Karen Bilotti
Assistant Director Tutorial Support Services
(401) 254-3630
kbilotti@rwu.edu
Karen Bilotti started teaching in the Writing Studies, Rhetoric and Composition Department here at RWU in the fall of 1988. After a few years, in addition to classroom teaching, she began working with students as a faculty tutor. Her experience with tutoring led to her role as the Coordinator of Writing Support Services and, eventually, to her present position as Assistant Director for Tutorial Support Services in the Center for Academic Development. A significant part of both of those positions involves directing the efforts of the Writing Center—a vital, intellectually stimulating, exciting component of so many students’ academic experience. She continues to teach in the Writing Studies program and occasionally also teaches an English course. In her spare time, she is an avid movie-goer and values listening to and reading about diverse points of view. Karen earned her B.A. in English from the University of Rhode Island and her M.A. in English from the University of Connecticut.
Professor Robert Blackburn
Professor
(401) 254-3022
rblackburn@rwu.edu
Professor Robert Blackburn earned both his B.A. and M.A. degrees from Brown with additional years of grad work there as well. He was hired to teach philosophy at Roger Williams College starting in the fall of 1968... 41 years later, still here... most senior faculty member at the University. He co-authored the first ever Roger Williams Faculty Constitution in the spring of 1969. Professor Blackburn taught many different courses over these years in philosophy (mostly), writing studies, and speech. He also teaches Core 104: Literature/Philosophy as part of the Academic Living and Learning Communities. Professor Blackburn also served as Humanities Division Coordinator in the late 1970's and 1980's. Later, he was appointed Dean of the School of Humanities from when it was first established in 1990 till it was subsumed into the College of Arts and Sciences in 1996.
He is proud to be an original founder/participant in the Freshman Seminar program some years ago and now participate in its reemergence as First Year Seminar as part of the First Year Experience program. Professor Blackburn also enjoys coordinating the ongoing Socrates Cafe program with Professor Michael Wright. He is serving as the first ever faculty liaison to the Board of Trustees on the Board's Academic Affairs and Student Affairs Committee and is also a member of the American Philosophical Association and the Rhode Island Philosophical Society.
Laura Mattoon D'Amore, Ph.D.
Department of History and American Studies ldamore@rwu.edu
Laura Mattoon D'Amore received her B.A. in anthropology, and M.A. and Ph.D. in American studies at Boston University. Having grown up in Vermont, Dr. D'Amore graduated high school eager to see that thing they called diversity. After college, she journeyed to Phoenix, Arizona, where she worked at a school that catered primarily to first generation Latino/a and Native American college students. There, she learned that "American identity" was a complex and fluid phenomenon; one that she had not truly examined prior to immersing herself in a new, multicultural, multilingual region of the country. As a result of that experience, cultural identity and the myriad of ways that people choose to identify themselves became her passion, and she returned East to do graduate work in cultural and gender studies.
At RWU, Dr. D'Amore teaches Introduction to American Studies, the United States History introductory courses, Culture and Gender, Masculinities, Girl Culture, United States Labor History, and Women and the Modern World. In the classroom she is highly influenced by feminist teaching practices, and urges her students to see beyond the world with which they arrived at college. She regularly reminds students that massive social change begins with one person, in one moment, liberating the ground beneath one's feet. There is no limit to what you can accomplish, and this LLC is the perfect jumping off point into your life of meaning and personal fulfillment. In her course, Women and the Modern World, you will learn about the various ways that the concerns of women, and about women, have historically converged to shape the evolution of what we now see as the modern global society
Jason Jacobs, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of French and Italian
GHH 111
401-254-3724
jjacobs@rwu.edu
Dr. Jason Jacobs holds a B.A. in literature from New College of Florida and an M.A. and Ph.D in literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz, two public institutions devoted to alternative education, student-centered learning, and social change. His interest in gender and sexuality studies dates all the way back to undergraduate tutorials in feminist and queer theory and was further enriched by graduate coursework with some of the most influential scholars in those fields at UC Santa Cruz. After growing up in a richly diverse community in Central Florida, Dr. Jacobs spent eight years on earnestly hippy small college campuses on the coasts of Florida and Northern California, three years in a Paris neighborhood squeezed between the Latin Quarter and a vast Chinatown, and four years living in the multiethnic LGBT Mecca of San Francisco. His life experience has thus taught him to see radical difference as natural and necessary, to value it, and to thrive on it.
