Faculty

**ASU has moved to a new directory service. As a result of this change, these results are from Spring 22.**

The Department of English faculty is internationally renowned for innovative research and teaching and explores pan-world expression of the English language and its literatures, which span the global yet connect directly to the local. Our active and engaged group of teachers, scholars, and students pursue research in a number of traditional disciplines—such as creative writing, education, film and media studies, linguistics, literature, and rhetoric and composition—and also conduct research and publish work on the cutting edge of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary fields—from border studies, digital humanities and material culture to literature and science, sustainability, and women’s studies. 

Home / About / Faculty
Name
Expertise
Devoney Looser
Regents Professor

Devoney Looser is an internationally recognized scholar of British women’s writings, the history of the novel, and Jane Austen. The author or editor of nine books, she is a Guggenheim Fellow and an NEH Public Scholar.

480-965-3925
Ross-Blakley Hall 372 PO Box 871401
Alberto Rios
Piper Center Director and University Professor

Ríos’s latest collection of poems is Not Go Away Is My Name, along with a novel, A Good Map of All Things. He is Arizona’s inaugural poet laureate and a recent chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

480-965-3800
Virginia G Piper Center for Creative Writing PO Box 875002
Ayanna Thompson
Center Director & Regents Professor

Ayanna Thompson is a Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, and the Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies (ACMRS).

480-965-5982
Durham 524
Elly Van Gelderen
Regents Professor

Elly van Gelderen is a syntactician interested in language change. Her work shows how regular syntactic change (grammaticalization and the linguistic cycle) provides insight in the Faculty of Language.

480-965-3535
Ross-Blakley Hall 327 PO Box 871401
Joni Adamson
President's Professor

Adamson is President's Professor of environmental humanities and Director of the Environmental Humanities Initiative (EHI) at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at ASU.

480-727-3675
Walton Center for Planetary Health #445 777 E University
Krista Ratcliffe
Professor

Ratcliffe's research focuses on intersections of rhetoric, feminist theory, and critical race studies.

Ross-Blakley Hall 170E PO Box 871401
Robert Bjork
Foundation Professor

Bjork specializes in Old English language and literature as well as Old Norse, modern Swedish, and modern medical writing. He was educated at Pomona College and UCLA.

480-965-4659
Ross-Blakley Hall 249
Lois Brown
Center Dir & Foundation Professor

Brown is a public historian and a scholar of African American literature and culture.

Center for the Study of Race and Democracy Durham Hall - Office 625
Neal Lester
Professor

Lester's specialization is African American literary and cultural studies.

480-727-7030
250 East Lemon Street Discovery Hall, Suite 112
Doris Warriner
Professor

Warriner is an educational anthropologist who examines the social, political, economic, and ideological dimensions of immigration and transnationalism.

480-727-6967
Ross-Blakley Hall 170D PO Box 871401
Karen Adams
Professor

Adams research interests are in the study of language in its social and linguistic context.

480-965-3013
Ross-Blakley Hall 156 PO Box 871401
Center Dir & Professor

Nicole Anderson is Professor and Director of The Institute for Humanities Research (IHR) at Arizona State University, USA.

Aaron Baker
Professor
Ross-Blakley Hall 370 PO Box 871401
Sally Ball
Director of Creative Writing, Professor

Ball is the author of three collections of poems: "Hold Sway," "Wreck Me" and "Annus Mirabilis," all from Barrow Street Press. She's an associate director of Four Way Books.

480-965-5829
Ross-Blakley Hall 355 PO Box 871401
Lee Bebout (he/him/his)
Professor

Bebout has authored two books: "Mythohistorical Interventions: The Chicano Movement and Its Legacies" and "Whiteness on the Border: Mapping the US Racial Imagination in Brown and White."

Ross-Blakley Hall 241 PO Box 871401
James Blasingame
Professor

Blasingame focuses on young adult literature, Indigenous education, secondary writing instruction, preparing pre-service teachers, and cowboy poetry.

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Ross-Blakley Hall 349 PO Box 871401
Ron Broglio
Professor

Broglio's research focuses on how philosophy and aesthetics can help us rethink the relationship between humans and the environment.

Ross-Blakley Hall Room 178 PO Box 871401
Deborah Clarke
Professor

Clarke's primary field is 20th century American fiction.

480-965-7405
Jeffrey Cohen (Dean)
Dean & Professor

Cohen is the dean of humanities in The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He is widely published in the fields of medieval studies, monster theory, and the environmental humanities.

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Name
Expertise
Gabriel Acevedo
Assistant Professor

Acevedo's research focuses on queer young adult literature, pop culture pedagogies, (auto)ethnographical methodologies, and masculinity/machismo in Caribbean/Puerto Rican communities.

480-965-1752
Ross-Blakley Hall Office 122
Heather Ackerman
Instructor

Ackerman teaches composition for the Department of English at ASU

Ross-Blakley Hall 205AB PO Box 871401
Asst Professor

Adams' interests include book history, history of reading, early modern English drama, and premodern critical race and gender studies.

Karen Adams
Professor

Adams research interests are in the study of language in its social and linguistic context.

480-965-3013
Ross-Blakley Hall 156 PO Box 871401
Joni Adamson
President's Professor

Adamson is President's Professor of environmental humanities and Director of the Environmental Humanities Initiative (EHI) at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at ASU.

480-727-3675
Walton Center for Planetary Health #445 777 E University
Aaron Agorsor
Graduate Teaching Associate
Danielle Alfandre
Lecturer, Sr

Alfandre has been with ASU since 2012 and leads an annual, faculty-directed study abroad to Costa Rica.

Ross-Blakley Hall 239 PO Box 871401
Center Dir & Professor

Nicole Anderson is Professor and Director of The Institute for Humanities Research (IHR) at Arizona State University, USA.

Nicole Arocho Hernandez
Grad Teaching Assistant
Balbir Backhaus
Instructor
480-965-3535
Ross-Blakley Hall 205AB PO Box 871401
Aaron Baker
Professor
Ross-Blakley Hall 370 PO Box 871401
Cajsa Baldini
Clinical Associate Professor

Baldini's research interests are concentrated on British and European 19th century literature and culture.

480-965-7755
Ross-Blakley Hall 148 PO Box 871401
Faculty Assoc
Sally Ball
Director of Creative Writing, Professor

Ball is the author of three collections of poems: "Hold Sway," "Wreck Me" and "Annus Mirabilis," all from Barrow Street Press. She's an associate director of Four Way Books.

480-965-5829
Ross-Blakley Hall 355 PO Box 871401
Asst Professor

Barksdale-Shaw's work explores narratives of justice by combining several disciplines including law, literature and medicine.

Shomit Barua
Instructor

Barua is an instructor with the Writing Programs, Barrett Honors College and W.P. Carey School of Business.

Ross-Blakley Hall 205AB PO Box 871401
Lee Bebout (he/him/his)
Professor

Bebout has authored two books: "Mythohistorical Interventions: The Chicano Movement and Its Legacies" and "Whiteness on the Border: Mapping the US Racial Imagination in Brown and White."

Ross-Blakley Hall 241 PO Box 871401
Matt Bell
Associate Professor

Matt Bell’s next novel, Appleseed, is forthcoming from Custom House/William Morrow in 2021. He is the author of seven other books, including the novels Scrapper and In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods.

480-965-1208
Ross-Blakley Hall 214 PO Box 871401

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