Composition Instructor Profiles
Kate Chadbourne holds a Ph.D. in Celtic Languages and Literatures from Harvard University where, in addition to her Brandeis teaching, she offers courses in Irish language and folklore. As a visiting scholar she has spent a year each at the University of Ulster, University College Swansea, and University College Cork. Dr. Chadbourne’s research and writing focuses on Irish and Celtic life, including essays about the Celtic Otherworld, the Irish harp, the history of Irish storytelling, the fairy tradition of Donegal, and various themes in the medieval literature of Ireland and Wales. Like Cenn Faelad, a figure in early Irish literature, Kate lives at the crossroads of scholarship and art. She performs regularly as a singer, musician, and storyteller, and has published two poetry chapbooks: The Harp-Boat, a collection about her lobsterman father, and in 2011, Brigit’s Woven World & other poems of Ireland.
Barbara Levy has a B.A. in English from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in Old & Middle English from Cornell University. She taught at the University of Puerto Rico for sixteen years, then was a tutor in History in Literature at Harvard and has taught first-year English at Wellesley and Babson College. For the last twelve years, she has been teaching composition at Brandeis as well as first-year English at Suffolk University and given various language classes at Harvard Extension School's Institute of English Language Programs. She is the author of one book, Ladies Laughing: Wit as Control in Contemporary American Women Writers and published over fifty book reviews for the San Juan Star and several in The Women’s Review of Books.
Gordon Ruesch has taught Brandeis first-semester writers every fall since 1984. Before that, he took a B.A. in English Literature (U.Mass., Amherst), served two conscientious-objector years helping challenged epileptics, and four years in Korea first as Peace Corp tuberculosis-control volunteer, later as a university English instructor. At Brandeis, despite never quite completing his doctoral dissertation (on Samuel Beckett) he has found rich fulfillment helping Brandeis writers—alongside teaching at Harvard’s Institute for English Language Programs since 1990, in workplace literacy programs, and in A.D. Little MBA English Instruction. Current interests include devising science-focused composition curricula and practical writing instruction for Aspergers/autistic writers.
in both the Brandeis Writing Program and the Music Department since 2006. She received her M.F.A. and Ph.D. in musicology from Brandeis University and her B.A. in Music and Italian from Hunter College of the City University of New York. Dr. Wissner is the author of several articles and has presented her research at conferences throughout the United States and Europe. She is a recipient of numerous awards and grants including a dissertation research grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and serves as the Music and Media Series editor for Pendragon Press. Dr. Wissner’s research interests include seventeenth-century Venetian opera, Music and Politics, Music and Immigration, Popular music, and Television Music. Currently, she is working on a book project on the scores for The Twilight Zone entitled A Dimension of Sound: Music in The Twilight Zone.