Faculty
Cobb, Tom
Lecturer IV
3082CB 583-6388
tcobb(at)umd.umich.edu
Tom Cobb (Ph.D., Yale) has enjoyed writing since he was a child and won numerous writing awards in Detroit area contests while a student at Cranbrook. He wrote a dissertation while at Yale on Robert Greene, a sixteenth-century English writer interesting for his pioneering attempts to create not only fiction but also journalistic texts that capture a wide audience of readers. Dr. Cobb has taught writing courses for thirty years at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, including offerings in the Honors program, and has also taught composition and technical writing at Henry Ford Community College and Oakland Community College. His interests are wide and embrace not only expository and creative writing but also an appreciation of the great literature that language has inspired.
DeGenaro, Bill
Assistant Professor of Composition and Rhetoric
3064CB 583-6383
billdeg(at)umd.umich.edu
William DeGenaro (Ph.D., The University of Arizona) teaches composition, creative writing, and Comp 364: Writing for Civic Literacy, and emphasizes writing as revision, writing with "voice," and writing about social issues and community. A member of UMD's Civic Engagement Project, he incorporates community-based research and community-service writing projects into many of his classes. Professor DeGenaro writes about discourses of social class, rhetoric, and open-access education and has published articles in journals like Rhetoric Review, JAC, and Teaching English in the Two-Year College; various anthologies; and in his book Who Says?: Working-Class Rhetoric, Class Consciousness, and Community. In his spare time, he likes to cook ethnic food; blog; write poems and short stories; volunteer with area peace groups; and live out his secret, "music geek" identity (he loves Detroit's homegrown rock and roll). In his pre-professor life, he was an Ambassador Bridge toll collector (night shift), YMCA janitor (also the night shift), and studied for the Roman Catholic priesthood.
Duda, Ray
Lecturer IV
3024CB 583-6374
rduda(at)umd.umich.edu
Raymond J. Duda (M.A., A.B.D., Detroit) has been teaching in the Writing Program at UM-D since the late 1970s. He concentrates on teaching the introductory level courses in the Writing Program, and focuses on incorporating computer technology in the writing classroom. He teaches online versions of the basic writing courses and has also taught Honors and Advanced Composition, as well as introductory courses in English Literature and courses in the Medieval period. Currently he also serves as Assistant Director in the Writing Program.
Rohan, Liz
Associate Professor of Composition and Rhetoric
3062CB 593-5138
erohan(at)umd.umich.edu
Liz Rohan (Ph.D., Illinois) teaches first year Composition, Advanced Composition, Creative Writing, Reading and Writing Young Adult Fiction and other upper division writing courses. Her research interests are technologies and writing, gender and writing, feminist research methodologies, literacy studies and creative nonfiction/life writing. Almost all of her scholarship is historical and features groups and individuals using writing for work or identity formation in America at the turn of the last century. Two of these articles won national awards. She has just co-edited a book, Beyond the Archives: Research as a Lived Process, with Gesa Kirsch (Southern Illinois University Press).
Spitsberg, Tija
Lecturer IV
3066CB 593-5014
tijaspit(at)umd.umich.edu
Tija Spitsberg (M.A., New York University) teaches courses in dramatic literature, creative writing, creative nonfiction and composition and is the faculty advisor for Lyceum, the UM-Dearborn literary magazine. She has completed work toward her Ph.D. (ABD) at Carnegie-Mellon University in the School of Theater. She was formerly the restaurant critic for Monthly Detroit and most recently published an article on Eleonora Duse (1859 - 1924), the Italian actor. She is presently working on a novel whose protagonist suffers from writer's block.
Woodland, Randy
Associate Professor of Composition and Rhetoric
3022CB 436-9192
woodland(at)umd.umich.edu
Randal Woodland (Ph.D., North Carolina) has taught at UM-Dearborn since 1993, after teaching at UCLA and UNC-Chapel Hill, where he received his Ph.D in English. His research and teaching interests include writing in online environments. His primary teaching interest is first-year writing courses; he has also taught courses for the Honors Program and MALS. Current research projects include the presentation of gender and sexual identity in Second Life and rhetorical narratives in response to Hurricane Katrina. He is the co-author of Twenty Questions for the Writer and has published articles on Louisiana women writers, on the structure of electronic texts, and on the experiences of LGBT people in online environments. He is interested in cities (especially Detroit and New Orleans), New Orleans jazz, southern literature, and gumbo.
Willard-Traub, Margaret
Director, Writing Program
Associate Professor of Composition and Rhetoric
3018CB 593-5238
mwillard(at)umd.umich.edu
Margaret Willard-Traub (Ph.D., University of Michigan), Associate Professor of Composition and Rhetoric and Director of the Writing Program, has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in composition, writing theory & pedagogy, feminist autobiography & research, and disciplinary genres. Her articles on scholarly memoir, genre studies, writing assessment and critical pedagogy have appeared in the journals College English, Assessing Writing, Rhetoric Review, Feminist Studies and Pedagogy (forthcoming) as well as in a number of edited collections. A native of Vermont, she earned undergraduate degrees in Biology and Spanish at the University of Pennsylvania, where she also studied in the School of Veterinary Medicine. Writing, teaching and researching writing comprise her most interesting and satisfying experiences to date, excluding only those of being married to an economist, and being step-mother to two grown daughters and mother to a two-year-old son.