Beverly Matherne

Professor
M.A., B.A., University of Louisiana at Lafayette
PhD, Drama, St. Louis University
bmathern@nmu.edu
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Teaching Specialties

- Poetry Writing
- Form and Technique of Poetry
- Playwriting and Drama
- Technical Writing

Beverly Matherne is Director of the English Department's MFA Program in Creative Writing. She has done over 120 readings of bilingual poetry across the United States, Canada, and France and is currently translating into French a book of poetry by former U.S. Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz. This spring and summer she served as short-term writer-in-residence at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, and at The Bright Hill Center in Treadwell, New York. In May of 2000, she read poetry in a millennial event titled "American Poets Greet Polish Poets at the United Nations." She was interviewed on National Pubic Radio's "The Poet and the Poem" and on CBC Radio Canada Internationale. Her work appears in many anthologies, including Trois siecles de vie francaise au pays de Cadillac, from Les Editions Sivori, 2002; Resurrecting Grace, from Beacon Press, 2001; and Uncommonplace, from Louisiana State University Press, 1998. Beverly is the author of four bilingual books of poetry, including Le blues braillant (The Blues Cryin'), from Cross-Cultural, 1999. Since 1993, she has won six first-place awards, including the Hackney Literary Award for Poetry and Le Prix CODOFIL en poesie. Beverly has published widely in reviews and journals, including Eloizes, Great River Review, Kansas Quarterly, Port Acadie, Runes, Squaw Review, and Verse. Prior to her arrival at NMU, Beverly studied French literature and critical theory at University of California at Berkeley; was tenured drama specialist in the English Department at Kansas State University; and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area as technical writer, French translator, and sole proprietor of Tekkon Associates, a consulting firm.

James McCommons

Associate Professor
B.A., University of Pittsburgh
M.A., Syracuse's Newhouse School
M.A., SUNY, Syracuse
jmccommo@nmu.edu

Teaching Specialties

- Journalism
- Nature and Essay Writing

James McCommons joined the Northern faculty in 2001. For the past four years, he served as journalistic adviser to the student newspaper, The North Wind. He recently developed a new course in Feature/Magazine Writing and a Teachable Minor in Journalism for secondary education majors.

Professor McCommons attended the Art Institute of Boston as photography major and later earned his B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1981. For the next several years, he was a reporter and photographer for newspapers in Rawlins and Casper, WY, Escanaba, MI and Rochester, NY. During this time, he freelanced for the Associated Press, United Press International, The Milwaukee Journal, The Detroit News, and several magazines. He later worked in corporate communications in Detroit, MI and edited Pro, the dealer magazine of the Chevrolet Motor Division. From 1990 to 1997, McCommons worked as a freelance and contract writer in Syracuse, N.Y., contributing to dozens of magazines and business publications.

In 1993, he earned an M.A. in magazine journalism at Syracuse's Newhouse School of Public Communications and an M.S. in environmental science at the College of Environmental Science and Forestry-SUNY in Syracuse. During the 1990s, McCommons taught news writing, essay writing, magazine writing/editing, and literature as an adjunct faculty member at Syracuse University in Syracuse, N.Y., and Muhlenberg College and DeSales University in Allentown, Pa.

In 1997, he joined Rodale Press in Emmaus, Pa. as a senior health writer and member of a writing team that produced several books for the Prevention and Men's Health brands. In 1999, he became a senior editor at Organic Gardening magazine and later a contributing editor.

McCommons continues to work as a freelance journalist, contributing regularly to the Family Matters section of Better Homes and Gardens and several other publications including Audubon, The Travel Section of the New York Times, Organic Gardening and Bicycling.
 

Bronwyn Mills

Assistant Professor
M.F.A., University of Massachusetts
Ph.D., New York University
bmills@nmu.edu

Bronwyn Mills received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from New York University in New York City, and comes to NMU from an academic appointment in Istanbul, Turkey. At NYU, she specialized in Caribbean and African Diasporic Literatures and Performance and wrote her dissertation, Maps, Cosmograms, And The Caribbean Imagination, under the direction of Kamau Brathwaite and Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Bronwyn's Master of Fine Arts degree was awarded in poetry under James Tate; and she is current revising a novel, Beastly, for publication in London. Her chapter on Simone de Beauvoir, "Second Sex; 'Third World' Female; Simone de Beauvoir and the Postcolonial Woman," has been translated into Turkish and will appear in the forthcoming book about Beauvoir edited by Dr. Gonul Bakay.  Bronwyn writes regularly for Talisman, A Journal Of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics in New York City.  Her latest article, a review article of Guthrie's Race Music, will be in The Journal  of American Studies in Turkey's forthcoming issue. She has been Senior Editor for Frigate, an online literary journal coming out of New York City and she has also published work on the work of Eduardo Galeano, on the Mexican American war (La Guerra Defensa), and writers in exile. For many years she was a dance and drama critic for a New England arts weekly.

