Faculty Bios & Scholarship

Personal Biography and Education

J Eric Miller grew up in the mountains of Colorado and Montana.  Educated at the University of Montana (Bachelor’s degree), the University of Southern California (Master’s degree), and the University of Denver (Doctoral degree), he has been a professor of Creative Writing since 2000.

He is a faculty advisor for the university literary journals, The MSU Denver Roadrunner Review.

He believes in comfort of nostalgia, life choices that take animal welfare into account, the hypnotic effect of a good film or a book, second reads of everything, and the way a liberal arts centered education sets one up for success not just in a variety of career paths, but to be a thoughtful and thus useful citizen of the world.

Publications

His book length publications include Animal Rights and Pornography; Bloodletting and Fruits of Lebanon; and Decomposition.  Decomposition.  Animal Right and Pornography and Decomposition have been published in a variety of languages, including, French, Spanish, Italian, Turkish, and Russian.  Several short stories from the collection Animal Rights and Pornography as well as Decomposition have been optioned for film development.  His short fiction has appeared in:  American Short Fiction, Eclectica, decomP, Semaphore, Starry Night Review, Clementine Unbound, The The/tEmz/Review, Litbreak, The Scarlet Leaf Review, eFiction, and others. His short story “Invisible Fish” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Personal Biography

Laura Niesen de Abruña, Ph.D., is currently  Professor of English and former Provost & Executive Vice President at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Her areas of expertise include academic programming, strategic planning,  diversity, equity and inclusion, HSI/Minority Serving Institutions, Title V and Title III grants, digital learning, American Literature, and literature of postcolonial women writers. As both an administrator and a faculty member, her career focus has been on culturally responsive pedagogy, academic innovation, enrollment, and retention student success initiatives.

In addition to teaching, she is actively involved in several professional organizations, including the Association of Chief Academic Officers, where she served as President, the American Conference of Academic Deans, the Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park, and a long-standing role as board member for Every Learner Everywhere (ELE) network of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.   She has published extensively in the areas of American literature, Caribbean literature, and academic administration, most recently having authored “Becoming a Provost,” featured in the Provost’s Handbook as well as “The Role of the Dean in Decision Making at the University Level in The American Council of Academic Deans’ Handbook. She has published a scholarly text, The Refining Fire: Herakles and Other Heroes in T.S. Eliot’s Works as well as 32 additional publications and  over 100 presentations nationally and internationally.

Before joining MSU Denver, Niesen de Abruña had a twenty-seven-year career as a Provost and Dean at Dominican University of Chicago, York College of Pennsylvania, Sacred Heart University, Rober William University, ad Heidelberg University.  She was the principal investigator on a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation digital fellows project that supported more than 32 provosts at institutions around the country by implementing resources to improve undergraduate teaching and learning.  She has brought in over $80 million in gifts and grants to her institutions.

Education

Niesen de Abruña earned her B.A. in English from Smith College.  She received both her  Ph.D. and Master of Arts in English Language and Literature from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In addition, she holds a MS. Ed in Higher Education Management from the University of Pennsylvania.

Featured Publications

The Refining Fire: Herakles and Other Heroes in T. S. Eliot’s Works.  New York, Munich, and Bern: Peter Lang, 1992.  This is a scholarly monograph that analyzes the presence of heroic Greek values in the entire body of T. S. Eliot’s works.

Geography Lessons: Identity and Gender in the Literature of the English-Speaking Caribbean.  (In Progress. The manuscript is half-completed and copies of the completed chapters are available upon request). This book investigates what writers from various islands in the Caribbean have in common e.g., the colonial heritage and attitudes toward gender, work, and family life.

Publications

“Homi Bhabha as Public Intellectual at the Turn of the Millennium.”  Modern Language Studies. No. 1-2, Vol. 33, Winter-Fall (2003): 90-93. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism, v. 285, 2009.

“Joan Riley, Buchi Emecheta, and Other Sea Changes: African-Caribbean and African American Women Writers in England.”  British Women Writing Fiction.  Ed. Abby H. P. Werlock. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: U of Alabama P, 2000.  270-92.

