Faculty

Professor Ferreira received Norwich’s Homer L. Dodge Award for Teaching Excellence.

Professor Ferreira holds memberships in the Modern Language Association, the Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature in the United States, the American Portuguese Studies Association, the Radical Caucus in English and the Modern Languages, the American Conference for Irish Studies, and the Vermont Beekeepers Association.

Professor Ferreira’s teaching and research interests focus on literature that emphasizes culture, race, and ethnicity. She regularly teaches classes on American cultural and ethnic literature, literature of the Developing World, and special topics courses involving African literature, and literature written by women. She has been interviewed on National Public Radio regarding her research on Frederick Douglass’s asylum in Ireland and is also a contributor to a full-length film titled Frederick Douglass and the White Negro. Current projects include a feminist biography of Isabel Jennings, an Irish abolitionist, an auto-ethnography focusing on the transplantation of her family from Portugal to Provincetown Massachusetts, and an anthology of contemporary poetry on bees and beekeepers.

A member of the Modern Language Association, the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies, and the College English Association.

Teaching Interests include World Literature, American Literature from the early days of European contact through the present, Mystery Literature and Film, specifically of the hard-boiled American variety, and the intersection between popular culture and high culture as evidenced in literature throughout history.

Professor Williams’ teaching and research interests focus on the literature of war. She regularly teaches Military Literature, has taught a course on writing about war by non-combatants, and has taught literature and writing for veterans. She also taught a course on the Literature of the Vietnam War and took a group of students to Vietnam for almost three weeks where they continued their study of the war and its literature. She has also served as faculty advisor to NU Visions Abroad, accompanying students to northeast Thailand to teach English and design and build a community kitchen for the village of Pa Chan. In addition, she has presented at numerous conferences on her scholarly work and published several pieces that explore the literature of war. At Norwich, she frequently teaches freshman writing, world literature, and electives such as “The Literature of Leadership.” She is currently working on a book-length biographical study of the life and work of Ellen N. La Motte, a nurse, writer, and activist.

MLA, LASA, ACTFL, AATSP, AAUW

Detective fiction, literature of the fantastic, nonfiction, journalism and testimony.

Modern Language Association, Cervantes Society of America, International Association for Semiotic Studies

The transposition of the aesthetic strategies of the cubism of Juan Gris and the noeclassical composer Manual de Falla in the poetry of Gerardo Diego, as well as the transatlantic relations between the poetry of Gerardo Diego and that of the latin american poets Ruben Dario, Julio Casals, and Cesar Vallejo; the influence of Erasmus on Cervantes’ Don Quixote; semiotic theory of Juri Lotman applied to the cinema of Spain and semiotic theory of Charles Peirce applied to poetry and to the study of contemporary history and culture. I have published articles on Gerardo Diego, Cervantes, Buenaventura Durruti, Mahatma Gandhi, and am currently working on a book about the poetic architecture of Gerardo Diego.