Faculty & Staff
Tabetha Adkins 
Assistant Professor, Director of Writing
Office: HL 229
Phone: 903-886-5269
E-mail: Tabetha_Adkins@tamu-commerce.edu
Salvatore Attardo 
Professor, Dean of Arts & Sciences
Office: Ag/IT 114
Phone: 903-886-5121
E-mail: Salvatore_Attardo@tamu-commerce.edu
I hold degrees from The Catholic University of Milan (1986) and Purdue University (PhD 1991). I have published two books on the linguistics of humor. I am also the Editor-in-Chief of HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research. I have also published extensively in pragmatics and semantics, primarily on issues relating to implicatures, irony, rationality and more generally on Neo-Gricean Pragmatics. My other areas of interest are in sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, and computational semantics.
I typically accept students interested in working on topics in humor research or pragmatics, but I occasionally work on topics of interest (e.g., the maintenance of heritage languages or pedagogical cognitive grammar). Non-degree seeking students/scholars interested in working with me should be self-supporting as the department can provide support for them only in very rare cases.
Curriculum Vitae: Attardo.doc
Robert Baumgardner 
Professor
Office: HL 116
Phone: 903-886-5254
E-mail: Robert_Baumgardner@tamu-commerce.edu
I received a Ph.D. in Linguistics and Certificate in TESOL from the University of Southern California in 1982. My areas of concentration were Sociolinguistics, Teaching ESL and the History of English. I have done research and published in the fields of English for Specific Purposes and World Englishes. My present interest and areas of research are the use of English in advertising in Iran and the use of English in advertising, the linguistic landscape and Radio & Television in Mexico. I will direct M.A. thesis and M.A. Papers in any of the above or related areas.
Curriculum Vitae: Baumgardner.doc
Bill Bolin 
Associate Professor
Office: HL 324
Phone: 903-886-5272
E-mail: Bill_Bolin@tamu-commerce.edu
My areas of interest include rhetoric, composition studies, and pedagogy. I have published in the areas of rhetoric and public policy and of the public face of composition instruction. I am currently working on a project examining and critiquing the contemporary uses of classical arguments for current policies of peace and war.
I have taught at the high school, community college, and university levels. Currently I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in rhetoric, writing theory, and the teaching of English.
Curriculum Vitae: Bolin.doc
Shannon Carter 
Associate Professor
Office: HL 209
Phone: 903-886-5492
E-mail: Shannon_Carter@tamu-commerce.edu
Website: http://faculty.tamu-commerce.edu/scarter/
Curriculum Vitae: Carter.doc
Shannon Carter is Associate Professor of English and co-director of the new Converging Literacies Center (CLiC). Her research interests include prison literacy (published in the Spring 2008 issue of the Community Literacy Journal) and potential applications of New Literacy Studies and activity theory to writing center work and the basic writing classroom. Other, related interests include conservative rhetoric (published in College English, 2007) and academic labor issues (article forthcoming in CCC and chapter in Identity Politics, published by Utah State UP in 2006). Her book, The Way Literacy Lives: Rhetorical Dexterity and Basic Writing Instruction, was published in 2008 with State University of New York Press, an article-length version of which appeared in the 25th anniversary issue of the Journal of Basic Writing.
Carter is also co-chair of the national organization, Conference on Basic Writing, co-editor of the BWe: Basic Writing e-Journal (publishing multimodal scholarship), co-editor of the First-Year Writing Feature of the national, peer-reviewed journal Young Scholars in Writing: Undergraduate Research in Writing and Rhetoric, and a reviewer for the Journal of Basic Writing, College English, and Young Scholars in Writing. In 2008, she brought the WPA-NMA project the National Conversation on Writing (NCoW) to A&M-Commerce, which will serve as NCoW’s institutional home for the next three years. She is also interested in writing with video and the production and circulation of digital/mutimodal scholarship.
Blanca Daza 
Spanish Instructor
Office: HL 112
Phone: 972-365-2566
E-mail: Blanca_Daza@tamu-commerce.edu
I was born in Arequipa, Perú. I completed a Master's Degree in Psychology at Universidad de San Agustin and a Speech Pathologist Master's Degree at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. I have always been in the Education field teaching children, young and senior students.
My research interests include the theories of pedagogy, different learning styles, and the individual pace in language learning. In addition, I would like to encourage my students to learn bilingual communication skills both for vocational and for linguistic enhancement.
