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Modern & Classical Languages Faculty
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Rafal Krazek, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Modern & Classical Languages
M.A., Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
M.A., University of Chicago
DEA Diploma, University of Paris-X, Nanterre, France
Ph.D., University of Chicago
Office: Colman 123
Phone: 815-226-4147
Fax: 815-394-5171
E-mail: RKrazek@rockford.edu
Rafal received his PhD degree at the University of Chicago in 2007. His PhD dissertation titled "Montaigne and the Philosophy of Pleasure. An Epicurean Reading of the Essays” is currently being published at the prestigious Parisian publishing house: Garnier Classiques. Rafal benefits from triple cultural heritage: Polish, French and American. His MA dissertation defended at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow focused on a theater avant-garde representation of the French surrealist writer Lautréamont. At the University of Paris Rafal worked on his graduate degree in philosophy, studying Rousseau and the political economy of his time. Rafal’s academic interests include (Ancient) philosophy and literature, the question of literary subjectivity, the concept of nature and religion in French literature, and Montaigne’s impact on the thought of Rousseau, Pascal, Nietzsche and Gombrowicz. Rafal is a big aficionado of cultural travelling: last winter he advanced his knowledge of the Spanish language and the Mexican culture at the Universidad Internacional de Cuernavaca, in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
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Donald Martin, Ph.D.
Professor of Modern and Classical Languages
B.A., University of Illinois
M.A., University of Cincinnati
Ph.D., University of Cincinnati
Don Martin received his Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Cincinnati in 1975. He read ancient and modern Greek at the Aristotelian University in Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1966-67. From 1975 to 1984 he was cataloguer in the technical services department of the Colman Library, Rockford College, and from 1984 to the present he taught classical languages, classical civilization, and English. In 1994 he taught English composition in the Department of Foreign Languages of the University of Cyprus, Nicosia. During a sabbatical leave in the fall of 1998 he returned to Athens to translate George Theotokas’ Astheneis kai odoiporoi (Invalids and Wayfarers), the author’s epic portrait of Greece during and after WWII.
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Joseph Kobylas, Ph.D.
Professor, Spanish
B.A., Washington University
M.A., University of New Mexico
Ph.D., University of New Mexico
Joseph Kobylas has been teaching Spanish language, linguistics, and literature at Rockford College since 1991, having also served as Spanish Coordinator, Department Chair, and Language Laboratory Director. For many years he resided in Spain, as student, teacher, translator, and interpreter, and returns as frequently as is possible, occasionally working with international programs there. Joseph also attended Middlebury College in Spain, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and Linguistics & TESOL Institutes of America.
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John Burns, Ph.D.
Chair, Assistant Professor, Spanish
B.A., University of Maine
M.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison
Office: Colman 113
Phone: 815-226-4099
E-mail: JBurns@rockford.eduDr. Burns loves to share his research on Latin American culture, literature and history with his students. Some semesters he is even fortunate enough to travel with his students to the regions he teaches about in his classes. Dr. Burns has studied in Chile and Spain and has spent considerable time in Mexico. He completed his graduate work in Spanish at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009 when he defended his doctoral thesis entitled "Imagining the Poet: Strategies of Contemporary Spanish-Language Poets in the Era of Globalization”. A revised chapter of that thesis was published as "The Emergence of the Mediated Poet: Leopoldo María Panero in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666” in Contemporary Developments in Emergent Literature and the New Europe. Domínguez, César, ed. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela Press: Santiago de Compostela, 2011. He regularly participates in academic conferences where he presents his research on contemporary poetry, cinema and new media. Additionally, he has participated in presentations for the University of Wisconsin’s Center for the Humanities on the subject of Nobel Prize winners in the Spanish-speaking world and the cinematic use of Don Quijote in the American film Ghost Dog. He often writes reviews of Latin American scholarly texts for the journal Feminist Studies. Dr. Burns also translates literature in and out of English, Spanish and Galician. He is currently finishing an extensive of anthology of Beat poetry, cotranslated into Spanish with notable Mexican poet Rubén Medina which will be published by Editorial Aldus in Mexico City. You can read an interview with him about his experience translating Galician and Latin American literature at this link:
http://mundoadiante.blogspot.com/2010/02/interview-with-john-burns-translator-of.html
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| Stephanie Quinn
Assistant Professor of Modern & Classical Languages
Stephanie Quinn, Ph.D., is interested especially in the literature
and history of the late Roman Republic, and also generally in Greek and Roman
epic, and Athenian democracy and tragedy. She enjoys teaching a wide
variety of courses that introduce students to the ancient Greek and Roman
worlds, including their languages. Her graduate work was at Vanderbilt
University, and undergraduate in classics at CCNY. She has edited, with
extensive introduction and conclusion, a collection of scholarly essays and
literary selections that relate to the works of Vergil, focusing on the Aeneid. Dr. Quinn's career has
included many years of senior academic administration in higher education
institutions.
E-mail:
SQuinn@rockford.edu
Phone: 815-226-4049 |
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