English Faculty Specialties
English Department Full-Time Faculty
Dr. Lindsay Christopher
Lindsay has been happily teaching at Clark since 2012. She previously taught at Arapahoe Community College in Littleton, Colorado and at the University of Denver, where she earned her Ph.D. in Literary Studies and developed proficiencies in climbing 14,000 foot mountains and descending the powdery slopes of the Rockies. Her teaching interests include multiethnic American literature, Native American literature, and research writing. She loves learning from her students’ diverse experiences and journeying with them as they develop new ideas, perspectives, and ways of being.
Jill Darley-Vanis
Jill has been teaching at Clark since 2000. She holds a B.A. in French and a B.A. in English from Oregon State University; she also spent one year abroad at the Université de Poitiers in France, where she studied in the Faculté de Langues et Lettres. Her M.A. comes from Portland State University, where her areas of focus were 18th and 19th century British literature and critical theory. Last, she returned to Portland State during her sabbatical, resuming her work in composition theory.
Her research, conference presentations, and published works focus on assignment design, transfer theory, and more equitable classroom practices. She has been published in the journal Teaching English in the Two-Year College (TETYC), the book Transparent Design in Higher Education Teaching and Leadership, and, with Melissa Favara, will soon be published in Just in Time from Utah State University Press. She has presented for the Conference on College Composition and Communications (CCCC), for the First-Year Experience (FYE), for the Two-Year College Association (TYCA), and for the state’s Assessment in Teaching and Learning (ATL) conference. Jill has served on the board for the journal TETYC and in English Department leadership, and she was recently elected to the Higher Education Practices (HEP) board of the MLA.
Dr. Marylynne Diggs
Marylynne is originally from the Washington D.C. suburbs of Maryland but has called Oregon home since 1986. She began her education at the University of Alabama as an Interior Design major, but soon changed to Criminal Justice and Sociology with a minor in English. After receiving her B.A., she moved to Eugene, Oregon, where she earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in English at the University of Oregon, specializing in Rhetoric, American literature, and Queer Studies. She has been teaching English and Humanities since 1987, and began her career at Clark College in 1998. In addition to teaching ENGL 098 and ENGL 102, Marylynne also teaches American Lit, Queer Lit, LGBTQ Studies, and Nature and the Humanities. Marylynne likes to relax and play too; she is an avid hiker and nature photographer as well as a huge fan of football, basketball, and tennis.
Elizabeth Donley
A Chicago native, Elizabeth holds a B.A. in Political Science with a minor in Italian
from DePaul University and an M.A. in English and an M.F.A. in creative writing from
Chapman University. She started her teaching career in rural New Mexico as a middle
school teacher and has also taught at the middle school and college levels in California.
In 2013, she taught Italian literature and writing in the WCCCSA foreign study program
in Florence, Italy. At Clark, Elizabeth teaches all levels of composition, Intro and
Advanced Fiction Writing, American Literature, and literary publishing. She also has
taught in the online and hybrid modalities for over fifteen years and has focused
much of her academic research on engaging the online learner.
Elizabeth's short fiction has appeared in ZYZZYVA, RiverSedge, Pomona Valley Review, and elsewhere. She also has been the recipient of an Oregon Literary Fellowship
in fiction, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant for fiction, and a Caldera Residency.
From 2013 to 2021, she was literary advisor to Phoenix, Clark’s award-winning art and literary journal. Currently, she serves as the English
Division Chair, a position she has held since 2014.
Melissa Favara
Melissa holds a B.A. in English with a Creative Writing Emphasis from Western Michigan
University and an M.A. in English Literature from The Pennsylvania State University,
where she studied Victorian and Modernist literature with a critical focus on Queer
Theory. She loves teaching composition classes, Detective Fiction, Science Fiction
& Fantasy, and American and British Literature.
Off campus, Melissa writes creative nonfiction, curates the 1,000 Words reading series,
enjoys the Pacific Northwest outdoors, and collects manual typewriters. She is also
a board member at the Independent Publishing Resource Center and is always on the
lookout for opportunities to promote reading, writing, and the printed word. Her writing
has been published in street roots, Metro Parent, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and elsewhere.
