knows my struggle”: Preservice teachers relate to young adult literature as a means for improving teaching writing and The ABC’s of Romeo and Juliet: A Multimodal Approach to Analyzing Shakespeare have been published in The Ohio Journal of English Language Arts. Both articles were co-authored with former students. His article A Multimodal Assessment that Enriches Literacy Learning was published in the journal In Sight: A Journal of Scholarly Teaching.

Tim also attends and presents at the National Council of Teachers of English Language Arts Annual Conference, as well as The Pennsylvania Council of Teachers of English Language Arts fall conference. Some of his conference sessions include Multimodal Assessment Across the Curriculum, Brave new world: The use of popular social media for multimodal literary analysis, and Interpreting ‘Othello’ through multimodal instruction.

When he is not working, T.O. is often reading young adult literature.

Contact Information:

timothy.oldakowski@sru.edu

317I Spotts World Culture Building

724.738.4574

Faculty and Staff

Faculty A-O

Faculty and Staff

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