Middlebury

Alumni College Faculty

 

Get to know your professor! Read these bios to learn more about the world-class faculty members who will be sharing their knowledge and enthusiasm with you at Alumni College 2013.
  Russell Leng graduated with the Middlebury Class of 1960, and was a political science faculty member for 40 years. Leng has taught at Alumni College on several occasions, and was its director for many years. He continues to teach an annual spring seminar at Middlebury. When not engaged in trying to improve his mediocre golf game, he pursues his research on interstate conflict and negotiation. Leng also currently serves on the Middlebury College Board of Trustees. He and his wife, Cilla, now divide their time between Middlebury and Cape Cod.
Anne Knowles is professor and chair of Middlebury's geography department. She teaches courses on historical geography, cultural geography, and the geographies of the Holocaust, among others. After earning her MSc and PhD from University of Wisconsin-Madison, she first taught, mostly in Welsh, at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, then at Wellesley College and George Washington University before coming to Middlebury in 2002. Her most recent books are Mastering Iron: The Struggle to Modernize an American Industry, 1800-1868 (forthcoming from University of Chicago Press) and a book of case studies, Geographies of the Holocaust (Indiana University Press), co-edited with Tim Cole and Alberto Giordano. In 2012, she received a Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award for her use of digital mapping technology to illuminate complex historical problems. In her spare time, Anne loves to travel, read, and draw.
  Daniel Brayton is an associate professor in the Department of English and American Literatures and the Program in Environmental Studies. He earned his doctorate from Cornell University in 2001. An avid sailor, he has taught for SEA Semester—on the Atlantic, Pacific, and Caribbean—as well as for the Williams-Mystic Program in Maritime Studies. At Middlebury, he teaches courses on American nature writing, maritime literature, New England fiction, Shakespeare, and world literature. His book, Shakespeare's Ocean: An Ecocritical Exploration, published in 2012 by the University of Virginia Press, won the 2012 Northeast Modern Language Association Book Prize.
Patricia Manley is professor of geology at Middlebury College, where she teaches courses in introductory geology, marine geology, geophysics, and sedimentary geology. She received her doctorate at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in 1989. She has taught at Middlebury College since 1989 and served as department chair from 1995–1999 and 2001–2005. In 2004, she received the American Women Geosciences Outstanding Educator Award and in 2005 was inducted into the Vermont Academy of Science and Engineering. From 2006-2010, she was the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Research at Middlebury College. Her research is focused on Holocene paleoclimate change as recorded in marine and lake sediments. She has been on numerous research cruises to the North Atlantic, Antarctica and on Lake Champlain where she has mentored many undergraduate students doing research in these locations.
Thomas Manley is a visiting assistant professor of geology at Middlebury College. He teaches courses in oceanography, coastal processes, and multi-dimensional visualization of data. He received his doctorate from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in 1981. He has studied the polar oceans and has been on numerous ice-based camps in the Arctic. He was the U.S. representative for quality control of the Russian-US oceanographic data base for the Arctic Ocean and Marginal Seas and was the Occupant of the Commander Naval Oceanography Command Sponsored Chair at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is a physical oceanographer and limnologist who has extensively studied the hydrodynamics of Lake Champlain utilizing taut-line moorings and lagrangian floats. He was the Executive Director of the Lake Champlain Research Consortium (1997 – 2005) and is one of the captains of Middlebury College’s research vessel. He also was the program manager who oversaw the building of the R/V Folger.
Together the Manleys have co-edited two special monographs on Lake Champlain: an American Geophysical Union Water Re­sources Series monograph entitled Lake Champlain: Research and Progress Towards Management (1999) and Lake Champlain in Transition: Partnerships in Progress, Kluwer Academic (2004). The pair has done 30 peer reviewed papers, 6 technical reports, and over 100 presentations on Lake Champlain. They have overseen 60 undergraduate senior theses and produced a new bathymetric map for Lake Champlain in 2005.
  Jason Mittell is associate professor of American studies and film & media culture. He has taught at Middlebury since 2002. His teaching and research interests include American television, digital media, videogames, media education, and animation. He is the author of the books Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture (Routledge), Television and American Culture (Oxford University Press), and Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (New York University Press). He also co-edited How to Watch Television (NYU Press) and writes the blog Just TV.