Those Oberlin students with classes in the English department have undoubtedly noticed several new faces at the front of the classroom. This year, there are seven new professors: Jennifer Bryan, Peter Kalliney, Noelle Morrissette, Scott Newstrom, Benjamin Pauley, Geoffrey Pingree and Skip Willman.
Although this may seem like a major upheaval within the department, the large number of new hires is actually coincidental. “All of these people are replacing people who are either on leave or retired. It’s not as though we’ve added that many new positions. . . we’re not empire-building,” Professor and Department Chair David Walker said. This year, several professors (Phyllis Gorfain, Gillian Johns, Nicholas Jones, Wendy Motooka, Anne Trubek, Carol Tufts and David Young) are all on at least one semester’s leave, and Professor Jeffrey Pence is teaching at the Dannenberg Oberlin-in-London program this fall. Number-wise, in fact, there are actually fewer teachers within the English department this year than in the past.

The fact that so many professors are only temporarily gone means that over half of this year’s new professors are here as visitors. Four of the new teachers will be gone after this year. Peter Kalliney will be teaching at Oberlin for the next two years as the inaugural professor in a new program with the University of Michigan. “[One] new position is a two-year post-doctoral position that’s been set up in a consortium with the University of Michigan for the foreseeable future. Several people who have recently received their PhDs from Michigan will be appointed for a two-year post-doctoral position,” Walker said.

One entirely new tenure-track position belongs to Geoffrey Pingree, the new assistant professor of Film Studies. “The College is moving towards having a separate film studies program, and as soon as the program is established then his position will be moved into Film Studies, but it’s temporarily housed in English. Two of the other people that teach film studies, Patrick Day and Jeff Pence, are also in English and it just made sense to have him in the same department as them.”
Jennifer Bryan, a specialist in Medievalist literature, was hired to fill the vacancy left by Robert Longsworth’s retirement last year. She was offered the position after giving a presentation and being interviewed at Oberlin last year.
“Eventually [Oberlin] called me, they said would you like to come to Oberlin, I freaked out. . .I would look at my husband for months after being hired and say ‘We’re going to live in the Midwest. Doesn’t that seem weird?’” Bryan said.

After completing her graduate work at the University of California, Los Angeles, Professor Bryan taught for one year at the University of Arizona before coming to Oberlin. “One of the things I was worried about coming here was that I would be losing these people who are smart and not as privileged and more diverse,” Bryan said. “I worried that I would be coming to teach the privileged children of the upper middle classes who were pretending to be liberals and who were eventually going to work in investment banks.”
Experience, however, has changed Bryan’s mind about Oberlin students. “One of the things I like about students here is that they’re so curious. It seems like they just have the ability to ask questions. It’s more of a stretch for me, which I like. . . thus far, I like living here. I think I like the college a lot, too,” Bryan said.