Profiles of the Harlaxton Faculty, Spring Term, 2010

The British Studies Faculty

Edward Bujak, PhD (University of East Anglia)
Associate Professor in British Studies and History
Vice Principal for Academic Services
ebujak@harlaxton.ac.uk

Dr Bujak is a graduate of the University of East Anglia (BA, MA, PhD) and joined Harlaxton College as an Assistant Professor 2001. In addition to teaching on the British Studies programme, a programme he led from 2004-2009, he teaches courses on British, European and international history and the two world wars.  In 2006, he received the Outstanding Teacher Award of the University of Evansville. In 2007 he was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. His book, England’s Rural Realms: Landownership and the Agricultural Revolution was also published in 2007 by I. B. Tauris. In May 2008, Dr Bujak was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. In 2009 he was appointed Vice-Principal for Academic Services at Harlaxton College and is currently writing a book on landownership in the Edwardian countryside.

David Green, PhD (University of Nottingham)
Teaching Fellow and Team Leader in British Studies
dgreen@harlaxton.ac.uk

Dr Green is a graduate of the universities of Exeter (BA) and Nottingham (MA, PhD). Before joining the British Studies team at Harlaxton in 2007 he lived and worked in England, Scotland and Ireland, lecturing at the universities of Sheffield, St Andrews and Trinity College, Dublin.

A late medieval historian working on Britain, Ireland and France, his research deals with themes central to the British Studies course such as kingship, colonialism and concepts of national identity. He has written three books and numerous articles. Dr. Green discusses his research at http://www.medievalists.net/2008/11/14/interview-with-david-green/. He is currently working on a volume on The Hundred Years War for Yale University Press.

Recent publications include Edward the Black Prince: Power in Medieval Europe (Longman, 2007); The Battle of Poitiers, 1356 (The History Press, rev. ed. 2008); The Black Prince (The History Press, rev. ed. 2008); 'Medicine and Masculinity: Thomas Walsingham and the death of the Black Prince', Journal of Medieval History (2009); and 'Lordship and Principality: Ireland and Aquitaine in the 1360s', Journal of British Studies (2008).

Gordon Kingsley, ThD (New Orleans Theological Seminary)
Lecturer in British Studies, and Principal
jgkingsley@harlaxton.ac.uk

In a long academic career, Dr Kingsley has been professor of literature and religion at Tulane University, Mississippi College, the University of Louisville, and William Jewell College, all in the United States. At the latter school he also served as academic dean and, for thirteen years, as president. In a study funded by the Exxon Foundation, he was adjudged among the top 5% of America’s 'most effective university leaders'. He holds degrees from Mississippi College (BA), the University of Missouri (MA), and the New Orleans Theological Seminary (BD, ThD), where his research was conducted jointly at Tulane University. He holds honorary doctorates from Mercer University (LittD), Seinan Gakuin University, Japan (DHum), and the University of Evansville (LHD). Though he describes the college presidency as a 'shortcut to illiteracy', he has managed to produce three books and some 100 articles, monographs, and reviews, chiefly in popular religious subjects.

Dr Helen Snow           
British Studies and English Literature
hsnow@harlaxton.ac.uk

After undergraduate work at Southampton University and her MA and PhD from the Shakespeare Institute of the University of Birmingham in Stratford-upon-Avon, Dr Snow first came to Harlaxton in the early 1990s, taking an active part in the creation and early evolution of the British Studies course as well as teaching Shakespeare and other literature, drama, and creative writing courses. After switching to the Open University for some years, both teaching and advising there, she returned to Harlaxton in 2004 and now combines working at the OU with teaching and advising on British Studies here. Her publications and research interests deal with Shakespeare in performance, gender in Shakespeare, and pedagogy and methodology in higher education, particularly in the field of study abroad (cf. also our conferences).

Philip Taylor, PhD (University of Lancaster)
Teaching Fellow in British Studies
ptaylor@harlaxton.ac.uk

Philip Taylor is a musicologist with interests in English music of the Renaissance period, particularly the work of William Byrd. He has degrees in music from Lancaster University (BA, MMus, PhD) gaining his doctorate in 2008 with the thesis: ‘Music and Recusant Culture: the Paston Manuscript Collection and William Byrd's Songs’. Before arriving at Harlaxton he taught courses in music history and theory at Lancaster University, and he continues to teach as an Associate Lecturer for The Open University. Phil has particular interests in the role of music in interdisciplinary arts and humanities education, and hopes to build on this as part of the British Studies team. As a keen singer and choral director he has led practical workshops on Byrd’s music, and currently runs an early music ensemble at Harlaxton. Current research interests focus on early modern music manuscript culture and word setting in Byrd's secular partsongs.