Gerald Duchovnay 
Professor
Office: HL 326
Phone: 903-886-5265
E-mail: Gerald_Duchovnay@tamu-commerce.edu
Gerald Duchovnay is Professor of English and the General Editor of Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities, an internationally recognized film/humanities journal. He received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) and his M.A. and Ph. D. from Indiana University (Bloomington). He has taught at private, technical, and regional state colleges and universities, served as the director of a first-year writing program, chaired a humanities division, and has headed an interdisciplinary literature and languages program. The author of Humphrey Bogart: A Bio-Bibliography (Greenwood, 1999) and the editor of Film Voices: Interviews from Post Script (SUNY Press, 2004), he has also published on literature, pedagogy, and various aspects of film studies. His recent research and writing has focused on media and interdisciplinary courses and science fiction movies adapted to television. Directed theses and dissertation work includes: a comparative study of Virginia Woolf's Orlando and Sally Porter's Orlando; iconic imagery in Dorothea Lange, John Steinbeck, and John Ford; and the reception of Tennessee William's Battle of Angels, Orpheus Descending and The Fugitive Kind. He teaches undergraduate literature, writing, and film courses. Recent graduate offerings include: Film Theory and Criticism; John Ford: Movies, Myth, and Culture; Teaching Literature in College; Film Adaptation; Alfred Hitchcock's Films; and Narrative Cinema.
Curriculum Vitae: Duchovnay.doc
Donna Dunbar-Odom 
Head
Professor, Director of English Graduate Studies
Office: HL 140
Phone: 903-886-5264
E-mail: Donna_Dunbar-Odom@tamu-commerce.edu
I came to Texas A&M University-Commerce (then East Texas State University) in 1993. My PhD is in Cultural and Critical Studies with a specialization in English from the University of Pittsburgh, and my MA from the University of Nebraska at Omaha is in 20th-century American literature. I have published textbooks for first-year composition, introducing ethnographic research methods into the teaching of argument. My book Defying the Odds: Class and the Pursuit of Higher Literacy (SUNY Press, 2007) focuses on why some working-class students pursue higher literacy against all expectations and predictions.
I serve now as Professor of English and Director of English Graduate Studies. My research focus is Composition and Literacy Studies—specifically literacy acquisition and the working-class student, but I also teach literary theory and pedagogy courses. I have directed dissertations on film and composition, basic writing theory, neo-expressivist composition theory, and teaching writing in the two-year college, among others.
Curriculum Vitae: Dunbar-Odom.doc
Maria Fernandez-Babineaux
Assistant Professor, Director of Spanish Graduate Studies
Office: HL 313
Phone: 903-886-5270
E-mail: Maria_Babineaux@tamu-commerce.edu
Website: http://faculty.tamu-commerce.edu/mbabineaux
María Fernández-Babineaux was born in Lima, Perú. She came to the United States in December 1996 to pursue graduate studies. She obtained her Masters Degree in Spanish Linguistics at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge and her Ph. D. at Tulane University in New Orleans in 2005.
Her field of study is contemporary Latin American (1930-XXI) and Peninsular literature (1936-1975). Her research interests are in children's literature, erotic literature, Latin American novels (1970-XXI) and Post civil war Spanish novels. She applies a transatlantic approach to study dystopias, utopias and heterotopias (gender and social) in these narratives and films.
Curriculum Vitae: Babineaux.pdf
Hunter Hayes
Associate Professor
Office: HL 213
Phone: 903-468-8625
E-mail: Hunter_Hayes@tamu-commerce.edu
I received my BA at the University of Kentucky and both my MA and PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi, where I specialized in twentieth-century British literature with secondary emphasis on Victorian literature. My publications include Understanding Will Self (University of South Carolina Press, 2007), the first in-depth critical examination of Self’s work. In addition to writing about Self, I have published essays on other contemporary British novelists and poets such as Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Craig Raine and Christopher Reid. Greenwood Press has recently commissioned me to write a book on Elmore Leonard. Since 2006 I have been General editor for the Sam Rayburn Series on Rural Life, a project that Texas A&M University-Commerce has sponsored under the auspices of Texas A&M University Press since 1987.
Curriculum Vitae: Hayes.doc
David Hervas 
Spanish Instructor and Coordinator of the Spanish Language Program
Office: HL 318
Phone: 903-886-5271
E-mail: david_hervas@tamu-commerce.edu
I was born in Madrid, Spain. I obtained my B.A. degree in English Studies in 1995 and my M.A. in Foreign Language Education in 1997 at Universidad de Alcalá, in my hometown Alcalá de Henares. Later on I changed fields but kept my interest in languages. In 2004, I obtained a M.A. in Teaching Spanish as a Second Language from the Universidad Antonio de Nebrija, in Madrid, Spain. Currently I am an ABD working to obtain my Ph.D. in Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. My dissertation explores the implicit and explicit approach in the acquisition of vocabulary in the instruction of Spanish as a foreign language.
