Faculty

The only point in having real live professors around instead of just computer terminals, videotapes and mimeoed lecture notes is that students need to have freedom enacted before their eyes by actual human beings. That is why tenure and academic freedom are more than just trade union demands. Teachers setting their own agendas--putting their individual, lovingly prepared specialties on display in the curricular cafeteria without regard to any larger end, much less any institutional plan--is what non-vocational higher education is all about.

--Richard Rorty

George Brinton, Ph.D. (English and computer science) has published in such diverse fields as eighteenth-century English literature, contemporary poetry, psychometrics, and education. He has been a systems consultant, is a co-director of the Quantitative Reasoning Project, and Director of the MALS Program.

Dominick Finello, Ph.D. (modern languages) has published four books, the most recent of which is Cervantes: Essays on Social and Literary Polemics. He is currently at work on The Spanish Pastoral Novel After "Las Dianas".

Mark Patkowski, Ph.D. (linguistics) is Graduate Deputy of the Department of English. He has published research in applied linguistics and second-language acquisition. He is particularly interested in the biological basis of language, and has received a Fulbright award in linguistics and English as a second language.

Mel Scult, Ph.D. (religion) emphasizes biographical studies. He wrote Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century: A Biography of Mordai M. Kaplan, Millennial Expectations and Jewish Liberties, and many articles on religious thought in the context of American life. He edited Dynamic Judaism, and is Editor-in-Chief of the Mordecai Kaplan Diary Project.

Aaron Streiter, Ph.D. (English) has published drama, poetry and literary criticism.  His interests include psychological, moral and structural approaches to literature.