Michelle DeRose, Ph.D., joined the English Department full-time in August 1999 to
use her specialty in post-colonial literature and theory to teach the world and African-American
literature courses. She is also the Coordinator of the Irish Studies minor, and an
active poet. Her publications include both original poetry and scholarly work on poetry,
and her recent work examining literature from Ireland and various Caribbean islands
resulted in the paper "The Island Metaphor in Poetry from Islands," which she presented
at the Interchanges conference in Ireland in 2015. Twice she has served as faculty
co-director for the Ireland program, teaching students while she lived in Tully Cross,
Ireland. She earned her Ph.D. with a focus on Caribbean epic poetry from the University
of Iowa, where she learned to imagine ocean waves in the undulations of the cornfields
and to love bicycling alongside those cornfields. Besides teaching, writing, and bicycling,
Michelle loves any outdoor activity that requires neither motor nor ball and spends
most of her free time hiking, canoeing, backpacking, camping, or cross-country skiing
with her husband and son.
