Employee Directory

Pen Pearson

Professor of English

Technology Center 259

pen.pearson@northern.edu

Resume/CV

Professor Pen Pearson teaches introduction to creative writing, poetry writing, fiction writing, and creative nonfiction writing, as well as early American literature, literary criticism, and composition. Pen also advises Honors students with creative theses. She currently serves on the campus-wide assessment committee and the three-year tenure-review committee for the College of Arts and Sciences.

Pen’s publications include One Wing Should Float (2023), winner of the South Dakota State Poetry Society’s chapbook contest, Bloomsbury’s Late Rose (2019), a historical novel about Edwardian poet Charlotte Mew, Poetry as Liturgy (2010), and Trespass to Chattel (2009). Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have also appeared in various anthologies and journals. 

Josie Portz

Assistant Professor of English

Technology Center 264

josie.portz@northern.edu

Dr. Peter Ramey, M.A., Ph.D.

Professor of English

Technology Center 254

peter.ramey@northern.edu

Courses Taught

Research Interests

Publications

The Word-hoard Beowulf: A Translation with Commentary. Angelico Press, 2023.

“St. Beowulf: Hagiography and Heroic Identity in Beowulf.” Studies in Philology, 121/1, Winter 2024 (pp. 1-27).

“Reconstructing Early Beowulf: The Evidence from Andreas for the 9th-Century Form of the Text,” Modern Philology. February 2023 (volume 120, no. 3).  https://doi.org/10.1086/723178 

“Problems with the Dramatic Irony Theory of Beowulf,” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews (Spring 2022). DOI: 10.1080/0895769X.2022.2043141

“Crafting Strangeness: Wonder Terminology in the Exeter Book Riddles and the Anglo-Latin Enigmata.” Review of English Studies 69.289 (2017): 201-15.

“The Riddle of Beauty: The Aesthetics of Wr?tlic in Old English Verse.” Modern Philology 114.3 (2017): 457-81.

“The Poetics of Caxton’s ‘Publique’: The Construction of Audience in the Prologues of William Caxton.” English Studies 96.7 (2015): 731-46.

“Writing Speaks: Oral Poetics and Writing Technology in the Exeter Book Riddles.” Philological Quarterly 92.3 (2013): 335-56.

“The Audience-Interactive Games of the Middle English Religious Drama.” Comparative Drama 47.1 (2013): 55-83.

“Variation and the Poetics of Oral Performance in C?dmon’s Hymn.” Neophilologus 96.3 (2012): 441-56.

“Beowulf’s Singers of Tales as Hyperlinks.” Oral Tradition 26.2 (2011): 619-24.

“Oral Theory and Medieval Literature.” Co-authored with John Miles Foley. Medieval Oral Literature. Ed. Karl Reichl. 71-102. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2011.

Meng Tian

Assistant Professor of Communication Studies

Technology Center 262

meng.tian@northern.edu

Tanya White

Instructor of Communication Studies and Spanish

Technology Center 250

tetiana.white@northern.edu

M.A., Spanish, Arizona State University

M.A., Communication, University of North Dakota

B.A., Spanish and English Philology, Kiev National Linguistic University, Ukraine

 

Resume/CV

 

In her Spanish, linguistics, and communication classes, Tetiana (Tanya) White gives students opportunities to develop new and various lenses through which to see themselves and other cultures. She enjoys watching students gain the confidence to speak publicly and carry that skill into their future careers.

 

Ms. White’s research interests lie at the intersection of linguistics and communication. Her latest master’s thesis studied critical cultural awareness of students, the structure of their mental lexicon, and their cultural values and beliefs. Her scholarly writing has appeared in Across Languages and Cultures and The Journal of Developmental Communication.