Meet the Faculty

Deborah Martinson, PhD

Chair; Associate Professor
Phone: 323-259-2801
Email: dmartin@oxy.edu
Office: CTL --Library Ground Floor #22
Office Hours: Monday and Friday, 10:30pm - 11:30pm
                     Wednesday, 3:00pm - 4:00pm

Associate Professor and chair of English Writing at Occidental College, Dr. Martinson's scholarly interest focuses on the theoretical intersections of auto/biography and literature. In Fall 2003, Ohio State University Press will publish her book In the Presence of Audience: Shaping of Self in Diaries and Fiction which explores the literary and autobiographical work of Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Violet Hunt and Doris Lessing. Professor Martinson is presently writing a biography of Lillian Hellman. In 1999 she was researcher for the PBS biography: The Lives of Lillian Hellman, directed by Phillip Schopper.

Tom Burkdall

Associate Professor
Phone: 323-259-2667
Email: tlburk@oxy.edu

Thomas Burkdall, Ph. D., is an Associate Professor in English Writing and Director of Writing Programs at Occidental College. He also serves as a writing specialist in the college's Center for Teaching and Learning. For the past six summers, Professor Burkdall has taught in the Health Preparatory Program offered through USC's Keck School of Medicine. His scholarly interests include modernism in English literature, the relationship between film and literature, and popular culture. In 2000, he published an analysis of the cinematic aspects of the works of James Joyce entitled Joycean Frames: Film and the Fiction of James Joyce.

Katie Mills

Visiting Assistant Professor

B.S.  University of California at Berkeley

M.A., Ph.D. University of Southern California  

Katie Mills, Ph.D., Visiting Assistant Professor, has extensive experience teaching writing for majors in social sciences, health sciences, plus arts and humanities.  Her scholarly specialties are film and cultural studies, focusing on gender, race, and popular culture.  Her book Headin’ Down the Highway: The Postwar American Road Story-will be published next year ( 2004) by Southern Illinois University Press. It explores American road stories-everything from Jack Kerouac's On the Road to MTV's Beavis and Butthead Do America.  She has also contributed to The Road Movie Book, GenXegesis: Essays on "Alternative" Youth (Sub)Culture, and ReallyGoodFilms.com.