Joseph M. Ditta, Ph.D.

Dr. Joseph M. Ditta is a poet, fiction writer, and sometime essayist who has published abundantly in the country’s journals and literary reviews. Many of these publications have back issues available online, and a search on any browser will call up numerous stories, poems, and essays by Dr. Ditta.

Dr. Ditta founded the Agnes Hyde Writing Contest at Dakota Wesleyan University in the mid-1980s, and since that time has awarded annual prizes in poetry, fiction, and essay writing to some 20-years’ worth of Dakota Wesleyan students. Dr. Ditta named the contest after Dakota Wesleyan’s first professor of creative writing, who taught here in the 1930s and 1940s.

Dr. Ditta also works closely with the student editors of our literary journal, Prairie Winds. When work begins on the journal, its student staff gather at his house and spend the day reading submissions, discussing their merits, and building the issue for that year. He says the Prairie Winds work is the most satisfying he does at Dakota Wesleyan University: “Holding the published journal in your hands is an ultimate satisfaction.”

Dr. Ditta received his bachelor’s degree from Adelphi Suffolk College in Oakdale, Long Island. At the time he attended that college it was much like Dakota Wesleyan. He did his Master of Fine Arts at the Poetry Workshop at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. While there, he had the opportunity to work closely with some of the American poets he most admired.

After earning his master’s degree, Dr. Ditta accepted an invitation to teach for several years at the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Kyushu, Japan. His son was born there; “A most memorable experience,” he says, noting that the childbirth customs in Japan are quite different from ours. His daughter was only two years old when they arrived in Japan and learned the Japanese language very rapidly. Dr. Ditta still smiles when he tells how his little girl translated from Japanese to English and back again whenever they traveled together. When he and his lovely wife JoAnn returned to the U.S. with the children, he took up his doctoral work at the University of Missouri, in Columbia.

Dr. Ditta joined the DWU faculty in 1983. In November of 1993 he was invited to read his poetry at the American-Italian Historical Association Convention at St. John’s University in Jamaica, N.Y. That same year he was named a recipient of the Artists Fellowship in Literature from the South Dakota Arts Council and spent the month of December in Italy visiting the sites in Florence and Rome.

A night not spent in Colorado by Dr. Ditta

Derek Driedger, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of English
DeDriedg@dwu.edu
(605) 995-2635.

Dr. Derek Driedger’s position at DWU completes his coverage of the upper-central Great Plains as he has now lived in Manitoba, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska. He grew up outside the small farming community of Oakville, Manitoba, Canada. His parents facilitated his fondness for reading by setting aside time for books every day. As a young student, Dr. Driedger would win by several hours whenever Oakville School held a reading contest.

Dr. Driedger enrolled in Communications with a journalism emphasis at the University of North Dakota. He added English as a second major when he realized he wanted to study literature beyond the general education requirements. Since he attended high school in Canada he had not yet received exposure to such canonical novels as The Scarlet Letter, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Great Gatsby. A Realism and Naturalism course began to fill his reading gap, introducing him to some of his favorite American novelists.

Dr. Driedger stayed at UND to obtain a Master’s degree in English. He taught in the college classroom for the first time, only four years older than his freshman students. At this time he began to think about how writing acts as a means of self-identification, and the necessary steps students must undertake during the writing process. He moved on to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to pursue his doctorate because he wrote his thesis on Willa Cather and he still wanted to read more books.

Dr. Driedger expanded his interests in literature and composition at UNL. He taught courses in Women’s literature, the British novel, American literature, several composition courses, and he tutored in the UNL Writing Assistance Center. His teaching confidence grew as he received a teaching award during each of his last three years at UNL. He drew from his journalism background for his dissertation as he covered America’s journalism history from 1835 to the 1930s. He simultaneously concentrated on ten American novelists who worked as journalists during the late-nineteenth and/or early-twentieth century.

Dr. Driedger can combine journalism and literature once again as an Assistant Professor of English at DWU. He teaches journalism, English, and serves as the faculty supervisor for the student newspaper, the Phreno Cosmian. He lists F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night and Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop as the novels that have engaged him the most. Future projects include further research into newspaper sensationalism’s connection to American fiction and Sherwood Anderson’s country newspaper writing.