 

The Discipline-Specific British Faculty

Sally Brown, MA (University of Northumbria)
Director of the Harlaxton Collegiate Choir and Lecturer in Music
sbrown@harlaxton.ac.uk

With a BA (Hons) and an MA in Fine Art (sculpture) from the University of Northumbria at Newcastle upon Tyne, Professor Brown worked for twenty years as a professional sculptor, completing public commissions; a research project in West Africa as a Winston Churchill Fellow (1990); and a residency with the Northern Sinfonia Orchestra. During this time she moonlighted as a musician, singing and playing with a variety of blues and jazz outfits in the North-East of England. In the nineties, Sally chose music over sculpture to tour the UK and Europe with her own swing band, playing both fiddle and double bass as well as singing. Then followed two years at the School of Music at Newcastle upon Tyne, where she was ‘Student of the Year’, studying voice, viola, violin and piano, and touring with the College Choir.

Since moving to the East Midlands in 1995, Sally has founded seven flourishing non-traditional choirs, including the National Trust Out of Silence choir (researching and creating music which tells lost stories from the region’s heritage), and Choir Invisible, a 90-member, non-auditioned soul-gospel group which reached the finals of the UK’s most prestigious choral contest, the BBC Radio 3 Choir Of the Year Competition, and most recently performed for Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Both these choirs rehearse at Harlaxton Manor, where Professor Brown leads the Harlaxton Collegiate Choir.

Professor Brown now combines choir work with writing, winning the Orange Prize for Short Fiction in 2000 and currently completing a first novel.

Cliff Pettifor, PhD (Nottingham Trent University)
Lecturer in Politics
cpettifor@harlaxton.ac.uk

Professor Pettifor has taught Politics at Harlaxton College for a quarter century, formerly sharing an appointment with The Open University and carrying forward research and management duties as Director of the Performance Indicator Project.  Prior to his academic career he was a successful businessman.  A raconteur, wit, and superb teacher, Professor Pettifor offers courses in British Politics.  At an age when many are taking retirement, he is modelling Harlaxton's value of lifetime learning in a community of learners by undertaking studies toward a new degree in Modern History.

Ian Welsh, MBA (Nottingham Business School)
Lecturer in Marketing
Vice Principal for Business and Technology
iwelsh@harlaxton.ac.uk

With a MBA from the Nottingham Business School, Professor Welsh has taught a popular introductory course in Marketing for the last 10 years. His academic interests include the development and affects of consumerism in higher education and service marketing in general. In addition, he serves as the College's Vice Principal for Business and Technology, a varied and interesting role which keeps him busy!

Before Harlaxton College, Professor Welsh began his career in data processing management at a large London based group of Builders Merchants, at a time when computers were only just being introduced into the mainstream business arena. This was an exciting time to be 'in computing' and he has maintained a passion for technology ever since. He continued to develop his career and, via sojourns in operational and financial management, progressed to the financial directorship of a Midlands based retail group.

The American Visiting Faculty  

Gary Armstrong, PhD (Georgetown University)
Professor of Political Science
William Jewell College
armstrongg@william.jewell.edu 

Gary Armstrong  specializes in international relations and foreign policy.   He graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. degree in political science from the University of Oklahoma and a Ph.D. in government from Georgetown University.   As a graduate student, he served as a research assistant for Francis Fukuyama and his book, The End of History, as a teaching assistant for Madeleine Albright, and as the research assistant for his mentor, William O’Brien, a specialist in the law of war and the Just War tradition.  His doctoral dissertation examined war termination, focusing on the American debate in 1918 on how to end the First World War, and he is revising that manuscript for publication. 

He also teaches a summer foreign policy course for The Fund for American Studies at Georgetown University.  Strongly skeptical of Rational Choice methods in political science, he enjoys teaching at the intersection of history, other humanities, and politics.  Among his favorite courses are Intro to World Politics, Just War and the Iraq War, and an interdisciplinary course,  Birth By Any Means? The Ethics of Assisted Reproduction.  Students have voted him Professor of the Year at William Jewell four times.