Dr. Mark Keats
Mark has an A.A. in English from Howard Community College as well as a B.A. in Japanese Language and Literature and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland, College Park. He began teaching at Howard Community College in 2008, focusing on composition and literature courses. He taught and tutored for six years before returning to graduate school and earning his Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from Texas Tech University in 2019. Outside of teaching and supporting students, he enjoys running, especially on the trails, and spending time with his wife and dog.
Dr. Ray Korpi
Ray has been teaching English at Clark since 1993. He has B.A. and M.A. degrees in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Washington State University-Pullman. Dr. Korpi teaches all levels of composition, especially focusing on English 102. He has been engaged with teaching composition with computers since his start as a teacher in 1988, and teaches a diverse selection of literature classes reflecting his multifaceted background. Dr. Korpi has also been actively involved in the learning communities activities at Clark as well as participating in the common read program. He served as a dean from 2003 to 2013. His current research interests are dealing with the changes in birding culture that deal with changes in technology and environmental issues.
Alexis Nelson
Alexis’s teaching career began in Rouen, France: a small medieval city where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, Gustave Flaubert set his famous novel Madame Bovary, and Alexis tried to help a bunch of French teenagers learn the English language. At Clark, where she has worked since 2010, Alexis teaches all levels of composition as well as various creative writing and literature courses. She also helps run the Columbia Writers Series, which brings nationally-recognized authors to campus, and Subtext, a week-long literary festival that takes places each spring. Alexis holds a B.A. in English from UC Santa Barbara and an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Portland State University. Her articles and essays have appeared in various publications including The LA Review of Books, The Normal School, and Tin House. Born and raised in San Francisco, she now lives in Portland with her husband, son, and little brown dog.
Dr. Julian Nelson
Julian is a professor of English at Clark College where he was also the German professor and director of the German Studies Program in Berlin, Germany. Julian has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UC Davis and some of his academic interests include world literature, philosophy, modernist aesthetics, contemporary theory, the Weimar Republic, photography and popular culture. Julian is fluent in German, French, and English, and since earning his Ph.D. in 2000, has taught a wide range of courses in languages, literary traditions, and the arts to both undergraduate and graduate students at different institutions. Significant teaching experience in the Humanities underscores his ethical and theoretical concern to frame learning outcomes with a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, intellectual traditions, and world areas. Julian has organized and directed study abroad tours to Paris, France, and Berlin, Germany for more than two decades. Julian advocates international learning opportunities for his students with the understanding that such experiences are embedded in debates about social justice in an increasingly globalized society and as such are an existential and economic necessity for students. Julian’s primary educational goal has been to help students succeed in acquiring proficiency in language, literature, and culture, but broader aims challenge students to develop empathy for cultural diversity while cultivating the effective communication skills needed to negotiate the trans-national nature of contemporary society. Beyond his teaching and scholarly work, Julian is also a practicing artist and photographer who has worked with traditional film media for over twenty years and has mounted solo and collaborative shows in galleries and cafés. He favors traditional, large format, black and white photography with a particular emphasis on portraiture. In addition to publications on modernist aesthetics, he has published his photography and writing in journals and contributed to a book on contemporary photography.
Jesse Morse
Tobias Peterson
Joe Pitkin
Gail Robinson
Gail has been teaching English at the college level for nearly twenty-five years and the time has flown by. That must be a sign that she loves what she's doing. Gail finds it deeply rewarding and humbling to witness the journeys of her students and to be part of the process of discovery and success. In addition to teaching, Gail is also a writer, though she struggles to find time for both teaching and her writing life. That's probably why she's still working on writing a memoir 15 years after she started it. She has hope that she'll finish it one of these days! Her other passions are cooking, baking, and being outdoors. Whenever Gail spends a weekend at the ocean or the mountain, all is right in her world. Gail earned her Bachelor's Degree in 1984 from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She majored in English with minors in Communication and Technical Writing. She then earned her Master's Degree in English in 1992 from Portland State University. Over the years, she has taken several workshops to build her knowledge and skills as a creative writer, with some of her most important teachers being Judith Barrington, Kim Stafford, Jennifer Lauck, and Martha Gies.
Kimberly Sullivan
Kimberly grew up in rural Mississippi and received her B.A. in English from Belhaven
College and her M.A. from Mississippi State University. She continued her graduate
studies at the University of Mississippi and Georgia State University. After teaching
composition at Mississippi State University and Georgia State University, she eventually
moved to Macon, Georgia, and taught at Mercer University. After a trip to the Washington
state in 1990, she decided to move to the northwest where she felt a strong affinity
with the area and the people.
