Faculty and Staff

Education

• Ph.D., English Studies, Illinois State University
• M.A., English and American Studies, Michigan State University
• B.A., English and History, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Education

• Ph.D. in Writing Studies, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, 2023 
• M.A. in English, South Dakota State University, 2015 
• B.A. in English, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, 2011

Research Interests

Mark’s research fits broadly into the discipline of Rhetoric and Composition, and specifically explores the uses of literacy in changing technological, cultural, pedagogical, professional, and creative contexts. His work has appeared in Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Language, Literature, and Culture (Duke University Press, 2023), The Minnesota Writing and English Journal (2023), as well as various edited collections such as The Twenty-First Century Western (Lexington Books, 2020). Works in progress include an essay on agonistic rhetorics in writing pedagogy, as well as an interview-based exploration into the fading literacy work of typewriter repairers. At UWRF, he teaches a variety of writing courses, including the Practicum for Peer Tutoring and Writing Instruction, Cyberliteracy, Technical Writing, Editing, and Rhetorical Theory. 

Mark is an emotionally invested follower of the Minnesota Twins. He collects (and uses!) manual typewriters. He listens to old folk and country music. Lefse is his favorite food.

Education

• B.A., Pepperdine University
• M.A., Claremont Graduate School
• Ph.D., University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Areas of Specialization
Courses developed at UWRF:

• ENGL 228 - Literature of Environmental Justice    
• ENGL 266 -  'Green' Business Writing (online)     
• ENGL 310 -  U.S. Environmental Literature     
• HUM 305 - Human-Animal Studies
• WGSS 214 - Women's Literature   
• WGSS 215 - LGBTQ Literatures

Background

Greta Gaard is Professor of English and served as Founding Coordinator of the Sustainability Faculty Fellows at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls (2015-2019). Her scholarship and teaching emerge from the intersections of student-centered pedagogy, antiracist feminisms, environmental justice, queer ecologies and critical animal studies, exploring a wide range of issues, from postcolonial ecofeminism to children’s environmental literature, and the ecopolitics of climate change. Gaard has served on the Executive Council for the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), and on the editorial board for the organization’s journal, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE) since 1995. Author or editor of six books of ecocriticism and feminist praxis, Gaard anchors her most recent volume, Critical Ecofeminism (2017), in Australian ecophilosopher Val Plumwood’s foundational work. Gaard’s current research advances conversations across the fields of critical ecofeminism and climate justice, Mindfulness pedagogy, Happiness Studies and Writing Pedagogy, and the Environmental Humanities.

Access her published research.

Education

• Ph.D., State University of New York at Buffalo

Certification

• Secondary School Teaching Certification in English, Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, South Korea  
• TESOL Certificate, California State University, Eastbay, CA

Courses Taught

• ENGL 100 Academic Reading and Writing (Undergrad)
• ENGL 101 Freshman English for International Students (undergrad)
• ENGL 201 Investigating Ideas: Reading, Writing, and the Disciplines for English Language Learners
• ENGL 211 Introduction to TESOL: Reading and Writing (Undergrad)
• ENGL 220 Structure of English (Undergrad)
• ENGL 360 Theory and Methodology of TESOL (Undergrad)
• ENGL 420 Pedagogical Grammar (Undergrad)
• ENGL 450/650 Non-Native Speakers in the Midwest (Undergrad/Grad, online)
• TESL 767 Teaching ESOL Reading (Grad, online)

Research Interests

• Bilingual and biliteracy education
• Dual immersion programs
• Reading engagement (motivation and metacognitive strategies)
• Culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogy
• Academic resilience