I came to Texas A&M University-Commerce in Spring 08. Ever since, I have taught all the Spanish language program courses, for which I became the Coordinator in the academic year 2009/10. Under my supervision, the program has been reinforced in the oral production area in the beginning and intermediate courses; and reading and response to original literary works in the intermediate-advanced courses. Other than those, I have taught intermediate courses ranging from introduction to literature in Spanish, Spanish for heritage speakers, history and development of Spanish language, and Spanish linguistics. My research interests include the implicit enhanced input of vocabulary and context reading in the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language. My personal interests also include volunteering for KETR, the public radio station service of A&M-Commerce hosting a weekly show on Latin jazz.
Kathryn Jacobs 
Professor
Office: HL 227
Phone: 903-886-5235
E-mail: Kathryn_Jacobs@tamu-commerce.edu
Kathryn Jacobs is a professor at the Department of Literature and Languages with Ph.D and M.A. from Harvard University, and a B.A. from the University of Michigan. She has research interests in Chaucer, Medieval drama, and Renaissance drama, and takes theses and dissertations in all these areas. She is also interested in poetry, has published critical studies of the modern formalist poets, and welcomes creative projects with new poets, particularly those with an interest in poetic form.
Dr. Jacobs has published a book (Marriage Contracts from Chaucer to the Renaissance Stage) and a dozen articles in early British literature. She has also published a volume of poetry (Advice Column) and over five dozen poems in a variety of national, regional, and international journals.
Curriculum Vitae: Jacobs.doc
Kim Jefferies
Administrative Secretary II
Office: HL 144
Phone: 903-468-3260
E-mail: Kim_Jefferies@tamu-commerce.edu
Jon Jonz 
Professor
Office: HL 308
Phone: 903-886-5252
E-mail: Jon_Jonz@tamu-commerce.edu
Curriculum Vitae: Jonz.doc
Inma Lyons
Assistant Professor
Office: HL 311
Phone: 903-468-8774
E-mail: Inma_Lyons@tamu-commerce.edu
Inma Lyons is an Assistant Professor of Spanish and the Spanish undergraduate adviser. She completed her B.A. at the University of Seville, in Seville, Spain. She earned her M.A. in Spanish and Latin American Literature at Texas A&M University-Commerce, and her Ph.D. in Modern Peninsular Literature at the University of Texas at Austin.
Her research interests include the general field of 18, 19, 20 and 21 century Spanish literature; contemporary Spanish women's narrative, and more specifically, the aesthetic and thematic features which influence women¹s narrative in contemporary Spain and Latin America; Colonial Literature, particularly the function of poetry and satire in the New World; and contemporary Spanish drama.
She is currently at work on a variety of projects: a book project on the construction and representation of masculine identities by contemporary Spanish women novelists; an article on intertextuality which highlights the continuing significance of picaresque narrative in contemporary novels; and several scholarly conference presentations.
Curriculum Vitae: Lyons.doc
Joe MacAde 
Director, English Language Institute
Office: HL 316
Phone: 903-886-5274
E-mail: Joe_MacAde@tamu-commerce.edu
Joseph MacAde has over 25 years of experience in managing international student and scholar programs in the United States and overseas. This experience includes service as a director of either ESL or international programs at several U.S. colleges, most of them in the Boston area; experience managing a regional management education program for students from throughout Southeast Asia at the Mekong Institute in the Northeast of Thailand; a two-year stint at the world Bank Education Office where he worked as a researcher on best practices in international education ;work running an American university campus for New England College in W. Sussex, England; and, more recently, experience overseeing the establishment and licensing efforts a Korean-funded international university program on Long Island and later in assisting in the placement and support of Vietnamese students in U.S. graduate schools. Joe spent almost six years working in Southeast Asia, first as a refugee education programs coordinator and later as academic director of a regional management training center. He also worked in Korea, Qatar, China, and Egypt and has set up and/or administered study abroad programs in such countries as Brazil, Italy, Spain, Ireland, and Australia.
Joe’s personal interests include reading, traveling, classical music, horseback riding and cross-country skiing. He holds a B.A. in History, an M.A. in International Administration, and an M.Ed. in Teaching English as a Second Language, and has completed the coursework, but not the dissertation for a doctorate in International Education.