He is a member of the American Political Science Association, Christians in Political Science, and the Great War Society. He has been elected to serve as the 2009 President of the International Relations Council of Kansas City.

Jerry Daday, PhD (University of New Mexico)
Assistant Professor of Sociology and
Director of Graduate Programs in Sociology
Western Kentucky University
jerry.daday@wku.edu 

As assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Western Kentucky,  Jerry has taught  a variety of undergraduate and graduate level courses, including introductory sociology, strategies of social research, criminology, victimology and genocide, family violence, and quantitative research methods.

After receiving his BA degree in Sociology from Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts, he enrolled at the University of New Mexico, where he completed his MA in 1999 and his Ph.D. in 2004. The majority of his research and publications focus on the examination of the overlap and divergence between victims and offenders involved in lethal and non-lethal violent crimes. His criminological research also examines the influence of social institutions on cross-national homicide rates as well as the study of the factors associated with fear of crime in different countries and cultural contexts. In addition to this criminological research, he has developed a collaborative and interdisciplinary research project with several colleagues from Western Kentucky University and the University of Nairobi in Kenya.  Each summer, graduate and undergraduate students from both of these institutions accompany Jerry and his colleagues to Kenya, where they conduct research on human-wildlife conflict and extreme poverty in several small villages in southeastern Kenya.

Jerry is joined at Harlaxton by his wife, Becca, who is an accountant and investigative fraud examiner for the State of Tennessee. Together, they enjoy long walks, travel, spending time with their chocolate Labrador retriever (named Chloe), and good conversation and laughter with friends and colleagues.

John Felton, PhD (Hofstra University)
Assistant Professor of Psychology and
Internship Program Coordinator
University of Evansville
jf35@evansville.edu 

John Felton was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and lived there until he left for college at the University of Notre Dame.  He graduated from Notre Dame with a B.S. in Psychology and went on to receive an M.S. in Experimental Psychology from Villanova University and then a Ph.D. in School/Community/Clinical Psychology from Hofstra University.  He has been teaching a variety of courses at the University of Evansville since 1979, with an emphasis on clinical psychology.  He runs the internship program at U. of E. and is the co-sponsor of the University’s Psi Chi chapter. 

His wife Maggie, a native of Philadelphia, is accompanying him at Harlaxton, and has her M.S. in Clinical Psychology and her Psy.S. in School Psychology.  She is also an instructor of psychology at the University of Southern Indiana, where she focuses on gender studies and child development.  They have five grown children scattered throughout the Midwest (three of whom are also alumni of Harlaxton) and one grandchild. 

Ruth Hoberman, PhD (Columbia University)
Professor of English
Eastern Illinois University
rhoberman@eiu.edu 

Ruth Hoberman received a master’s degree in comparative literature and a Ph.D. in twentieth century British literature from Columbia University in New York. She has been teaching modern British, world, and women's literature at Eastern Illinois since 1984. In 2006, she was named Eastern’s Distinguished Faculty Member.

Co-editor, with Kathryn N. Benzel, of Trespassing Boundaries: Virginia Woolf’s Short Fiction (2004), Ruth is also the author of Gendering Classicism: The Ancient World in Twentieth-Century Women’s Historical Fiction (1997) and Modernizing Lives: Experiments in English Biography, 1918-1939 (1987), and she is currently at work on a book manuscript titled Museum Trouble: Narratives of Conflict in the Edwardian Museum.

She is accompanied at Harlaxton by her husband, Richard Sylvia, a professor of Victorian literature at Eastern, who was a visiting faculty member at Harlaxton in 2007.

Kate Lang, PhD (University of Chicago)
Associate Professor and Chair of History
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
LangKH@uwec.edu 

Kate Lang completed her Ph.D. in Islamic History at the University of Chicago in 1997. During her studies, she lived abroad in Egypt, Yemen and Germany.  Kate currently teaches Middle East history, world history, and the senior thesis seminar at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where she also chairs the History Department. Her current research explores Arab-American communities in the Midwest.

