Job Title: Full-Time Lecturer
Phone: (631) 632-7390
Email: rcalvey@gmail.com
Office Location: H-2032
EDUCATION
Stony Brook University—Stony Brook, NY
05/2011 Ph.D. in English
Dissertation Title: “Transcendent Outsiders, Alien Gods, and Aspiring Humans: Literary Fantasy and Science Fiction as Contemporary Theological Speculation”
Stony Brook University—Stony Brook, NY
12/2002 M.A. in English
Dowling College—Oakdale, NY
05/2000 B.A. in English; Minor in Psychology.
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
Co-presented Brown Bag session reporting findings of Curriculum Committee assessment of WRT 101 practices (Spring 2013)
Co-presented Brown Bag session titled “Developing a 300-level writing course” on constructing, advertising, and teaching upper level composition courses (Fall 2012)
Developed and co-presented Brown Bag session titled “Pop Goes the Writing: Four Approaches to Pop Culture as Theme” on pop culture as a composition course theme (Spring 2010)
Chaired Panel Session 1F (on Public and Private in Writing Center Work) during the 2008 Annual Conference of the SUNY Council on Writing (Spring 2008)
“Escape, Solace, and Reflection: Why I Have Read Fiction,” keynote speech at Sigma Tau Delta (English Honor Society) Induction Ceremony, Dowling College (Spring 2005)
“The Partially Realized Myth of the Total Videogame: The Past, Present, and Future of (Non)Linearity in Video Games,” at the 33rd/25th Annual Pop Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, New Orleans, LA (Spring 2003)
“Fanny Hill and John Cleland’s Literary License to Assault,” at Stony Brook Graduate English Conference, “Guilt: The Culture of Manipulation,” Stony Brook University (Spring 2002)
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Composition Courses
Stony Brook University—Full Time Lecturer (Spring 2008—)
WRT 102: Intermediate Writing Workshop
Guided by themes ranging from technology and the near future to ethics and effective altruism and utilizing nonfiction texts including Joseph J. Romm’s rhetoric guide Language Intelligence, William MacAskill’s Doing Good Better, Martin Ford’s Rise of the Robots, Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken, and persuasive articles from The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine and others, we’ve worked on writing as a three-stage process (placing particular emphasis on revision), rhetoric, and critical thinking, with students ultimately producing a Digication e-portfolio comprised of a Researched Argument, Textual Analysis, and Informal Essay for assessment by outside readers. With an “email challenges” assignment I created, we’ve also devoted time to applying compositional and rhetorical strategies gleaned from papers to practical, everyday situations.
WRT 102: Intermediate Writing Workshop (online version)
WRT 302: Worlds within Worlds
This upper division course analyzed a range of diverse literary and filmic narratives including Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, C.S. Lewis’ Narnia, Neil Gaiman’s Coraline and Stardust, Gene Wolfe’s The Wizard Knight, Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels, Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, and the films Pan’s Labyrinth and Sucker Punch to consider the following questions: Why are “rabbit hole” stories (narratives featuring characters who travel from their own world into another realm, often one contained within the first) so common? What pleasures and insights do they (and the subgenre “crosshatch fantasy,” into which many fit) provide readers—especially adults, who are often told that such story elements and the genres that feature them are only “for kids”? How can they enable us to see ourselves, and our world, in new ways—perhaps inspiring us to believe, as the best literary fantasy and science fiction can, that things could be different?
WRT 302: The Problem of Happiness
This upper division course sampled nonfiction writing on happiness including Sonja Lyubomirsky’s The How of Happiness and the Dalai Lama’s The Art of Happiness and analyzed a range of diverse literary and filmic narratives including the ancient epic Gilgamesh; Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road; Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World; Margo Lanagan’s dark fairy tale novel Tender Morsels; short stories by acclaimed science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin, satirist George Saunders, Margaret Atwood, and others; Romantic poetry; and films including Mike Leigh’s Another Year to consider the following questions: Is happiness an essential life pursuit—or a problem? Do we, or our circumstances, determine our happiness? Do cultural forces that promise happiness provide it—or distract us from what might? Do some people or institutions depend on or profit from people’s lack of happiness and hope? Can happiness be pursued directly? Are we good or bad at judging what will provide it (if the latter, can we get better at it)? Is finding happiness more about discovering passion within oneself (Joseph Campbell’s famous, perhaps misused, “follow your bliss”) or finding ways to be compassionate towards others? Can happy people and unhappy people really understand or help each other? How is happiness related to hope, pleasure, mortality (the desire for immortality), comfort, challenge, play, achievement, freedom, friendship, love, justice, self-knowledge/acceptance, and spirituality or religion? Do different cultures have fundamentally different understandings of happiness and its value?