Robin Reid 
Professor
Office: HL 125
Phone: 903-886-5268
E-mail: Robin_Reid@tamu-commerce.edu
Curriculum Vitae: Reid.doc
I received my doctorate in English at the University of Washington in 1992. I have a master's in creative writing, and second master's (from the Bread Loaf School of Literature) in English. I came to A&M-Commerce when it was East Texas State University in 1993. My areas of teaching are creative writing, critical theory (critical race feminism, gender/queer theories, and sociolinguistics), and new media (which means considering the ways that the internet is changing the creation, production, and circulation of content; my special focus in that area is in fan studies). Since August 2006, I have been teaching all of my courses online, and I am interested in developing work on online and media literacies and the use of wikis for college writing.
My publications include poetry, critical theory introductions to Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury, and (due out in December 2008) the first encyclopedia on women in science fiction and fantasy. I have published essays on The Lord of the Rings (novel and/or film) and fan fiction. My current books in progress include a vampire novel (in third draft stage), two co-edited anthologies (one on queerness and fantasy, another on fanfiction and fan production). I'll be on faculty development leave Spring 2009 to work on those projects plus a book titled Slashing the Fathers: Female Writers Crossing the Borders of Male Texts which looks at queerness in how women writers have created homoerotic male pairings in work ranging from fanfiction to original fantasy.
- I am the organizer of the Tolkien at Kalamazoo group which organizes paper sessions on Tolkien's work to be presented at the International Congress on Medieval Studies (http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/).
- I am currently serving as the second Vice President of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (http://www.iafa.org/) which is the one of the two oldest and the largest scholarly organization on fantastic genres and media: our annual conference draws an international group of 300 scholars.
- Several friends and I are currently organizing a new scholarly organization, the International Association of Audience and Fan Studies (http://community.livejournal.com/iaafs).
Karen Roggenkamp 
Associate Professor
Office: HL 315
Phone: 903-886-5251
E-mail: Karen_Roggenkamp@tamu-commerce.edu
Website: http://faculty.tamu-commerce.edu/kroggenkamp/
Curriculum Vitae: CV2008.doc
After completing a B.A. in English at the University of Michigan, I taught English for a number of years at an independent Detroit middle school before entering graduate school. I earned my Ph.D. in English at the University of Minnesota, where I specialized in nineteenth-century American Literature and print culture. My areas of interest include nineteenth-century American periodical culture, early American novels, Puritan rhetoric, the history of children’s literature and culture, contemporary reconstructions of fairy tales, and the censorship of adolescent and children’s literature. I am currently working on a book project about female newspaper journalists and cultures of sentimentality in nineteenth-century America, as well as a project on children’s editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in American literature and children’s and adolescent literature.
Philippe Seminet 
Associate Professor
Office: HL 225
Phone: 903-886-5277
E-mail: Philippe_Seminet@tamu-commerce.edu
I went to high school in Guadalajara, Mexico, and then proceeded to Sarasota, Florida where I wrote a senior thesis on the primacy of practical reason over pure reason in Kant for the BA in Philosophy from New College in 1987. I opted to study French Literature instead of Philosophy in graduate school, after spending a year and a half teaching at a boarding school in Lausanne, Switzerland. I received the MA from the University of Florida in 1992, taught Spanish for a year in a public school in North Carolina, and then headed to Austin and the University of Texas where I completed my PhD in French Literature in 1999.
Since arriving in the Department of Literature and Languages at Texas A&M University-Commerce in 2000, I have published a book on the short fiction of the Marquis de Sade, and my interests remain firmly embedded in the literature and philosophy of the French Enlightenment, especially the role of the novel, libertinism, and the rise of deism and atheism. At present, I am excited about the growing popularity of web-based courses, and the potential for reaching more students. I enjoy the challenge of teaching courses in French, Spanish, English, Philosophy, and Liberal Studies.
Curriculum Vitae: Seminet.doc
Susan Stewart 
Associate Professor, Assistant Head
Office: HL 314
Phone: 903-468-8624
E-mail: Susan_Stewart@tamu-commerce.edu
Website:http://faculty.tamu-commerce.edu/slstewart/
Curriculum Vitae: Stewart.doc
I received my M.A. in English (emphasis in Children's Literature) from Missouri State University and my Ph.D. (emphasis in Children's Literature) from Illinois State University. My areas of interest include adolescent literature and narrative theory, but I'm very interested in the constructions of race and ethnicity in adolescent literature. I'm working on a series of projects that explores such novels as Sapphire's "Push," Virginia Hamilton's "Planet of Junior Brown," Jacqueline Woodson's "If You Come Softy," Sherman Alexie's "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian," and Gene Yang's "American Born Chinese." I have published articles in The Lion and the Unicorn and in Children's Literature in Education.
Additionally, I have written reviews for Children's Literature Association Quarterly and MELUS. I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in children's and adolescent literature on a regular basis.
