Retiring Faculty 2012

Harry Cleaver

Economics
Cleaver, associate professor of economics, taught at the university for 35 years. A specialist in Marxist theory, he taught a popular introductory course on Marxist economics for more than 20 years. Cleaver’s recent work has focused on social struggles, particularly in rural Mexico. He has published several articles on the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico in numerous books and journals, including the Journal of International Affairs, and “Zapatistas! Documents of the New Mexican Revolution.”

Andrew Cooper

English
Cooper, associate professor of English, began teaching at the university in 1982. A specialist in British Romanticism, he taught a range of courses on the works John Keats, William of William Blake, Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Milton. During his time at the university, Cooper published dozens of articles examining the works of British romantic poets and novelists. He was the recipient of a 1992 and 1999 University Research Institute Faculty Research Award, and he was named a Harry Ransom Center Fellow in 2004.

Enrique Fierro

Spanish and Portuguese
Fierro, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese, retired after 23 years of teaching at the university. He specialized in contemporary Spanish American poetry and Spanish American women’s narrative. A native of Montevideo, Uruguay, Fierro published several collections of poems, translations and books of literary criticism. He is the recipient of several awards including the National Poetry Award in 1997, and the Best Translation Award from the Circulo de la Critica translation of William Teatral for his Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” in 1968.

Vance Holloway

Spanish and Portuguese
Holloway, professor of Spanish and Portuguese, came to the university in 1990. During his time at the university, he directed numerous dissertations on contemporary Spanish literature, and is best known for his work on postmodernist Spanish novels. He is the author of several publications, including the Spanish edition of “American University Studies Series II, Romance Languages and Literature.”

Judith Kroll

English
Kroll, associate professor of English, began teaching at the university in 1997. She published the first full-length critical study of Sylvia Plath’s poetry in her book “Chapters in a Mythology: The Poetry of Sylvia Coloauthor Plath.” Kroll is the of two collections of poetry, “Our Elephant and That Child” and “In the Temperate Zone.” She also published poems, criticism and nonfiction in several journals including Poetry, The New Yorker, Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Southwest Review, and River City.

Abraham Marcus

History
Marcus, associate professor of history, came to the university in 1980, and 15 years later he became director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He specialized in modern Middle Eastern history, the Ottoman Empire and music cultures of the Middle East. His book “The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity,” an exhaustive social history of the Syrian city of Aleppo in the 18th century, won the Albert Hourani Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association of North America in 1991. Marcus, who is proficient in Arabic, Hebrew, Ottoman Turkish, French and German, was a historical consultant for the PBS series “Timeline” from 1985 to 1990.