Dr. Driedger’s recent and forthcoming publications appear in The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, The Encyclopedia of American Literature, JNT: The Journal of Narrative Theory, and Teaching the Works of Willa Cather. Anyone interested in his dissertation can access it at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishdiss/5

Vince Redder, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English and Languages
Chair of the English Department
viredder@dwu.edu
(605) 995-2631

A Texan by birth, Dr. Vince Redder grew up as the eldest of seven brothers. Although his parents were extremely busy, they instilled in him and his brothers a love of reading and a curiosity about the world. This has been the foundation of Dr. Redder’s several careers and the biggest advantage he brings to his students at Dakota Wesleyan University.

Dr. Redder graduated from the University of Dallas with a bachelor’s degree in German and a liberal arts education that would benefit him for the rest of his life. He was in the seminary studying for the priesthood, and, after finishing in Dallas, he was sent by his bishop to Rome where he spent the next four years studying theology. The Gregorian University where he studied had five official languages, all of which each student was expected to know. He learned quickly the importance of languages in a European education: besides the five official languages, seminarians were expected to have at least a passing knowledge of the ancient biblical languages as well. He found he was good at learning languages, and picked up a few extra ones, like Hieroglyphics, just for fun.

Dr. Redder left the priesthood and went back to school to earn his teaching certification. When the chair of the education department told him he would never teach history in Texas unless he was a coach, he settled on English as a poor second choice. To his surprise, he found that he liked literature and looked forward to teaching it. The economy at the time, however, did not allow room for one more English teacher, so Dr. Redder found a position as a probation officer. He spent eight years supervising offenders and then writing pre-sentence investigations for the district court judges. He also served as a trainer for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, training new officers all over the state.

Despite his blossoming criminal justice career, Dr. Redder decided to go back to school and work on his master’s degree at Midwestern State University. When he completed his master’s degree, he and his patient family moved to South Carolina, where he worked on his Ph.D. When the time came to choose a specialty, there was only one choice—he remembered Rome and the splendor of the Renaissance that surrounded him daily as a seminarian, and decided to major in Renaissance literature.

After graduation from the University of South Carolina, Dr. Redder began his fourth career, this time as a professor. He passed up a better paying job offer to teach at Dakota Wesleyan University because he felt at home both at the university and in Mitchell. He also felt he could make a positive impact on the students at DWU. The impact is important, because there is still a bit of the priest and probation officer in him. At Dakota Wesleyan, he teaches German and Italian besides most of the British literature courses. He is also open to teaching Old English, but so far no one has taken him up on it.

Dr. Redder has been published in the Proceedings of the 11th Annual North Central Plains Pre-1750 British Literature Conference. His current project is a study of the poet Ben Jonson’s Catholic years. He is also attempting to learn Russian in his spare time. When he is not occupied with academic matters, Dr. Redder likes to tinker with his collection of pocket watches and spend time with his wife and children.

The reliques and ragges of popish superstition by Dr. Redder (111k pdf)

Gretchen Rich
Assistant Professor of English
grrich@dwu.edu
(605) 995-2640

As a new teacher at Dakota Wesleyan, Gretchen Rich brings 28 years of teaching experience to the classroom—which makes her one of the older “new teachers” on campus. Having taught both in high school and at the college level, most recently at Si Tanka University at Huron, she has a wealth of experience to offer.

Rich’s undergraduate degree from Yankton College centered around communications—with a major in speech and theater and a minor in English. She earned a graduate degree from the University of South Dakota in American literature. As a graduate student she studied James Fennimore Cooper’s, “The Leatherstocking Tales.”

Working part time in DWU’s Student Support Services means she’s with students both inside and outside of classroom. She is also working toward her advanced degree in education, which means she is busy writing as well as reading papers. Her office is Smith Hall 505 where she lives most days. She also works in the McGovern Library Writing Center from 7 to 9 p.m. on Mondays and from 1 to 3 p.m. on Thursdays.

Research for Rich is relatively new. Her major interests in the past have been on specific authors—Cooper as a M.A. student and Virginia Woolf in the doctoral program—but her main interest overall has been teaching. Since “teaching is all,” she is working on her Ed. D. in adult and higher education beginning with a class in adult learning theory Wednesdays at Vermillion. So if you see her rushing out of the building at noonish on Wednesdays, don’t worry. She’ll be back later that evening and in class on Thursday morning!