Master of Liberal Arts Faculty
Richard K. Adler
Known partly for his humor, charm, and political activism, Richard K. Adler is a Speech-language Pathologist and Professor of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at MSUM. As of July 1, 2006, Dr. Adler will also be the Director of Graduate Studies at Minnesota State University Moorhead. Dr. Adler has accumulated academic, teaching, and clinical experience in the areas of Rhetoric and Public Address, Interpersonal Communication, Phonetics, Language and Speech Disorders in Adults, Motor Speech problems of Adults and Children, Voice Disorders, and Neuroanatomy. He also heads up the Voice Clinic housed within the Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences department. In 2003, Dr. Adler started a Transsexual Voice and Communication Clinic as a subsidiary of the SLHS Department’s Voice Clinic. This clinic serves clients from South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Manitoba, Canada, and Iowa. He has taught MLA 690, Rhetorical Criticism of Women's Rhetoric, an interdisciplinary course involving the psychosocial, interpersonal communication, language, and psycholinguistic aspects of women's rhetoric from the 1950's through present day. Public speeches by Margaret Chase Smith, Barbara Jordan, Ursula LeGuin, Mary Fisher, Hilary Clinton, Anita Hill, Wislawa Szymborska, and others were studied and analyzed.
His first book, Voice and Communication Therapy for the Transsexual/Transgender Client: A Comprehensive Clinical Guide (www.pluralpublishing.com) is a co-edited/authored book in collaboration with two colleagues from Seattle. The collection of contributing authors spans the globe from the United States to Belgium to Australia. The text is the first book ever published in this area of speech and voice therapy. In addition, Dr. Adler is currently under contract with Elsevier Publishing to co-author the fifth edition of Neurology for the Speech-Language Pathologist with Dr. Wanda Webb from Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. This book is due out in 2007.
Originally from New York City, Richard has been at MSUM for four years. Previously he has lived and worked as a professor, clinical speech pathologist, supervisor, and administrator in Atlanta, Georgia, Seattle, Washington, and the Philadelphia area. He currently lives in Moorhead. Richard enjoys bicycle riding, working out, cooking, hiking, reading, traveling, gardening, and walking.
Jim Bense
Jim Bense’s MLA seminar on “America’s Great Books: Cases and Controversies” focuses on a number of “classic” American books in order to discuss fundamental questions about the nature of literary works that are regarded as having “universal” or at least enduring qualities: Are there distinguishable characteristics to be found in literary works that are classified as “masterpieces?” or “masterworks?” Do critical opinions about “classic” works more often reflect agreement or debate? Are such works designed to instill “values?” Do they convey “eternal verities?” What should “right-minded” readers get from a “great” book? Should established works that fail to meet present standards of critical “purity” be rejected? Should the category of “great books” be defended? Revised? Superseded? Abolished? The course also examines historical perspectives relevant to the questions above—for example, controversies, past and present, surrounding Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Huckleberry Finn.
Bense completed his Ph.D. in American literature at the University of California at Davis. He has been teaching in the MSUM English department since 1990. His areas of concentration include the intellectual history of American literature in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, with particular attention to 19th-century authors such as Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, Douglass, Stowe, Twain, and James. Conference papers reflecting his continuing research include a number on Hawthorne and Emerson, and more broadly, the relation of American Transcendentalism to millennial thinking in American literature. His previous publications include articles on Hawthorne and Stowe. His continuing interest in philosophical connections with Emerson has been relevant to his participation in National Endowment for the Humanities summer institutes on “Kant and Early German Romanticism” and “Emerson: Literature, Philosophy, Democracy.” He has a forthcoming article on the relation of Emerson’s thinking to philosophers William James, Immanuel Kant, and Stanley Cavell.
Steven Bolduc
Dr. Steven Bolduc studied at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (B.S., 1993) and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Ph.D., 2001). He is trained as an institutional economist—a tradition rooted in the work of Thorstein Veblen, John Dewey, and John R. Commons—and has written on industrial policy, political economics, and ecological economics. He also has served as policy advisor to the former Governor of Nebraska and has consulted with policy makers on US low-level radioactive waste policy.
Steve has offered MLA 690: ‘Justice’ in Economic Thought and Policy. Additional MLA courses in the planning stages include “Political Economy of Science and Technology” and, with Amy Phillips of the Department of Social Work, “Understanding Social Systems and Systemic Change.” Steve recently bought a house in Fargo for himself, his dog Fidelma, and his two cats, Joan and Nacia.
Mark Chekola
Mark Chekola, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, retired in May, 2005, after 36 years of teaching at MSUM. He was one of the original group of faculty involved in the development of the MLA Program in the early ‘80’s. He recalls the exciting workshops the group participated in, sharing ideas about the courses they were developing and offering sample class sessions. They were all so interesting that with each sample class session one found that one wanted to take such a course.
