Assistant Professor of English

Office: NC 31
Phone: (574) 535-7518
Email: jbaldanzi@goshen.edu

Education

BA, Northwestern University, 1992
MA, Indiana University Bloomington, 1997
PHD, Indiana University Bloomington, 2003

Current Projects

After taking a graduate course in writing fiction this past summer, my creative writing focus has shifted from creative nonfiction to fiction.

My current research interests are the graphic novel, gender studies, and my ongoing interview project about traumatic birth.

I also love working with my writing students to take the next step in the creative writing process and send out their work for publication.

Courses

English Department, Goshen College, Assistant Professor, Fall 2006-present

FALL 2011:

Women in Text and Image
A critical analysis of women’s representation in social institutions, popular culture, literature, and film. Readings and projects will address definitions of feminism, femininity, woman, as well as gender, power and sexuality, with the objective of helping students critique cultural representations and examine how textual narratives shape their own perceptions of gender, sex, and identity. Individual or collaborative projects take the form of art work, videos, texts (stories, poems, critiques, research) or performances, presented in a seminar format. Recent offerings have focused on gender, race and class in popular media.
120 Creative Writing
An introduction to the writing of poems, short stories and creative nonfiction, with emphasis on writing, reading and discussion.

SPRING 2012:

American Literature II
Literature from the 20th-century to the present

MAY 2012:

230 The Graphic Novel
This course studies the US evolution of comics into graphic novels, and works both to define the boundaries and test the utility of the distinction between the two genres. While our reading list focuses on graphic novels that explore individual psychology, particularly autobiography and family history, we also explore other categories of visual narratives, from superhero comics to manga. Students create their own graphic autobiographies for their final projects.

2012-2013:
Two new courses in the Goshen College Core: Are We Still Human, and Recent US Fiction

Historic Courses:

336  Writing Memoir
307/WOST 325, Writing the Body
110 Literature and Writing
“Truth, Fiction, and Storytelling”
“Medical Myths”
120  Creative Writing
201  Postcolonial Literature
204  Expository Writing
230  The Graphic Novel
MCLL 300, International Classics
303  American Literature Survey

Selected Publications

Review of Demanding Respect: The Evolution of the American Comic Book.. Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies 12:1 (January 2011). www.safundi.com

“Jean Toomer.” Entry in Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Fiction. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

Continuing Maple Scholars project begun summer 2010, “Stories of Traumatic Brith, Grief, and Hope,” interview project with student Chelsea Kauffman.

Review of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. Center for Mennonite Writing Journal 1:5 (September 2009). www.mennonitewriting.org

“Bloodlust for the Common Man: The Sopranos Confronts Its Volatile American Audience.” Reading the Sopranos: Hit TV from HBO. Ed. David Lavery. Reading Contemporary Television Series. London: I.B. Tauris, 2006.

“Stillborns, Orphans, and Self-Proclaimed Virgins: Packaging and Policing the Rural Women of Cane.” Genders 42 (Fall 2005): 17 pp. www.genders.org

“What Remains: (De)composing and (Re)covering American Identity in As I Lay Dying and the Georgia Crematory Scandal.” Co-written with Kyle Schlabach. Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 36.1 (Spring 2003): 38-55.

Awards & Grants

Goshen College

  • Mininger grant summer 2011 for Fiction Writing workshop at Drew University, Madison, NJ
  • Maple Scholars, Summer 2010, Interview project, “Stories of Traumatic Birth, Grief, and Hope”
  • Mininger Conference Grant, March 2009, Iowa Summers Writers’ Conference
  • Mininger Conference Grant, March 2008, Indiana University Writers’ Conference

Indiana University, Bloomington

  • Departmental Teaching Fellow, Fall 2002–Spring 2004
  • President’s Summer Undergraduate Research Initiative Grant, Summer 2003
  • Dissertation-Year Fellowship, Indiana University English Department, Fall 2001–Spring 2002
  • TERA Award for Outstanding Teaching, Spring 2000

Northwestern University

  • Honors Thesis in Women’s Studies, Spring 1992
  • Phi Beta Kappa, Spring 1992

Committee/Administrative Work

  • Adviser for Red Cents
  • Adviser for Pinchpenny Press
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., Study day committee
  • Halloween poetry slam with CAC
  • PLA interviewer
  • Participated in Gen. Ed. Review, spring and summer 2011

 

Church/Community Activities

Church and Community

  • Help-a-House, Summer 2011
  • Globe Fund Drive, yearly
  • Disc Jockey, “Could Lead to Dancing,” WGCS-FM, The Globe, 2007-present
  • Disc Jockey (DJ NoCoast), “Crop Circles,” Breakthruradio.com, Fall 2008-Spring 2010
  • Actor and bassist, “Action Comedy,” New World Arts, Spring 2007

Lectures & Presentations

“The Changing Student ‘Self’ at a Religious Liberal Arts College: Assessing and Adjusting the First-Year Writing Curriculum to Address Major Changes in the Student Body.” Panel Presentation, International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Bloomington IN, October 2009

“Freaks, Geeks, and Paupers: Biologizing Class in a Democratic Utopia,” University of Louisville Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, February 2007

“The Bluest Eye: Story over Stereotype,” Women’s Studies Week Lecture, Goshen College, February 2007

“Eugenics and Popular Culture,” Invited Class Presentation, History of Eugenics Graduate Seminar, Indiana U—Purdue U, Indianapolis, November 2006

“What Remains? Composing and Decomposing National History with the Georgia Mortuary Scandal” (joint presentation with Kyle Schlabach, Midwest Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Minneapolis, MN, November 2002

“Whose New Race? Sanger, Toomer, and 1920s Narratives of American Eugenics, ” Society for Literature and Science Annual Convention, Atlanta, GA, October 2000

“Engineering Subversion: Our Geek American Heritage,” University of Louisville Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, February 2000

“Reproducing a Feminist Nation from 1915 to the Edge of the Millennium,” University of Louisville Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, February 1999

“Mothering Subversion: Pop Culture Moms ‘Nurture’ Resistance to Institutionalized Reproduction,” Society for Literature and Science Annual Convention, Gainesville, FL, November 1998

“Protecting Our Mothers, Defining Ourselves,” University of Louisville Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, February 1998

 

Memberships & Associations

Modern Language Association

Science and Literature Society