WRT 101: Introductory Writing Workshop
Stony Brook University—Part Time Lecturer (Fall 2006—Fall 2007)
WRT 102: Intermediate Writing Workshop
Stony Brook University—Graduate Instructor (Fall 2000—Spring 2006)
WRT 102: Intermediate Writing Workshop
WRT 101: Introductory Writing Workshop
Dowling College—Adjunct Instructor (Fall 2003—Fall 2007)
ENG 1001: Principles of Writing
Suffolk County Community College—Adjunct Instructor (Fall 2003—Spring 2006)
EG 11: Freshman Composition
EG 10: Developmental Writing
Literature Courses
Stony Brook University—Graduate Instructor (Fall 2004—Fall 2007)
EGL 393: Rethinking Escapist Texts, Escapist Reading
Fall 2007
This upper-division course examined overtly escapist fiction, so-called “serious” literature, and works that straddle both camps along with metafiction, criticism, and films to explore questions including the following: Are forms of imaginative escape cowardly retreats from our world or noble attempts to redefine it/create alternatives? Can we find insight and emotional depth in escapism? Can escapist elements in serious works facilitate artistry/profundity? To what degree are escapism and literariness actually reading approaches? What works would “literary readings” of escapist fiction and “escapist readings” of serious literature produce? How would such an approach empower us as readers? Could it force us to rethink distinctions between escapism and literature/art? What might it reveal about the relationship between narratives and real life? Authors included Maxine Hong Kingston, Gene Wolfe, Jane Austen, and Nora Roberts.
EGL 393: Science Fantasy
Summer 2007
Following critic Brian Attebery’s claim that the subgenre of science fantasy is the source of “some of the most interesting stylistic, narratological, and epistemological experimentation in contemporary fiction,” this upper division course examined major science fantasy epics from Gene Wolfe and Philip Pullman along with the work of critics including Brian Attebery and Karen Armstrong to explore questions including the following: What is science fantasy, and what does it offer? Does it clarify or obscure the relationship between science fiction and fantasy? Are there separate literary and commercial forms of science fantasy? Can the subgenre help us bridge the divide between mythical and rational thinking (“mythos” and “logos”) that religious historian Karen Armstrong has suggested is a central dilemma of modern life? What else can it tell us about religion, spirituality, and science?
EGL 192: Introduction to Fiction: Literary Fantasy, Before & After Realism
Spring 2005
This introductory class for non-English majors explored and evaluated the fantasy tradition, with a focus on tracing the connections between marginalized contemporary fantasy and dominant pre-realistic fantasy, considering the relationship between fantasy and realism, examining fantasy’s relationship to other traditions, such as science fiction, determining what contemporary fantasy has to offer readers, and investigating how/why it is so often dismissed by writers and critics. Texts included Gilgamesh, Gulliver’s Travels, A Christmas Carol, and The Once and Future King.
EGL 192: The Science Fiction Short Story
Fall 2004
Following The Norton Book of Science Fiction’s claim that the genre is “a source of the most thoughtful, imaginative—indeed, literary—fiction being written today,” this introductory class for non-English majors asked, If science fiction is a form of literature, how should we read it, and what does it offer us? To explore answers, we examined science fiction short stories by authors including Isaac Asimov, Octavia E. Butler, Philip K. Dick, and Ursula K. Le Guin with a focus on how the genre can be understood as literature and what it has to say about subjects such as identity, gender, war, family, ecology, and the nature of reality.
Dowling College—Adjunct Instructor (Fall 2003—Fall 2007)
ENG 2033: Survey of British Literature I
ENG 2034: Survey of British Literature II
HUM 100: Western Literature I
ENG 103: Coming of Age Literature
Fall 2005
This Freshman Seminar was both an introductory literature class and a college orientation course. In the literature class portion, we explored varied literary works focusing on coming of age, the universal human experience which has been one of the central concerns of literature for as long as the medium has existed, to introduce students to the reading of literature and to help them navigate their own coming of age experiences. Texts included Austen’s Emma, Tolkien’s The Hobbit, short stories by authors such as Alice Munro and V.S. Naipaul, and the film Pleasantville. The orientation component of the course guided students through the academic challenges of college via ongoing discussions of student expectations/college realities and lessons in essential skills such as time management, note-taking, and library research.
