Contact Information

School of Arts & Sciences

(315) 792-3028

English Faculty



Frank Bergmann, Ph.D.


Professor of English & German
fbergmann@utica.edu
Phone: (315) 792-3149
White Hall Room 255

Frank Bergmann (Dr. phil., Eberhard-Karls-Universitaet Tuebingen) first came to this country as a Fulbright scholar from Germany. He joined the college in 1969 and is currently professor of English and German. He has received the college's distinguished teaching award and the college's distinguished research award. Mr. Bergmann believes in careful reading and writing; in learning something about history; and in cultivating curiosity, courtesy, and common sense. He teaches and researches American literature, with an emphasis on New York State, and world literature with an emphasis on the fairy tale. He likes Mozart, soccer, gardening, and Kaesspaetzle (South German cheese-and-onion pasta).


John D. Cormican, Ph.D.


Professor of English
Phone: (315) 792-3185
Gordon Science Center Room 174

John Cormican has his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in English language and teaches composition and linguistics or language classes. He also has an M.S.W. from Syracuse University. His areas of publication have included Old English, medieval language and literature, child language acquisition, and language and social work practice. A self-described "born-again peasant," he has gained some notoriety locally by growing blue potatoes and raising chickens that lay green eggs. He is sometimes seen on the racquet ball courts taking out his hostility on a ball, which allows him to be kinder to students than he might otherwise be.


Jason R. Denman, Ph.D.


Assistant Professor of English
jdenman@utica.edu
Phone: (315) 792-3265
White Hall Room 244

Jason Denman received his doctorate from the University of California at Irvine in 2003 and came to Utica College in the fall of 2004 after a postdoctoral stint in Southern California. As a teacher and researcher, he is torn between major canonical classics and a few minor figures he would love to rehabilitate; thus he teaches Shakespeare and Milton while researching odd-ball plays by Beaumont and Fletcher. In class, he is something of a formalist and can often be found teasing unnatural amounts of meaning out of a word or two at a time. In his spare time, he is generally obsessed with three or more of the following: home-brewing, South-East Asian and Italian cooking, classical music, the piano, the baroque trumpet, billiards, darts, running, and basketball.


John Foreman, Ph.D.


Assistant Professor of English
jforeman@utica.edu
Phone: (315) 792-5285
DePerno Hall Room 105


Mary Anne Hutchinson, Ph.D.


Professor and Coordinator of English
mhutchinson@utica.edu
Phone: (315) 792-3221
DePerno Hall Room 116

Mary Anne Hutchinson (B.A., Utica College, '71) returned to teach at her alma mater after receiving a Ph.D. in English literature with a specialization in British literature prior to 1800. She teaches survey courses in British and world literature, upper level courses in Renaissance literature, as well as topics courses in Arthurian romance and detective fiction. In all her courses she places literary achievements in the context of intellectual history. Dr. Hutchinson serves as coordinator of the English Department. She lives in complete chaos with her children, her five cats, and her Cairn terrier Macduff, but still finds time to bake her own bread.


Mary Ann Janda, Ph.D.


Professor of English
mjanda@utica.edu
Phone: (315) 792-3325
Faculty Center Room 201

Mary Ann Janda (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago) has studied British and American literature and Composition and Rhetoric. Her teaching and research interests center in writing and writing instruction. Her particular research interest is autobiographical writing and she is currently working on projects that focus on self-reported literacy development. She finds herself so thoroughly satisfied and exhausted by the pursuit of her family's various interests, which include international sports car racing, breeding fancy mice, animé, and Civil War history that she has little time for any hobbies of her own.


Gary Leising, Ph.D.


Assistant Professor of English
gleising@utica.edu
Phone: (315) 223-2381
DePerno Hall Room 105

Gary Leising has an MFA in creative writing from the University of South Carolina and a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from the University of Cincinnati. He teaches creative writing and poetry, and is particularly interested in modern and contemporary American and British poetry. His poems have appeared in such journals as River Styx, Quarterly West, Margie, The Cortland Review, and The South Carolina Review. He enjoys cooking with his wife, Melinda, chasing squirrels with his hound dog, Oliver, and injuring himself while taking recreational softball too seriously.


Diane Matza, Ph.D.


Professor of English
dmatza@utica.edu
Phone: (315) 792-3259
White Hall Room 248

Diane Matza (Ph.D. in American Studies) came to Utica College in 1978 to teach composition and courses in contemporary American literature. Her topics courses (on minorities in the American literary tradition, on war, on politics, and other issues) and her two-course twentieth century survey emphasize the multi-ethnic and -racial nature of our national literature and tensions between the ideal and the real in American life. Ms. Matza is the editor of Sephardic-American Voices: 200 Years of a Literary Legacy. She has co-produced the literary artists series at Utica College for 20 years, currently administers the College's Honors Program, and received the college's distinguished research award. She likes to bake chocolate desserts, take her daughters to the ballet, and listen to Italian opera.


Lisa M. Orr, Ph.D.


Associate Professor of English
lorr@utica.edu
Phone: (315) 792-3058
White Hall Room 248

Lisa Orr (Ph.D. in English literature, 1997) is associate professor of English at Utica College. She received her doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she specialized in twentieth-century American literature, feminist theory, and working-class literature. She has published in Women's Studies Quarterly, Race, Gender, and Class, and American Indian Culture and Research Journal, and co-edited a special issue on working-class studies of Women's Studies Quarterly (1998). Ms. Orr believes in active learning (lots of group work and class discussion), mixing canonical and unknown works in her syllabi, and teaching historical and cultural contexts for all works of literature. She is often observed running, not speedily but doggedly, in the neighborhood around campus, and has completed Utica's Boilermaker--a 15k race.


James M. Scannell, Ph.D.


Associate Professor of English
jscannell@utica.edu
Phone: (315) 792-3113
DePerno Hall Room 102

Jim Scannell (Ph.D. in English literature, 1996) is assistant professor of English at Utica College. He received his doctorate at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He specializes in British nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature. He is also interested in aesthetics and aesthetic theory, having published on the aesthetics of imperialism. Jim is interested in computers and computer-assisted learning. He loves all things digital, from reading Jane Austen in ebook form on his MacBook to watching episodes of Lost on his iPod.


Carlann Scholl, Ph.D.


Assistant Professor of English
cfox@utica.edu
Phone:(315) 223-2542
DePerno Hall Room

Carlann Scholl comes to Utica College from Lafayette, Indiana, where she has been working on her Ph.D. at Purdue University. Her dissertation is about the emergence of a postmodern rhetoric within clinical medicine, specifically within a course called Clinical Medicine offered to first-year medical students. She also has two MAs-one in American Studies and one in English, TESOL track. She enjoys rhetoric and composition; books and movies; music, especially classical; and water-lakes, streams, puddles. She is especially delighted with her two-year-old granddaughter, Chloe. She thinks of herself as complex becoming, a verb rather than a noun.


Barbara L. Witucki, Ph.D.


Assistant Professor of English
bwitucki@utica.edu
Phone: (315) 792-3829
White Hall Room 247

Barbara Witucki is an assistant professor in English at Utica College. She completed an M.A. and Ph.D. in classical languages and literature at New York University where she specialized in Greek epic. Barbara also has an M.A. in English from Villanova University. Her current research interests include the ancient Greek novel and the influence of classical literature, art, and archeology on the British romantic authors. She has taught ancient Greek and Latin as well as literature courses and writing at the college, high school, and middle school levels.