Kimberly has been teaching at Clark College since 1991. Her teaching interests are
composition, technical writing and world literature. Outside of academia, her passions
are animal rescue and land use issues. She works with a local non-profit animal rescue
organization and serves on her local planning commission.
Cydney Topping
English Department Part-Time Faculty
Justin Allen
Justin teaches composition and writing courses themed around exploring cultural identity, disability, and social injustice. He earned his Master’s Degree in Fiction Writing from Portland State University. Before that he studied English Literature at Linfield College and Chemeketa Community College.
Jennifer Brennock
Jennifer earned a Master of Fine Art in Writing from Goddard College. She writes prose, drama, and poetry. Her creative work has been chosen by Michigan State University Press, Minerva Rising, Rough and Rede, Line Zero, Till, Shark Reef, Involutions, Becoming: What Makes a Woman from University of Nebraska Gender Studies and on stage at Orcas Center and Actors Theater of Orcas Island. Jennifer lives in Portland.
Lisa Bullard
Lisa earned her MA in English from Montana State University and has been teaching writing courses since 2011 at colleges and universities in Montana, New York, and in Washington. She has taught composition, literature, creative writing, and college skills courses. Prior to going back to school for her Master's Degree, Lisa taught toddlers, preschoolers, and substitute taught all grade levels in Montana and Vermont. Lisa has published writing in her own name as well as in her pen name, Isa Nye. You can find some of her work at The North Meridian Review, The Manifest Station, and forthcoming in an anthology titled We Don't Cry Anymore. When not teaching or writing, Lisa enjoys spending time with her family, being in nature, snowboarding, canoeing, traveling, and binge watching shows. She has moved countless times throughout her life, and is enjoying the comfort of staying put right here in the Pacific Northwest and loves being a part of the Clark College community.
Dr. Mary Coté
Mary has taught English composition and literature at universities and colleges in Oregon, Alaska, and Washington for more than 20 years. A native of Oregon, she completed her Ph.D. in English at the University of Oregon, specializing in Middle English language and literature, but also received comprehensive training in composition pedagogy. At Clark, she enjoys teaching composition and research writing as often as possible, because they form a crucial foundation for students’ success in college, work, and life. On occasion, she also teaches literature, including her first love, American literature, believing that all students deserve to know literature not just as something studied in school, but as something of their very own: part of their cultural inheritance.
Will Dawkins
Since entering the profession in early 2007, Will has taught writing, literature, and film studies at higher ed institutions in Mississippi, Washington, Oregon, and Minnesota. His published work consists of food writing, poetry, and scholarship on the English playwright Francis Beaumont, among other subjects; he has also presented at conferences on a range of pedagogical and scholarly subjects, most recently noir fiction. Will values the opportunities for cultural exchange that happen in the community college classroom and sees the processes of reading and writing as central to this exchange. When not teaching, he enjoys spending time in the outdoors with his family, traveling within and beyond U.S. borders, and listening to jazz records. If the mood is right, he also coaches his son’s Little League Baseball team in spring.
Jason Eversman
Jason has been an English instructor at Clark College since 2018, where he has taught courses in the composition sequence (ENGL 101 and 102) as well as the survey of twentieth-century American literature (ENGL 270). He did his undergraduate work (BA in English and Classical Humanities) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his graduate work (MA, some PhD work in English Language and Literature) at the University of Virginia. In addition to teaching, he has worked as an editor, mostly for other academic writers.
When not teaching about reading and writing, he likes to do those things himself, with a reading list ranging from antiquity to modernity—from Sophocles to Shakespeare to Joyce and Woolf and Beckett. He also likes to read and write about the outdoors, where he tries to spend as much time as possible—after growing up in the Midwest, he moved out to the Pacific Northwest to spend his summers rambling about the high peaks and old-growth forests and wildflower meadows of the Cascades (and when the mountains are covered with snow, the coast and the desert are great alternatives!)
