institute 2011
Faculty Biographies
Program Co-Director, Dr. Susan Shillinglaw
Susan Shillinglaw is a professor of English at San José State University and Scholar in Residence at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas. A noted Steinbeck scholar, she has published several articles on the author and edited Steinbeck’s journalism (America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction) and collections of essays. She also wrote introductions to Penguin editions of Cannery Row and Of Mice and Men, A Russian Journal, and The Winter of Our Discontent (2008). Her most recent book is A Journey Into Steinbeck’s California (2006).
Program Co-Director, Dr. William Gilly
William Gilly is a Professor of Biology at Stanford University based at Hopkins Marine Station and was Director and Chief Scientist of a 2004 retracing of Steinbeck and Ricketts’s Sea of Cortez trip. He has engaged in numerous outreach projects involving print, television, radio and web media. His current research focuses on the ecology and physiology of the Humboldt squid and on impacts of decreasing oxygen in marine systems, including Monterey Bay and the Sea of Cortez.
Presenter, Dr. Robert DeMott
Robert DeMott received his Ph.D. in American Literature from Kent State University, Ohio. He is the Edwin and Ruth Kennedy Distinguished Professor of English at Ohio University. Author of Steinbeck’s Typewriter: Essays on His Art, he also edited Conversations with Jim Harrison; Steinbeck: Novels, 1942-1952; and John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath and Other Writings 1936-1941 (with Elaine Steinbeck). Steinbeck’s Typewriter was a co-winner of the Nancy Dasher Book Award from the College English Association of Ohio. He is a past director of the Steinbeck Research Center at San Jose State University.
Presenter, Dr. Chris Fink
Chris Fink is associate professor of English and creative writing at Beloit College and editor-in-chief of the Beloit Fiction Journal. Since 2000, he has published more than twenty stories in various US and Canadian journals, as well as several poems and essays. He was a founding faculty member of the Master of Fine Arts program at San Jose State University and founder of the John Steinbeck Award for the Short Story. Since 2000 he has been contributing editor of Steinbeck Studies. His stories have been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize.
Master Teacher, Nancy Harray
Nancy Harray recently retired from teaching literature and science at Monterey High School in a special program focusing on the marine sciences.
Project Coordinator, Maria Judnick
Maria Judnick is a graduate of San Jose State's MA program, where she focused on American literature and explored environmental concerns in everything she read - from Dickens to Shakespeare to Dana. She currently teaches English at a Bay Area Catholic high school where she schemes on ways to incorporate a little bit of Steinbeck into every class. In her spare time, Maria enjoys yoga, knitting, and reading.
Presenter, Dr. Scot Guenter
Scot Guenter is Professor and Coordinator of American Studies at San Jose State University. A cultural historian and vexillologist (vexillology is the scholarly study of flags), he is the founding editor of Raven: A Journal of Vexillology, author of The American Flag 1777-1824, and past president of both the California American Studies Association and the North American Vexillological Association. He has consulted at the Smithsonian and has most recently published on such varied topics as the effect of the Internet on interpreting national symbols, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Sarah Palin
Presenter, Dr. Persis Karim
Persis Karim is an associate professor of literature and creative writing at San Jose State University. She teaches American, ethnic and world literature and is the editor and contributing poet to Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora (2006). She is married to an ocean scientist, Craig Strang, and she credits him with her deepened appreciation for the ocean, and the beauty of California.
Presenter, Anthony Newfield
Anthony Newfield, originally from Northern California, is a professional actor based in New York City whose appearances on stage, film, and television have taken him from New York to California to Ireland and Russia. Broadway credits include Tartuffe and Waiting for Godot. For his work in the play Bent, he won Florida’s Carbonell Award for Best Supporting Actor. In 2002, he created his one-man show, Steinbeck and the Land, and performed it in New York and in Salinas, California, at the Steinbeck Festival. Since then, he has created new pieces for the Festival, including The Dog Ate My Manuscript: Of Mice and Men Onstage, A Box of Glory… An Armful of Garbage, and Tortilla Flat: How Danny and His Friends Found Their Way from the Page to the Stage. He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and earned an MFA in Acting from Carnegie Mellon University in conjunction with the Moscow Art Theatre.
Presenter, Dr. Matthew Spangler
Matthew Spangler is an assistant professor of Communication and Performance Studies at San Jose State University. He has written and directed over thirty adaptations of literature for the stage, including works by Ernest Hemingway, John Cheever, James Joyce, and Delmira Augustini (an Uruguayan poet).� Recently he produced and directed a stage adaptation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s letters at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland and at the Avignon Theatre Festival in France. He will be joined by Elizabeth Lee Barber to present his adaptation of Steinbeck’s short story, "The Chrysanthemums." His adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's novel The Kite Runner was produced by the San Jose Repertory Theatre and Arizona Theatre Company.
Presenter, Dr. Craig Strang
Craig is associate director of Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) at the University of California, Berkeley. He is founding director of MARE: Marine Activities, Resources & Education, a K-8 interdisciplinary professional development and curriculum development program focused specifically on implementing schoolwide marine science programs that increase learning and language acquisition for English Language Learners. He is the lead principal investigator of the multi-institution, NSF-funded Center for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence—California. He is a member of the National Marine Educators Association Board of Directors Executive Committee. He has co-led the Ocean Literacy Campaign in the US since 2003 resulting in the development of Ocean Literacy: The Essential Principles of Ocean Sciences Grades K-12. He is co-author of three multi-volume sets of science & environmental education curriculum materials for grades K-8.
Presenter, Pete Barraza
Interdisciplinary and experiential teaching of literature provides an opportunity to question why it belongs to a particular place, especially when it comes to a complex state like California. In reading the kaleidoscopic literature of California, particularly the works of John Steinbeck, students realize that CA is made up of a multitude of voices, experiences, histories, and enclaves. As part of the California Literature course at Santa Monica High School, students explore Steinbeck country by actually taking a curriculum-guided literary journey up through the Central Coast, a 4-day odyssey that allows students to explore the literature read throughout the year in a tangible way. For many students, it is their first time away from Los Angeles, experiencing what Gerald Haslam refers to as the "many Californias" of our state. Students visit places such as The National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, Corral De Tierra (Steinbeck's landscape for The Pastures of Heaven), Cannery Row, the Pacific Biological Lab of Ed Ricketts in Monterey, and Point Lobos. Along the way, students are also visited by several speakers who provide lectures on various issues related to California, including the life and works of John Steinbeck. During the NEH Institute, this presentation will provide teachers with a virtual tour of the California Literature trip, seeing how the literature of Steinbeck connects with the lives of students in meaningful and lasting ways.