He developed “Ethics: The Moral Dimensions of Life” and taught it numerous times. In recent years he taught topical seminars, one on evil (“Facing Evil”) and two on happiness (“Happiness/The Good Life” and “Happiness/Well-Being”). He was acting coordinator of the MLA Program in 1985-86, while Joyce Torgerson, long-time MLA coordinator, was on sabbatical leave. He directed the program from 2001-2004. He always found his MLA classes to be stimulating and exciting teaching experiences. MLA students are almost always well-prepared for class, and ready to engage in discussion. They were true seminars. The end of class often seemed to come too soon, with many things left to discuss. While director he found it exciting and rewarding to help people interested in the program work out a plan of study and work on their major papers (now theses).
Mark has published papers in Gay/Lesbian Studies and on happiness and well-being. He’s returned to the topic of his PhD dissertation, “The Concept of Happiness,” and is continuing research on it. He has been working with social scientists involved with the World Database of Happiness at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, seeking to foster more cooperation between philosophers and social scientists in working on happiness. He’s been spending a month each year in residence at Erasmus University and expects to continue doing that. He enjoys the experience of living in another country for a time, and has developed some good friendships there.
Originally from Brooklyn, New York, Mark has become a happy resident of Fargo-Moorhead. He delights in taking his two young grandchildren on excursions and to art classes. He enjoys spending time at a remote cabin near Nevis, in Hubbard County, Minnesota and walking in the woods with his standard Poodle.
Sheila Coghill
Dr. Sheila Coghill directs a Master of Liberal Arts program and is also Professor and Chair of the Department of English at Minnesota State University Moorhead. Trained in 19th-20th Century American Literature, she teaches American Literature Survey courses, Modernism & Post-modernism, along with seminars and Senior Capstone classes in: Flannery O'Connor & Eudora Welty; Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman; and The American Renaissance.
To prepare for the MLA class she offers on The Archetypes of Midlife, she trained at the C.G. Jung Institute, in Zurich, Switzerland. She regularly attends conferences on Literature and Depth Psychology. This class has been voted as one of the MLA Program’s “best ever” courses.
Some of her more recent publications include: Visiting Emily: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Emily Dickinson, University of Iowa Press, 2000; Visiting Walt: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Walt Whitman, University of Iowa Press, 2003, Visiting Frost: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Robert Frost, University of Iowa Press, 2005), "'To Be a Flower is Profound Responsibility'", Emily Dickinson Newsletter, March-April, 2005. And “On The Subject of the Feminist Business”: Re-reading Flannery O’Connor,” published in The Flannery O’Connor Review, Vol. 3, 2005.
She is a voracious read as well as a Master Gardener. She also likes to travel. She and her husband, Thom Tammaro, live in Moorhead. You may visit her MSUM website at: http://www.mnstate.edu/coghill/ soon to be updated.
Alan Davis
Known for his easygoing Southern charm—he grew up in New Orleans—Alan Davis is Senior Editor of New Rivers Press, a teaching press on the MSUM campus, and has published two collections of short fiction: Rumors from the Lost World, 1993, and Alone with the Owl, 2000. He also co-edited ten annual issues of American Fiction, an anthology of short stories that was chosen by Writer’s Digest in 1998 as one of the top 15 publications of short fiction in the United States.
Al teaches MLA ---, The Shadow, an interdisciplinary course that explores the shadow—the dark side of personality—and the importance of understanding it. The shadow represents everything that a conscious person doesn’t wish to represent in themselves. For example, someone who identifies themselves as kind-hearted and friendly has a shadow that is always passing judgment on other people’s behavior. As Jacquelyn Small has written: “Until it is made conscious, the shadow causes us to create emotional explosions and catastrophe or to explode in emotionalism.” In Wikipedia, the shadow is further described: “Contemporary examples include religious zealots who project their own hatred onto other religions or groups, accusing them of the very thing that they are unable to accept within themselves. Another potent example of shadow projection is seeing in another person, with whom one is infatuated, good and wonderful qualities that one refuses to see in oneself. To gain access and awareness of one's shadow, one should carefully consider those qualities in another that repulse or disgust oneself. This can allow access to the underdeveloped aspects of personality that represent the shadow.”
We’ll read a variety of creative and theoretical material about shadow energy, including work written and/or edited by such writers as Margaret Atwood, Robert Bly, Joseph Conrad, Ralph Ellison, James Hillman, Carl Jung, Ken Kesey, Tim O’ Brien, Flannery O’Connor, Mary Shelley, Art Spiegelman, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Connie Zweig.
Alan lives in Moorhead with his wife Cathy and has two children, one of whom attends MSUM. You’ll sometimes see him walking on campus with Smoky, a black Labrador, or having a cup of good coffee or a pint of bitter with other members of the FM cultural and literary community at one of our many good coffee shops or pubs.