Elizabeth A. Monske

Assistant Professor
M.A.,B.A., Central Michigan University
Ph.D., Bowling Green State University
emonske@nmu.edu

Elizabeth A. Monske holds a Ph.D. in English with a specialization in Rhetoric and Writing and cognate in Technical Communication from Bowling Green State University.  For three years she taught technical writing courses for Louisiana Tech University and acted as Technical Writing Coordinator.  With research interests in on-line education and faculty training, she has published in Computers and Composition and the Journal of Educational Technology and Society.  Dr. Monske has also presented and given workshops on various aspects of computers and composition and technical communication, i.e. digital identity, eportfolios, and pedagogy, at conferences and faculty seminars. 

Dominic Ording

Assistant Professor
B.A., Michigan State University
M.A. Philosophy & TESOL,
Michigan State University
Ph.D., Michigan State University
dording@nmu.edu

Dominic Ording received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University (2003), where he taught prior to coming to Northern. His dissertation, "The Difficulty of Intimacy: Gay Masculinities Before and After Stonewall," traces representations of masculinity from the Lost Generation through the Beat Generation, and through the years just before the advent of the HIV/AIDS health crisis. Dominic's teaching and research interests include American literature, cultural studies, gender studies, critical theory, and composition. His publications include articles about cultural representations of the Vietnam War era and the counterculture, Jack Kerouac, and the philosophy of education.
He also has M.A. degrees in Philosophy and TESOL, both from Michigan State. Dominic is extremely pleased to be back in Marquette, where he graduated from Marquette Senior High School and began his academic career at NMU.

Russell Prather

Associate Professor
B.A., University of British Columbia
M.A., University of Washington
M.F.A., University of Washington
Ph.D, University of Washington
rprather@nmu.edu

Russ Prather’s research and teaching specialization is British literature and culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with additional interests in visual culture, critical theory, and contemporary world literature and art. His article, “William Blake and the Problem of Progression,” is forthcoming in the journal Studies in Romanticism. In fall of 2006 he presented papers at the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR) at Purdue University, and at a "Blake and Conflict" conference at University College, Oxford. Prather is also a visual artist with work recently shown at the Oasis Gallery in Marquette, the DeVos Museum in Marquette and the Bonifas Fine Arts Center in Escanaba, and a show upcoming at the Omphale Gallery in Calumet. Before coming to Northern, Prather was a Fulbright Scholar in Marrakech, Morocco, and before that a graduate student and acting instructor at the University of Washington in Seattle. He has a B.A. in Philosophy, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and a M.A./Ph.D. in English.

Kia Jane Richmond

Associate Professor
B.A., English and Psychology, Texas Christian Univ
M.A., English, Texas A&M University-
Commerce
Ph.D., Composition and Pedagogy, Illinois
State University
krichmon@nmu.edu

Teaching Specialties

- Composition Studies
- English Education
- Psychology and Writing

Kia Jane Richmond is in her seventh year as an English department faculty member. She earned her Ph.D. in English Studies (composition studies and pedagogy) at Illinois State University in 2001. While a longtime resident of Texas, Kia earned an M.A. in English (1997), a B.A. in English and Psychology (1986), and two teaching certifications (Texas Lifetime Certificate in Secondary English and Psychology, 1989; National Board Certificate in Early Adolescence/English Language Arts, 1995). 

Kia is the co-director of the English Education program at NMU. In addition to teaching courses to prepare future secondary teachers of English/Language Arts, she serves as a university supervisor for English Ed students and, in that capacity, visits student teachers at middle/high schools across the Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin. Kia also teaches courses in writing, young adult literature, and the humanities. 

In December 2006, Kia was presented with NMU’s Excellence in Professional Development Award. 

Kia’s professional development activities include publishing (her articles have appeared in English Education, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Language Arts Journal of Michigan, Composition Studies, Issues in Writing, and The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning) and presenting at conferences sponsored by NCTE, CCCC, CEE, and MCTE. Kia has co-chaired the CEE Commission on English Methods since 2004, and she was one of only a hundred national leaders invited to participate in the Conference on English Education's Leadership and Policy Summits in 2005 and 2007.

Kia and her husband, David Neumann, have one tuxedo cat and one Pembroke Welsh Corgi dog. Since moving to the Upper Peninsula, Kia and David have enjoyed downhill skiing at Marquette Mountain, vacationing in Wisconsin, and searching for authentic Tex-Mex anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon Line.