CUNY Academic Commons

I am Professor of English at Kingsborough Community College. My degree is in Comparative Literature (CUNY Grad Center) and I teach 20th Century World Lit and European lit along with experimental remedial courses.

I am a writer and teacher with a strong background in the visual arts, voice, dance and piano. My degree is in Comp. Lit. A child of survivors, I published a critical work in Holocaust Studies, ” Words and Witness: Narrative and Aesthetic Representations of the Holocaust,” and had staged productions of two plays, one of them magical realist in style that dealt with family Holocaust stories and the notion of “the untold story.” Insofar as research, my work on questions of historical trauma and its representation had an unexpected bu rather natural T segue into black history and work on the historical figure of George Washington Williams (and his relationship to Joseph Conrad). I was privileged to work closely with John Hope Franklin, Williams’ biographer, for the last three years of his life and put together a scholarly workshop on Williams that took place at the Cardozo Law School. My interests in the arts took the form of making concerts and recordings for the neglected genius and pianist Stanley Babin. I initiated two groups, The Friends of Stanley Babin, and, more recently, The Stanley Babin Society. I have a website devoted to his biography and recorded work (not commercially available). I hold 50 manuscripts of original works by this pianist and composer.