Laura Fasick
Laura Fasick has taught in the English Department at Minnesota State University Moorhead since 1990. During that time she has published over a dozen scholarly articles and two books: Vessels of Meaning: Women’s Bodies, Gender, and Class from Richardson to Lawrence (Northern Illinois University Press, 1997) and Professional Men and Domesticity in the Mid-Victorian Novel (Edwin Mellen Press, 2003).
In the MLA program, Laura teaches the course, “Artistic Creativity: Portraits of the Artist.” Ever since the Romantic Movement in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century introduced the idea of the artist as a tormented and solitary genius, artistic creativity has been associated as much with a certain personality type as with the actual works of art that an individual produces. Terms such as “artistic temperament” have come to connote a driven, often self-destructive and self-absorbed character, prone to extreme mood swings, simultaneously sensitive and yet ruthless in his (or more rarely he) pursuit of creative fulfillment. The course “Artistic Creativity” asks to what extent twentieth-and twenty-first-century literature has reflected, reacted to, and revised this vision of the artist. The course explores some literary embodiments of the artist, whether the art in question is writing, painting, or musical composition and performance, and encourages students to discuss what the implications of those embodiments are for our understanding of artistic creativity itself. Issues that this course examines include the relationship between art and morality (both private and public), the putative link (much disputed) between artistic creativity and neurosis, and the idea of an artistic “type.”
In teaching this course, Laura always promotes as much class discussion and shared learning as possible so that students will not simply passively receive information and ideas but will actively contribute their own insights, experiences, and – yes! – creativity to the course.
Ted Gracyk
Known for his insightful wit and biting commentary on the culture of music, Ted Gracyk chairs the Philosophy Department and has published books on I Wanna Be Me: Rock Music and the Politics of Identity, Temple University Press, 2001 and Rhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock, Duke University Press, 1996.
Ted teaches MLA 613 Human Spirit in Art, an interdisciplinary course that explores competing theories of human nature and their diverse manifestations in great works of art. One of the major questions posed by this course is: Do different eras and styles of art express different ideas about being human?
Among the theories examined are those of Greek antiquity, early Christianity, Renaissance humanism, the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud. Related art movements will include Greek sculpture and tragedy, the Italian Renaissance, the paintings of Vermeer, the music of Beethoven, Romantic painting, surrealism, and abstract art. These European perspectives on what it is to be human will be contrasted with selected non-Western ideas, specifically Confucianism and Zen Buddhism. Several of the books used in the course include: Ten Theories of Human Nature, Third Edition, by Leslie Stevenson and David L. Haberman (Oxford University Press) and Concerning the Spiritual in Art, by Wassily Kandinsky (Dover Publications).
Originally from California, Ted has taught at MSUM for 20 years. He lives in Moorhead with his family and two yappy dogs. Ted enjoys both high and low culture.
Stephen Hamrick
Professor Stephen Hamrick offers courses in literature and world religion, enjoying a wide range of texts from The Odyssey and Beowulf to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Terry Pratchett’s Disc World series. He currently pursues research on the relationship between the English Reformation, Petrarchan love poetry, and the cult of Elizabeth.
Stephen teaches MLA 690 The Literatures of War, which focuses on literary exploration of war, soldiers, and violence. War continues to play a central role in our lives as Americans, yet there is a long and varied tradition of writings about war, which we can turn to think about our situation. The course will study a series of Western and non-western texts written by men and women, starting with the ancient period and continuing to the current moment. Some texts read include the Hebrew Bible, Sung Tzu’s The Art of War, Walt Whitman’s poetry, World War I women’s poetry, and Pink Floyd’s, The Wall, among others.
An avid fan of Jethro Tull, Doctor Who, and Britcoms, Stephen enjoys spending time with his family, reading, and eating Indian food. He has been teaching at MSUM since Fall 2003.
Cecilia Mafla Bustamante
Dr. Cecilia Mafla Bustamante, Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Languages and Cultures, obtained her B.A. in Linguistics and English Literature from University of California – Berkeley, her M.A. in Special Applications of Linguistics from the University of Birmingham, England, her Doctorate in Literature from the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador, and her Ph. D. in Spanish from Arizona State University.
Before coming to MSUM, she taught at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, and Arizona State University. She has taught English, Spanish, linguistics, literature, translation, and Latin American Culture and Civilization. In addition to publishing her book, Arí – Sí – Yes: Análisis lingüístico y evaluación de las traducciones de Huasipungo al inglés, Abya-Yala, 2004, she has published the translation of a long poem “Sollozo por Pedro Jara” by the well-know Ecuadorian poet Efraín Jara Idrovo, several articles on linguistics, literature, and translation. She has also presented papers in Ecuador, Canada, England, Honduras, and the United States.