At RWU, Dr. Jacobs is Assistant Professor of French and Italian in the Department of Foreign Languages, where he teaches elementary and intermediate courses in Italian as well as advanced courses in French (including Advanced Conversation, Advanced Grammar and Composition, French Literary Tradition I & II, and focused courses in French literature from the medieval and early modern periods). Dr. Jacobs is very active in RWU's general education program, and has recently begun teaching a new CORE Senior Seminar on Sexual Identities. Dr. Jacobs' primary research focus is in French and Italian literature of the medieval and early modern periods, with a special interest in narrative and lyric poetry (epic, romance, and lyric). He is currently at work on research projects on the homoeroticism of Christian-Muslim relations in medieval epic, on medieval feudal politics as a product of Oedipal conflict between aristocratic fathers and sons, and on the impact of medieval love lyric on political relationships between men. When not teaching in Rhode Island, Dr. Jacobs spends his time in New York City, where he shares a home with his partner of many years, painter Darren Waterston.
Professor Autumn Quezada-Grant
Assistant Professor of History
GHH 213
(401) 254-3024
aquezada-grant@rwu.edu
Dr. Autumn Quezada-Grant recently joined the faculty at Roger Williams University last year and is originally from Louisiana. She earned her B.A. in history at Louisiana Tech University and her M.A. in history and cultural resource management from Northwestern State University in the beautiful French colonial city of Natchitoches, a city just as hard to pronounce, as it is to spell. After brief stints as a contract archaeologist and a year of teaching high school, she moved to Oxford, Mississippi to pursue a Ph.D in Latin American history from Ole Miss. Dr. Quezada-Grant’s focus of study is on 19th and 20th century Mexican History and is quite passionate about indigenous studies.
She is proud to be a participant in the First Year Academic Living/Learning Communites and believes it to be an exciting way of cooperative learning and sharing. Dr. Quezada-Grant plans to bring a speaker from the Chiapas Photography Program, a NGO located in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas to visit both the university community and the Gender, Culture, and Sex LLC to share indigenous women’s experiences with the students through cultural demonstrations and photography.
She also teaches classes in the American History survey, Colonial Latin America, Modern Latin America, Latin American Popular Religion, Slavery, and Indigenous History. When not teaching she is busy with her two daughters and husband, loves to travel, is an avid fan of Dr. Who and Rhode Island’s own Ghost Hunters and regularly escapes into 19th century murder mysteries.
Jane Ellen Scott
M.A. English: University of Pittsburgh
B.A. English: Chatham College, Pittsburgh
Ms. Scott began teaching writing and CORE courses at Roger Williams University three years ago when she moved to Newport, R.I. from Costa Mesa, Cali. She taught writing studies courses at Orange Coast College previously. Before teaching, she was employed as a consultant for American College Testing out of Iowa City. During school vacations she is a guest speaker for American Cruise Lines.
Dr. Michael Swanson
Professor
(401) 254-3230
mswanson@rwu.edu
Dr. Mike Swanson was born in Minneapolis in 1941. En route to Roger Williams University, he picked up a B. A. in music and human relations, and a M.A. and Ph. D in American studies from Case-Western Reserve University in Cleveland Ohio. He joined the faculty of Roger Williams College in 1972, and has been on the faculty ever since. For the first twenty-five years of his tenure he was the tallest member of the faculty. Now he’s third tallest - but not because he’s started to shrink!
He became interested in Academic Living/Learning communities about five years ago when he attended his first conference of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. He thought it would be a great idea to have some at Roger Williams, and he began planning for them in 2005. He was delighted when the first FYSOP program began in the fall of 2008. He teaches Core 102 in the Core 102/Core 104 Living/Learning Community now, and intends to continue to do so in next year’s program.
He also teaches courses on Urban America, Social Class, New England and the 1890s. In his spare time he sings in a very good choir, reads a lot of blogs and tells corny jokes.
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