Assistant Professor
Department of English
Office - Bellarmine G07
Phone: (610) 660-1887
Email: fusco@sju.edu
Education
B.A., University of Pennsylvania, 1973
M.A., University of Pennsylvania, 1974
M.A., University of Mississippi, 1982
Ph.D., Duke University, 1990.
Courses Taught
English 1011 (The Craft of Language)
English 1021 (Texts and Contexts)
English 1071 (Rhetoric in Modern Practice)
English 1091 (Major American Writers)
American literature courses at the 2400 and 2700 level
English 2661 (The Essay)
English 2911 (Literary Forms and Styles)
English 2931 (Poetry Seminar)
English 2991 (coordinator for internships)
Publications
"Henry James's "Decidedly Primitive Stage of Reflection" [conference paper] NEMLA (April 1998)
Maupassant and the American Short Story: The Influence of Form at the Turn of the Century (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994)
Fin de millénaire: Poe's Legacy for the Detective Story (Baltimore: Poe Society, 1993)
"Entrapment, Flight and Death: A Recurring Motif in Dickens with Plot and Interpretive Consequences for Edwin Drood," Essays in Arts and Sciences 20 (1991): 68-84
"On Primitivism in The Call of the Wild," American Literary Realism 20 (1987): 76-80
General Fields of Professional Interest
nineteenth-century American literaturenarrative forms of the short story
Pedagogical style
I attempt to balance lectures, discussion (using Socratic methods), student presentations, and essay assignments to inspire students to become self-reliant defenders of their insights and opinions about a text. In freshmen courses, I stress the benefits of working through multiple drafts to hone an argument. In upper-division classes, I prefer a seminar format that permits students to generate some of the topics treated in classroom discussion. Or, to quote Indiana Jones, "I don't know. I'm just making this up as I go along."
Other information
Member MLA, NEMLA, AAUP; faculty advisor for The Crimson
and Gray [Saint Joseph's student literary magazine].