Cecilia will teach in the Hispanic Emphasis portion of the MLA Program next year, and she would like to teach courses such as “Contemporary Latin American Women Writers”, “The Indigenist Novel,” or “Ecuadorian Literature.” She is originally from Ecuador, but has lived in the USA on different occasions for approximately 17 years. Having lived in many places including the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, Spain, England, and having visited many countries in Latin America, Europe, and Asia, she offers a rich perspective of the world.
Shari Scapple
In 1791, the United States constitutionalized free speech; that meant Government could no longer control the information available to its citizens. Quite a radical idea occurring in late 18th century America! In MLA 690, Censorship and American Literature, we will examine this 215-year-old legacy as we engage in the great debate over who has the power to determine access to information. Issues pertinent to this course are Intellectual Freedom, First Amendment Rights, Right to Read, and Ramifications of Censorship (legal, political, personal, cultural, parental, and religious). Examples of texts read are Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Brave New World, Spirit of Crazy Horse.
Before coming to MSUM five years ago, Shari Scapple taught a graduate level course at the University of Minnesota on censorship and literature; MLA 690 has grown out of that experience. As well, Shari has written in defense of literature in Censored Books II, Nicholas Karolides, Ed., 2002.
Shari hails from Wisconsin where she lived on a 160-acre farm amidst pine-scented breezes and the early morning roar of farm machinery. She is an artist, wood refinisher, collector of toys and most things wooden; she claims to own ten rocking chairs. Teaching Censorship and American Literature will be her first experience in the MLA Program; she is looking forward to engaging with students in lively discussions at this level.
John Sherman
I retired about a year ago, and people I run into frequently ask, "Do you miss it?" The answer varies depending on whether I take the antecedent of "it" to be teaching or the job of being a faculty member. One of the good things about teaching is that, unlike many jobs, it provides the constant possibility of being interesting. And teaching folklore realizes that possibility more frequently than other classes.
Every term I taught folklore I could count on learning something new and interesting. I taught folklore focusing on the here and now, thereby making everyone in the class an expert. Students frequently reached into their own experience for collecting projects, so they were writing and talking about subjects close to their lives. They were usually informed, clear and lively. And I learned all sorts of things I otherwise could never have discovered.Folklore was literally the last class I taught, and I can't think of a better way to go out.
I still live a block off campus with my wife and two cats.
Benjamin Smith
Benjamin Smith, a Wyoming native, specializes in Medieval Spanish literature and the history of the Spanish language. He has presented at local and national conferences on topics ranging from Hispanic and Romance linguistics to foreign language pedagogy.
In the MLA program, Dr. Smith has taught the Masterpieces of Spanish Literature (630 course) on Cervantes’ El ingenioso hidalgo de la Mancha, Don Quixote. He enjoys helping students discover great works of literature. Through Cervantes, students are able to gain a better understanding of Medieval literature because of the way Don Quixote adopted so many conventions of Medieval Spanish and carried them into the literature that followed. Dr. Smith is currently designing a course that will focus on texts that demonstrate how the Spanish language has evolved over time.
Dr. Smith loves to travel and has traveled extensively in Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela, Spain and Mexico. Dr. Smith drew up MSUM’s current Study Abroad contract with the Universidad Internacional in Cuernavaca, Mexico and directed the first group in 2004. Dr. Smith received his PhD in Romance Philology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2000. During his time in Philadelphia he taught Spanish at Bucks County Community College, Drexel University and Haverford College. He is in his sixth year here at MSUM.
Mark Vinz
Mark Vinz has taught in the MSUM English department since 1968, where he is currently Professor of English, as well as faculty advisor to Red Weather literary magazine and co-director of the Tom McGrath Visiting Writers Series. He is also the author of several books of poems, most recently Long Distance, as well as a number of published essays and short stories. He is also the co-editor, with Thom Tammaro, of two anthologies published by the University of Minnesota Press, Inheriting the Land: Contemporary Voices from the Midwest and Imagining Home: Writing from the Midwest, both of which won Minnesota Books Awards, as well as co-editor with Robert Alexander and C.W. Truesdale of The Party Train: A Collection of North American Prose Poetry and The Talking of Hands, both from New Rivers Press.
In the late-80s he was asked to develop a writing course for the MLA program, which has evolved into his MLA 651/MLA 688 course called Autobiographical Writing. A number of examples of creative nonfiction are discussed during the semester, but the main emphasis is on establishing a writers’ workshop (both small groups and the class as a whole) for the constructive criticism and encouragement of the students’ manuscripts. As Wallace Stegner and a number of other writers have pointed out, “the best teaching that goes on in a college writing class is done by members of the class, upon one another.” Students are free to explore any number of topics and formats, whether working on extended pieces of writing or a series of shorter ones. Likewise, students’ goals may vary widely, from creating memoirs for one’s children or grandchildren to developing material to be used eventually in fiction or poetry.