“Jamaica Kincaid’s Writing and the Maternal-Colonial Matrix.”  Caribbean Women Writers: Fictions in English.  Eds. Mary Conde and Thorunn Lonsdale.  London: Macmillan, 1999.  172-83.

“Dreams of Leaving: Mother and Mother Country in Jamaica Kincaid’s Fiction.” The Woman, the Writer, and Caribbean Society.  Ed. Helen Pyne-Timothy.  Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles, Center for African American Studies, 1998.  164-75.

“The Ambivalence of Mirroring and Female Bonding in Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones.” International Women’s Writing: New Landscapes of Identity.  Eds. Anne E. Brown and Marjanne E. Gooze.  Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1995. 245-52.

“Greek Arete and Heroic Figures in T. S. Eliot’s Poetry.”  Human Virtue and Human Excellence.  Ed. Arthur A. W. Adkins.  New York, Munich, and Bern: Peter Lang, 1991.  95-129.

“Family Connections: Mother and Mother Country in the Fiction of Jean Rhys and Jamaica Kincaid.” Motherlands: An Anthology of Critical Writing on Black Women Writers from Africa, the Caribbean, South Asia and Great Britain.  Ed. Susheila Nasta.  London: Women’s Press, 1990.  This book was reprinted in the United States under the title of Motherlands: Black Women’s Writing from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia.  Ed. Susheila Nasta.  New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers UP, 1992.  257-89. Excerpts reprinted in Caribbean Women Writers.  Ed. Harold Bloom.  Ontario, Canada: Chelsea House.  108-09; 144-145.

“The ‘Incredible Indigo Sea’ Within Anglo-American Fiction.”  Engendering the Word: Feminist Essays in Psychosexual Poetics.  Ed. Temma Berg.  Introduction by Sandra M. Gilbert.  Urbana: U of Illinois P, Reprinted in Twentieth Century Literature Criticism, Vol. 138. Ed. Linda Pavlovski.  NY: Gale Group, 2003.

Personal Biography

Rebecca Gorman O’Neill is from Akron, Ohio, and she holds a BA in Drama and English from Dartmouth College and an MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon University.  She has worked professionally in film and stage theatre for the last 20 years. Her plays have been published and produced and across the country. At MSU Denver, she is a tenured professor whose expertise and courses cover playwriting, screenwriting, film and media studies, comics and the graphic novel, adaptation, and dramatic literature.

Publications

Selected Plays and Screenplays:

Lucia, Originally produced by Morehead Theater, Semifinalist, Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference.

Picnic Under a Gibbet, Richard Corso Films, Dark Rabbit Theatre, released 2020 (writer and producer)

The Ghosts of Us. Originally produced by the Athena Project, published by Next Stage Press, 2020.

Mynx & Savage. Originally Produced by Vortex Theater, Winner of the American Association of Community Theatre AACT NewPlayFest.  Published by Dramatic Publishing, 2018.

“The Green Crayon”. Originally Produced by And Toto Too Theatre Company, Published in Best Scenes for Kids Ages 7-15 In Lawrence Harbison (Ed.), New York, NY: Applause Books.

“Poison Control” originally produced by the InspiraTO Theatre, Toronto, Canada, Published by Heuer Publishing.

Selected Articles and book chapters:

“The Stuff of Legend: The Graphic Novel’s Re-imagination of Toy Literature.” Toy Stories: The Toy as Hero in Literature, Comics, and Film. Tanya Pell Jones (Ed.). MacFarland & Company: MacFarland & Company.

“Y: The Last Man”. Critical Survey of Graphic Novels: Heroes and Superheroes In Bart H. Beaty, Stephen Weiner (Ed.), (vol. 2, pp. 6p). Ipswich, Massachusetts: Salem Press.

“I See What You Mean”: Using Visuals to Teach Metaphoric Thinking in Reading and Writing. The English Journal, 100(1), p92-99. 8p. (with Dr. Gloria Eastman)

Personal Biography

Vincent Piturro is a Professor of Film and Media Studies in the English Department and holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. His areas of study include Science Fiction, Westerns, Documentaries, and World Cinema. He hosts a yearly Science Fiction Film Series in conjunction with scientists from the Museum of Nature and Science and the Denver Film Society. He recently published a book, co-written with those same Museum scientists, entitled The Science of Sci-Fi Cinema.