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Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Professor of English
St. Thomas Aquinas College 125 Route 340 Sparkill, New York 10976 Curriculum Vitae Office: Spellman 105B Phone: 398-4125 Email: rmurray@stac.edu Fall 2012 Office Hours for Fall 2012: M-Th 10:00-11:00; Th 4:00-5:00 English 410: Senior Seminar in American Realism and Naturalism Thursdays 5:30-8:15 Winter 2013 English 345: History of Comedy Spring 2013 Office Hours for Spring 2013: M-Th 10:00-11:00; Th 4:00-5:00 English 211: Critical Methods T/Th 11:25-12:50 St. Thomas Aquinas College is home to the Alpha Kappa Omicron chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honors Society. Contact Professor Rachel Golland for more information. |
 Mooselookmeguntic Lake, Maine
"It
is the living spirit of the tree, not its spirit of turpentine, with
which I sympathize, and which heals my cuts. It is as immortal as I am,
and perchance will go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me
still."
Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods. I have had the pleasure of working at St. Thomas Aquinas College since 1998. Before that, I taught at Virginia Military Institute, Princeton University, Rutgers University, Middlesex County College (NJ), and Raritan Valley Community College (NJ). Born and raised in the forgotten borough of NYC, Staten Island, I fell in love with reading at an early age, working through about five Hardy Boys novels a month. In 8th grade, my English teacher, Sister Madeline, assigned us Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and lots of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and I was hooked. At Tottenville High School, I had two really great English teachers: Carl Larsen and Hugh Rainey; they introduced me to Dickens, Hardy, and many more. In college and graduate school, I focused on American writers, including Hawthorne, Thoreau, Melville, Faulkner, Crane, Emerson, as well as others, such as Jim Harrison, Flannery O'Connor, Jack Kerouac, Nella Larsen, Jean Toomer. I am also interested in works produced elsewhere, especially the work of Dostoevsky, Gogol, Turgenev, and Rilke. Other than reading, I enjoy fly-fishing, canoeing, hiking, old films; watching The Simpsons, Arrested Development, and The Office; listening to everything from Patty Griffin, Dave Matthews, the Dead, Tom Waits, and G. Love; to 20th century music by John Tavener, Henry Cowell, and Arvo Part; to Warren Zevon, Jay Farrar, Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan; to Miles Davis, Lee Morgan, Dexter Gordon, Kenny Dorham, and John Coltrane; to Bach, Mozart, Mahler, and Medieval Polyphony. |
Magalloway River, Rangeley, Maine