Conference Presentations

• Jang, E., Seo, Y.S., & Brutt-Griffler, J. (2024, April) Exploring reading motivation, metacognitive strategies, and achievement among multilingual and English-dominant students, 2024 AERA Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA.
• Jang, E., & Seo, Y.S. (2023, March). The effects of motivational and cognitive engagement on multilingual students’ reading achievement. Paper accepted for the 2023 Conference of the AAAL, Portland, OR.
• Jang, E. (2021, April). Contextual understanding of literacy skills of language-minoritized bilinguals: A cross-country comparative study. Presented at the Student Academic Excellence Poster Presentations, SUNY at Buffalo.
• Brutt-Griffler, J., & Jang, E. (2021, April). Early biliteracy development: Key factors that facilitate its development in a dual language program. Presented at the 2021 AERA Annual Meeting (virtual conference).
• Brutt-Griffler, J., & Jang, E. (2021, March). Early biliteracy development: Research and policy implications for dual language programs, Presented at the 2021 Conference of the AAAL.
• Brutt-Griffler, J., & Jang, E. (2019, April). Dual language programs: An exploration of students’ academic achievement, bilingual proficiencies and school identification. Presented at the 2019 AERA Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada.
• Jang. E. (2017, April). Exploring language program pipelines to bachelor’s degree attainment. Presented at 2017 Graduate School of Education Symposium, SUNY at Buffalo, NY.
  Jang. E. (2017, March). Heritage language as a bridge to higher education. Presented at the 2017 Conference of the AAAL, Portland, OR.
• Riazantseva, A., & Jang. E. (2016, April). The relationship between L2 English proficiency and academic success in higher education. Presented at the 2016 Conference of the AAAL, Orlando, FL.
• Jang, E., & Han, Y. (2015, March). EFL graduate students’ socialization into academic discourse in American university. Presented at the TESOL 2015 International Convention & English Language Expo, Toronto, Canada.

Professional Associations 

• American Association for Applied Linguistics
• American Educational Research Association
• TESOL International Associations (2015–present)
• WITESOL

Publications

• Jang, E., & Brutt-Griffler, J. (2023). Between- and within-school tracking and literacy skills of multilingual young adults: Across-national comparative study. International Journal of Educational Research, 120, 102210.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2023.102210
• Jang, E., Seo, Y. S., & Brutt-Griffler, J. (2023). Building academic resilience in literacy: Digital reading practices and motivational and cognitive engagement. Reading Research Quarterly, 58(1), 160-176. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.486 (Recognized as a top cited article 2022-2023)
• Brutt-Griffler, J., & Jang, E. (2022). Dual language programs: An exploration of bilingual students’ academic achievement, language proficiencies and engagement using a mixed methods approach. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 25(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2019.1616670
• Jang, E., & Brutt-Griffler, J. (2019). Language as a bridge to higher education: A large-scale empirical study of heritage language proficiency on language minority students’ academic success. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 40(4), 322–337. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2018.1518451
• Jang, E., & Kim, J. (2015). Uses of smartphone apps for English listening practice. Studies in English Education, 20(1), 27-53.
• Jang, E., & Kim, J. (2012). The effects of task types on English writing performance in social media-based learning environments. English Language & Literature Teaching, 8(2), 45-66.
• Jang, E., Won, E., & Jeong, D. (2011). The effects of using Smartphones to assist lexical inferencing strategies in vocabulary learning. Modern English Education, 12(3), 342-367.
• Jang, E., Won, E., Kang, K., & Jeong, D. (2010). The university learner responses to mobile social media-based vocabulary learning. English Language & Literature, 15(2), 145-165.

About Eunjee

Eunjee Jang joined the English department as an assistant professor of TESOL in 2023. She earned her PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her research focuses on equity-oriented language and literacy education for English Learners in both monolingual and bilingual settings. She has a particular interest in bilingual and biliteracy education, dual immersion programs, reading engagement (motivation and metacognitive strategies), culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogy, and academic resilience. In exploring these topics, she employs quantitative and mixed-methods approaches, drawing on data from international and national large-scale assessments. Her recent research published in Reading Research Quartey has been recognized as one of the top cited papers in the journal (2022-2023). She serves on the editorial board of Multimedia-Assisted Language Learning, sponsored by the Korea Association of Multimedia-Assisted Language Learning. In her free time, she enjoys collecting fridge magnets, stickers, and pins. She is bilingual, speaking Korean and English.

Education

• Ph.D., University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa
• M.A., B.A., Winona State University

Erik's research is wide-ranging, but primarily focuses on disability, trauma, addiction and religious experience in American fiction and creative nonfiction. His work has appeared in The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review (Penn State University Press) and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men at 75: Anniversary Essays (University of Tennessee Press). A member of the 2020 cohort of the American Examples workshop, a working group aimed at scholarship in American religious history and sponsored by the Henry Luce Foundation, Erik has a forthcoming essay, which focuses on the influence of psychedelia in American religion in the workshop’s second volume of essays, and he will be a co-editor of Volume 3.