James Finley
Cassia Gammill
Michael Guerra
Andrew Hillen
Andrew earned his M.A. in History at the University of Utah in 2012 and is now finishing his Ph.D. in Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Utah State University. He began teaching composition in 2014 and enjoys integrating classical rhetoric and history into each course. His research focuses on medical rhetorics and critical questions surrounding the rhetorics of pediatric care. In addition, he maintains his connection to his historical training through freelance writing for popular press ancient history publications.
Soohyon Ji
Shannon Kelley
Shannon completed her undergraduate degree in English Education at Trine University in 1998. She worked in marketing and communications for over 20 years in the San Francisco Bay Area. She went back to school in 2012 and completed a Master of Arts degree in Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse and a Master's Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from DePaul University in 2014. Additionally, Shannon worked with the Chemeketa Press to author a technical communications textbook titled, Practical Models for Technical Communicators. It is currently in its first edition.
Alexis Khoury
Alexis grew up outside of New York City and earned degrees at the State University of New York at Binghamton and the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. The bulk of her twenty-five-year teaching career was spent at Reedley College in California, but she also taught at Fresno City College and Greenville Technical College in South Carolina. She has been mercilessly mocked by students for introducing every single reading assignment as her favorite piece of writing.
Meredith Kirkwood
Dawn Marie Knopf
Dawn teaches composition, literature, and poetry at Clark College and Portland State University. She received her bachelor's degree at University of California Davis and her master's degree at Columbia University in New York, where she was the editor of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art. Her poems and essays have appeared in the Boston Review, Pacific Standard, Bomb, the New Inquiry, and Fence, among others.
Sara Marshall
Kym Miller
Lynne Nolan
Lynne was born in Seattle, and, after spending time in Arizona, Oklahoma, California, and Texas, moved back to the Pacific Northwest in 1994 and immediately felt at home among the trees. She lives in Portland with her husband, Mike. They have two beautiful daughters and an incredible grandson. Lynne received her B.A. in English Literature from Lewis and Clark College and her M.A. in English from Portland State University where she specialized in Renaissance literature and literary theory. She joined Clark's English Department in 2003 and teaches all levels of composition (and sometimes literature) both online and in the classroom. Her classes emphasize sense of purpose, and she encourages students to continually ask “why” on many levels. She is always eager to talk about Shakespeare, the best television show ever--Lost, the Chicago Cubs, the Washington Huskies, and will take on all challengers in basketball.
Joshua Patrick
Inspired to become an English teacher by his first composition instructor's emphasis on critical thinking and advanced literacy, Joshua tries to spread the same. Since 2008, Joshua has taught reading, writing, and literature classes at Clark College, specializing in pre-college reading and writing. He has a master's degree in English from Portland State University where he studied Critical and Composition Theory. He enjoys games, animals that do not bite, and music.
Dr. Arwen Spicer
Arwen belongs to the east of Sonoma Mountain, California and gets back there when she can. She has a B.S. in biology from Humboldt State University (1997), M.A. in English from Sonoma State University (2000) and Ph.D. in English from the University of Oregon (2005), where she focused on the nineteenth-century British novel and evolution and ecology in utopian science fiction. Her recent scholarly work includes the relevance of Ursula Le Guin’s and Jeff VanderMeer’s science fiction in the age of climate crisis. She has published two science fiction novels, Perdita and The Hour before Morning. Her favorite thing about teaching composition classes is bringing together a group of diverse voices to have meaningful, respectful discussion about topics that matter.
Carrie Steltz
Carrie has been teaching college level composition and language development and communication classes for over 23 years, 15 at Clark College and 8 at Le Cordon Bleu. She has earned a Bachelor’s in Interior Design from WSU Pullman; a Certificate in Professional and Technical Writing and Editing from PCC; and a Master’s in Education: Policies, Foundations, and Administration, Specializing in Leadership in Ecology, Culture, and Learning from PSU. Carrie is a firm believer in lifelong learning, both for herself and her students, and constantly enriches her knowledge base. In 2019, she earned a Certification of Completion in eLearning/Teaching Online with Hybrid and Online Formats. Carrie’s former careers include chef, catering director, career services director, and restaurant manager.
She loves adventure, nature, and traveling with her family and has been fortunate to visit 21 countries and many states. Carrie’s two grandchildren, two sons, daughter, and their partners are a loved and valued benefit in her life. She also enjoys a yearly family camping reunion at the Oregon and Washington coasts, which brings together European, Californian, and NW family.