Kate enjoys cooking and gardening. She is joined at Harlaxton College by her husband, David Knowlton, an artist, and her sons Jack (10) and Scott (7). David paints representational oils that study themes in architecture and industrial design. His work can be seen at the following website: http://thepetersongallery.com/Index.asp?PG=58. 

Jack and Scott love sports and are avid soccer players.

Paul E. Olsen, MA (Bowling Green State)
Associate Professor of Mathematics and
Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs
Wesley College
OlsenPa@wesley.edu 

Paul Olsen has taught mathematics at Wesley College in Dover, DE, since 1981, serving also as assistant vice president for academic affairs since 2007.  He is the author of two textbooks, Mathematics for the Health Sciences and Real Estate Mathematics.

The “proud father of two,” Paul is a self-styled sports fanatic, card player, and animal lover.  His favorite advice to students?  “Find a job you love to do and get somebody to pay you to do it.  To me, this translates to teaching the beauty, the importance, and application of mathematics, whatever the level of teaching.  I have been fortunate to have done this for thirty-seven years and God-willing, will for another ten.”

Roger Pieroni, PhD (Indiana University-Bloomington)
Associate Professor of French and Chair of Foreign Languages
University of Evansville
Rp49@evansville.edu 

Roger Pieroni earned his MA and PhD in French literature from Indiana University-Bloomington and taught at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez and at Central College in Iowa before joining UE in 2005.  His current research interests include the poetic novel, the Vietnamese colonial novel written in French, and foreign language program evaluation.  He has published articles on francophone writers Andree Chedid and Sony Labou Tansi.  He is an English to French ATA certified translator.

Peter Sherman, PhD (University of Nebraska)
Associate Professor of Management and
Mead Johnson Nutrition Chair in Business Administration
University of Evansville
Ps45@evansville.edu 

After earning his Ph.D. in business policies and strategy with areas in entrepreneurship and organizational behavior from the University of Nebraska, Pete Sherman spent approximately eight years in the investments business including time with Ameritrade Corporation and Chase Manhattan Investment Services. He also co-founded an investment advisor business.

Pete was the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant in the College of Business Administration Department of Management at the University of Nebraska; then, at the University of Evansville, he won the Dean’s Teacher of the Year recognition in 2005 and the Dean’s service award in 2006.  He directs the Evansville New Venture Creation Competition.
Pete is joined at Harlaxton by his wife Kim and by children Kelly (9), Ty (9) and Kate (7).

Kevin Valadares, PhD (St. Louis University)
Associate Professor and Program Director, Health Administration
University of Southern Indiana
KValadar@gmail.com

Kevin Valadares is associate professor of Health Services Administration and program director of the undergraduate and graduate programs in Health Administration at the University of Southern Indiana (USI), Evansville, Indiana. He teaches a variety of graduate level courses in health administration and undergraduate courses in health care ethics. In 2009, he was awarded the University’s Integra Bank Distinguished Professor Award.

Fiercely proud of his Canadian heritage, he earned Bachelor’s degrees in arts and social sciences from the University of Ottawa followed by a Master of Health Administration and PhD in Health Care Ethics from St. Louis University.  At present, he is a member of three medical ethics committees at regional health care institutions and speaks on a variety of topics concerning both health care ethics and health care reform. He is co-authoring a book entitled Ethics and Health Care in a Pluralistic Society.

Kevin is joined by his wife Katie,  assistant professor of gerontology at USI, and their three mischievous children, Sam, Vivian and Ruth. The Valadares kids will most likely spend many hours exploring the secret passages of Harlaxton manor and the entire Valadares family will be cheering (loudly) for Team Canada during the 2010 Winter Olympics.  In a first for Harlaxton, Katie will be teaching a full time faculty load—courses in Introduction to Gerontology, Health Aging, and Health Facilities Administration—from Harlaxton to America, online.

Bruce Woodruff, PhD (University of Nebraska)
Associate Professor and Chair of Theatre
Baker University
Bruce.Woodruff@bakeru.edu

Bruce Woodruff is a native of Kansas City, Missouri.  After graduating from the theatre program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and teaching at Westport High School, he spent two years in the U. S. Army.  He earned masters degrees in both theatre and speech communication from the University of South Dakota.  His Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is in theatre. 
Bruce began teaching at Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas in 1981, offering courses in both communication and theatre. He has directed forty productions there and has chaired the department of theatre for most of those years.