He teaches a variety of literature courses in UWRF’s English program, including American literature surveys, African American literature, International Short Fiction, Contemporary American literature, and Literature of War.

A native of the Twin Cities, Erik is grateful to return to the upper Midwest as an educator at UWRF.

Education

• B.A., M.A., Utah State University
• Ph.D., English Literature, Purdue University.

Areas of Specialization

• English Renaissance Literature
• Early Modern Cultural Studies
• Shakespeare
• Literary Theory
• Gender and Sexuality Studies

Publications

• "La Jupe Blanch: (Ad)dressing ElizabethI". Prose Studies 28 (2006): 168-83.
• Rev. of Shakespear's Violated Bodies: Stage and Screen Performance, by Pascale Aebischer.The Sixteenth Century Journal: The Journal of Early Modern Studies 37 (2006): 617-18.
• Rev. of Words That Count: Early Modern Authorship: Essays in Honor of MacDonald P. Jackson, Edited by Brian Boyd. The Sixteenth Century Journal of Early Modern Studies 37 (2006): 617-18.

Autobiographical Information

Michelle Parkinson has published critical works in Prose Studies and The Sixteenth Century Journal. Her creative work has appeared in The Sycamore Review and Utah State University Magazine. Her dissertation focused on sexuality politics in early modern England through readings of the letters and speeches of Elizabeth I and the plays of John Lyly and Christopher Marlowe. She has attended numerous conferences in the United States and the U.K. Recently, she traveled to Scotland as an invited speaker at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow to deliver a talk on the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. Her current research centers on the political, religious, social and legal rhetoric surrounding the phenomenon of execution in early modern England. She teaches Shakespeare, Introduction to Literary Studies, British Literature Survey I, Shakespeare on Film and Human Issues in Literature.

Education

• B.A., University of Minnesota
• M.A., University of Nebraska
• Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Research Interests

• Creative Writing
• Creative Writing Pedagogy
• Fiction Writing
• World Literatures in English
• Contemporary Novels

Joe Rein is a Wisconsin native and taught at five other midwestern institutions before coming to UWRF in 2012. He currently serves as faculty advisor to Prologue, UWRF's student-run literary magazine, and has editorial experience with a variety of literary journals including Prairie Schooner and cream city review. He is co-editor of the book Dispatches from the Classroom: Graduate Students on Creative Writing Pedagogy. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in over fifteen journals and anthologies, most recently The Pinch Literary Journal, Hawai'i Review, Laurel Review, and Beyond the Workshop. His screenplay, 15 Minutes with Jacob, was produced into a short film in 2013.

Education

• B.A., University of Wisconsin-River Falls
• M.A., University of St. Thomas

Education

• B.S., M.A., St. Cloud State University

Education

• B.S., University of Wisconsin-River Falls
• M.A., University of Arkansas-Fayetteville

Education

• B.S., University of Wisconsin-River Falls
• M.F.A., University of Arkansas-Fayetteville

Education

• M.A., ESL, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, 2010
• B.A., History and Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1999

Courses Taught

• ENGL 101 English for International Students
• ENGL 201 Investigating Ideas: Reading, Writing, and the Disciplines for English Language Learners
• ENGL 211 Introduction to TESOL: Reading and Writing
• ENGL 252 Multicultural Education: Language, Media, and Philosophy
• ENGL 322 Language Acquisition
• ENGL 373 Techniques in Tutoring: TESOL Practicum
• TED 432 English Techniques
• ENGL 450 Non-Native speakers in the Midwest
• TED 428 TESOL Techniques
• ESL courses in the English Language Transition Program

Professional Affiliations

• American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)
• International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL)
• Fulbright Association
• Minnesota TESOL (MinneTESOL)
• Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)
• Wisconsin Association of International Educators (WAIE)
• Wisconsin Association for Talented & Gifted (WATG)
• Wisconsin TESOL (WITESOL)

Professional Awards

• U.S. Fulbright Scholar, Narva Collage, University of Tartu, Estonia, 2018-2019
• UWRF Evidence-Based Teaching Fellow, 2017-2018
• UWRF College of Arts and Sciences Excellence in Service Award, 2015
• Ruth Crymes TESOL Academy Fellowship, 2013
• UWRF Compass Award for Outstanding Advising and Support for First Year Students, 2012

Research Interests

• Teaching and learning strategies
• English language learners
• Teacher education
• Professional development