ENG 103: The Science Fiction Short Story
Fall 2004
This Freshman Seminar combined the content of the EGL 192 class on the same topic with a college orientation component.
ENG 103: Heroes and Hero Stories in Literature
Fall 2003
This Freshman Seminar examined the hero and the hero story in literature, focusing on the physical hero, the intellectual hero, the tragic hero, the antihero, and the heroine. We examined how the concept of the hero is defined, whether heroes are selfless or selfish figures, what constitutes a heroic journey or quest, how the hero types compare, how hero stories vary from culture to culture, to what degree hero stories reflect reality, and how they empower and/or disappoint us. Texts included criticism by Joseph Campbell and Jan de Vries and works such as Beowulf, The Odyssey, Oedipus the King, Hamlet, The Woman Warrior, the film L.A. Confidential, and the television series Xena: Warrior Princess.
Suffolk County Community College—Adjunct Instructor (Fall 2003—Spring 2006)
EG 13: Intro to Literature
AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS
University Graduate Student Teaching Award Nominee, Stony Brook University. (Spring 2006)
Sigma Tau Delta (English Honor Society) Inductee, Dowling College. (1998)
Presidential Scholar, Dowling College. (1996-2000)
Full Academic Scholarship Recipient, Dowling College. (1996-2000)
SERVICE
Chair Bylaws Review Committee (Fall 2019—)
Judge for upper level informal essay category in PWR 2019 Essay Contest (Summer 2019)
Mentored two of my students chosen to present their researched argument papers at URECA (Celebration of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities) Conference (Spring 2019)
Serve on First Year Writing Committee (Spring 2019)
Served on Lecturer Search Committee (January 2019, Spring 2019)
Judge for argument genre in PWR 2018 Essay Contest (Summer 2018)
Served on Undergraduate Studies Committee and developed several drafts of a dozen different promotional postcards for our two minors (Fall 2017)
Judge for analysis genre in PWR 2017 Essay Contest (Summer 2017)
Judge for argument genre in PWR 2015 Essay Contest (Summer 2015)
Served as facilitator for Peter Khost’s study on student writing (Fall 2014, Spring 2015)
Inventoried and assessed WRT 302 syllabi and materials as part of Curriculum
Committee’s study of the program’s upper level courses (Fall 2013-Fall 2014)
Completed inventory and analysis of WRT 101 materials and contributed to final draft of
Curriculum Committee report on WRT 101 practices (Spring 2013)
Served on Program Reappointment Committee (Fall 2012)
Served on the Curriculum Committee and participated in drafting and revising a program-wide survey of WRT 101 teaching practices (Spring 2011)
Judge for research genre in PWR 2010 Essay Contest (Spring 2011)
Served on the Strategic Plan Committee and participated in crafting and revising the Program Strategic Plan for 2010-2015 (Fall 2010)
Contributed extensive pop culture-themed course packet to program resources (Spring 2010)
Reviewed all links to program site for Website Review Committee (Spring 2010)
Observed class taught by a colleague up for reappointment and wrote detailed observation report (Spring 2010)
Contributed email challenges as the “assignment of the week” for the program’s ongoing series (Spring 2010)
Submitted “article of the week” and summary/commentary on rhetoric and politics (Spring 2010)
Judge for argument and research genres in PWR 2009 Essay Contest (Spring 2010)
Presented lecture to History Department Teaching Practicum on students and writing (Fall 2009, Fall 2010)
Worked extensively with History Department’s Writing Committee (Spring, Fall 2009)
Contributed assignment and lecture files for email challenges assignment to Career Center (Spring 2009)
Member of spring vacation assessment group for the Program in Writing and Rhetoric, Stony Brook University (Spring 2004).
Two-term English Department Representative for Graduate Student Organization (2002, 2004)
Member of Conference Committee for Stony Brook Graduate English Conference, “Humanitas: Revisiting Humanism,” Stony Brook University (Spring 2003).
Organized series of instructional skits for the Program in Writing and Rhetoric New T.A. Orientation session, Stony Brook University (Fall 2001).
TUTORING EXPERIENCE
The Writing Center at Suffolk County Community College—Professional Assistant (from 2003)
Academic Tutoring Center at Dowling College—Writing and English Tutor (2003-2008)
The Writing Center at Stony Brook University—Writing Tutor (July 2002-December 2002)
Academic Services Center at Dowling College—Writing and English Tutor (1997-2000)