Anthony Dotterman

Academic Tutor Anthony Dotterman, part of the General Studies Learning Community faculty since 2007, teaches Expository Writing and Research, Critical Reading and Writing and World of Ideas I and II. He is also an academic tutor for GS students, for whom his door is always open.

Currently finishing a Ph.D. this year in English and American Literature at Stony Brook University, Dotterman said his dissertation is tentatively titled “Representations of Autism in Transatlantic Modernism.” Part of his dissertation will be published in an anthology of essays on disability next year.

His favorite course to teach is Expository Writing and Research, Dotterman said, because “this class is geared toward completing a research paper, so the students will be writing and researching about what they’re interested in.”

Mr. Dotterman attends and speaks at many conferences. For instance, he will chair and present on a discussion panel, “Creating Contact Zones for General Studies Learning Communities,” due to be held March 21–24, 2013, in Boston at a Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) convention. The panel’s goal, he said, is to bring together faculty from GS programs in the region and discuss ways these programs can best serve their students, as well as correct stereotypical misconceptions. One misconception about GS programs is that “they are remedial programs, no college work, high school part two—which they’re not,” he said.

In addition, Dotterman participated in two other conferences last year with two pop culture-themed presentations. The first was Drexel University’s Great Works Symposium: The City and the Senses conference in June 2012 in Philadelphia. His panel’s theme was “Spectacles of Neuro-Diversity in the New York City Novel: Autistic Individuals and Their Environment in Motherless Brooklyn and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.”

At the South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA) convention in November in Raleigh, North Carolina, he presented the paper “A New National Bard: Whitman’s Body Politic Reimagined in Bruce Springsteen’s Magic and Wrecking Ball.”

Dotterman’s best advice for incoming General Studies Learning Community students is to take advantage of the resources available. At Adelphi, he said, students have “ready academic support” and accessibility, “getting to know your professors more.” Programs elsewhere, he added, do not offer such benefits as tutoring, which is available here.