Lisa Nicholas received a B.A (magna cum laude) with a double major in English and Spanish from Rockford College, after being elected to Phi Beta Kappa, the national Liberal Arts honor society. Immediately after graduating from Rockford, she taught and studied at the University of Iowa as a Teaching and Research Fellow in Comparative Literature. After several years away from academic life, during which she worked as a graphic designer, she returned to graduate studies at the University of Dallas, where she earned the M.A. in English in 1998 and from which she hopes soon to receive her Ph.D. in Literature from that University's Institute of Philosophic Studies. She is currently preparing to defend her doctoral dissertation on the function of memory in Chrétien de Troyes' twelfth-century Old French romance, Perceval or The Story of the Grail.

Professor Nicholas has studied (and in some cases taught) a number of modern and ancient languages -- including French, Spanish, German, Italian, and Russian, as well as Latin, Old French, and Old Provençal -- and her literary interests include most of the literature of the Western (and other parts of the) world, particularly ancient epic, medieval romance, and the modern British novel. She has presented scholarly papers on a variety of topics at regional and national conferences. In the Fall of 2004 she joined the English department of USI, where she teaches core courses in English and Humanities, and will also be teaching Latin in the 2007-2008 academic year. Previously she had taught rhetoric, composition, literature, Spanish, and Latin at the University of Iowa, El Centro College (Dallas, TX), and the University of Dallas, including UD's Due Santi campus outside Rome, Italy. Her most thrilling achievement to date was climbing to the top of Mount Vesuvius overlooking the ruins of ancient Pompeii.

Now a resident of Newburgh, Indiana, where she shares a home with two friendly black & white cats, Prof. Nicholas grew up as an "inland Cajun" in Louisiana and then became a naturalized Texan, living for many years in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. One of her most rewarding experiences was spending her Junior Year Abroad in Madrid, Spain, where she became fluent in Spanish, tutored English to Spanish schoolchildren and government ministers, and narrowly escaped being bombed by political terrorists. Her life these days, however, is rather more sedate -- she enjoys travel, hiking, bird watching, gardening, cooking, reading murder mysteries and alternative history novels, watching movies, and having long conversations with friends and students.

Phone:  465-1224

Office:  LA3036

Email:  lanicholas1@usi.edu