Associate Professor, Humanities

Year Started

2004

Education

• Ph.D. English Literature NYU
• MA English Literature NYU
• AB English and French Literature Princeton University

Teaching Interests

• Literature (Generalist) and Composition

Research Interests

• Henry James
• Psychoanalytic Theory
• Maritime Literature
• Pedagogy and Learning Models
• Outcomes Assessment

Biography

Dr. Melanie Ross has been teaching English at the USMMA for more than eight years. Previously, she held full-time teaching positions at both Parsons, the New School for Design and the Devry Institute of Technology, Long Island City. She has published articles on both Shakespeare and Henry James and co-edited, with Greg Zacharias, Tracing Henry James (2008). She is currently writing a manuscript on James, George Du Maurier and "the Oral" and is beginning work on a project entitled "A Maritime Henry James?". lnspired by James Zull's The Art of Changing the Brain, she is increasingly interested in studying the learning process itself and in theorizing it with students as it is (hopefully) happening. She sees composition classes as offering a similar opportunity to both analyze and practice the writing process. Dr. Ross is presently Chair of the campus Outcomes Assessment Committee and wants to help spread word that outcomes assessment is a "scholarly" endeavor, in the words of Barbara Walvoord, that focuses on how students learn and how to improve that learning.