MLS, Pratt Institute
BA, CUNY
Get in Touch
Alfond Hall 445 | wgalgan@sjcme.edu | 207-893-7930
Dr. Galgan earned her Ph.D. in English from CUNY Graduate Center in June 2009. She has a Master’s in Library Science from Pratt Institute (May 2000), and her B.A. in English is from the CUNY Baccalaureate Program (September 1997).
Prior to joining Saint Joseph’s College, Dr. Galgan was a faculty member at St. Francis College in Brooklyn (NY). She started there as an adjunct in Philosophy in 2003, became an adjunct in English in 2004, and joined the English Department full-time in September 2007. She was granted tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in January 2015. Dr. Galgan also served as Chair of St. Francis’s English Department from July 2014 to her departure in August 2018. From September 2013 through August 2017, she was Director or C0-Director of the Women’s Center/Women’s Studies Minor, and was the Founding Director of the Women’s Poetry Initiative at St. Francis from March 2013 to August 2018.
Dr. Galgan received her doctorate from CUNY Graduate Center in New York; her dissertation, She’s Poetry in Motion, focuses on metaphors of movement in the work of some contemporary American women poets. In addition to poetry, Dr. Galgan’s areas of academic interest include war literature, women’s and gender studies, pop culture, and genre literature. She teaches both composition and literature courses at Saint Joseph’s College.
In 2015, Dr. Galgan was selected by the New York Council for the Humanities (now Humanities NY) as a member of its first cohort of Public Scholars. She also served as Project Scholar for the Council’s Adult Reading and Discussion Series “Our World Remade: World War I.”
Dr. Galgan was named the 2015 Educator of Excellence for Colleges by the New York State English Council. When she announced that she was leaving New York to join the faculty at Saint Joseph’s College in 2018, then-Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams awarded Dr. Galgan a “Citation for Dedication to the Field of Education” in recognition of “all she has done to touch and improve the lives of many” in Brooklyn.
Dr. Galgan is an award-winning poet whose work has appeared in both anthologies and literary journals, and an academic author writing on subjects as diverse as detective stories, Alicia Ostriker’s poetry, and Dale Evans. She is an Advisory Editor for the journal ASEBL, reviews audiobooks for Library Journal, and is the Founding Editor of Assisi: An Online Journal of Arts & Letters.
Dr. Galgan enjoys photography, watching movies, and working on digital humanities projects.
Affiliations
Member, Adobe Creative Educators Program (since 2020)
Member, AAUP (since 2020)
Member, Quality Matters Instructional Designers Association (since 2020)
Member, Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance (since 2019)
Member, Quality Matters (since 2016)
Member (Faculty), Sigma Tau Delta: International Honor Society (since 2015)
Member, VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts (since 2015)
Member, Association of Writers & Writing Programs (since 2012)
Member, American Studies Association (since 2014)
Member, Long Island Philosophical Society (since 2009)
Member, Literature/Film Association (since 2009)
Member, National Council of Teachers of English (since 2008)
Member, AAUW (since 2008)
Member, National Women’s Studies Association (since 2006)
Member, Popular Culture Association (since 2006)
Member, American Culture Association (since 2006)
Member, Association of Literary Scholars, Critics and Writers (since 2004)
Member, NeMLA (since 2003)
Member, MLA (since 2001)
Member, Beta Phi Mu, International Library Honor Society (since 2001)
Member, American Library Association (since 1998)
Publications
“False Dawn,” Goose River Anthology, edited by Deborah J. Benner, Goose River Press, October 2021
Review of This Far by Kathleen O’Toole, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, edited by Mary Ann B. Miller, April 2021
“Here, in the gloaming. . .,” Literary Veganism, edited by Gregory F. Tague, August 2020 with re-publication in ASEBL, January 2021 (nominated for a Pushcart Prize)
“‘Rejoice, we have triumphed’: Ostriker’s Poetics of Motion,” Essays on Alicia Ostriker: The Online Companion to Everywoman Her Own Theology: On the Poetry of Alicia Suskin Ostriker, edited by Martha Nell Smith and Julie R. Enszer, University of Michigan Press, 2018
Review of Les Fauves by Barbara Crooker, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, edited by Mary Ann B. Miller, 2018
“Nondum Cognita,” The Moon anthology, edited by Whitney Scott. TallGrass Writers Guild/Outrider Press, 2017
“Penelope,” Grabbing the Apple: An Anthology of New York Women Poets, edited by Terri Muuss and M.J. Tenerelli. Albuquerque: JB Stillwater Publishing Company, 2016
“1968,” “Tiger Cages,” “Reading Elizabeth Bishop,” “To Endure Life,” “Slower Than Before” and “Prayer For My Sister,” Forge, Spring 2014
“‘Why doesn’t make any difference. It’s time you moved on faith.’: Detection, Redemption and Saving Grace,” Christianity and the Detective Story, edited by Walter Raubicheck and Anya Morland. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013
“Burning Angels: March 25, 1911,” Villanelles, edited by Annie Finch and Marie-Elizabeth Mali, New York and London: Everyman’s Library, January 2012 (UK) and April 2012 (USA)
Innovative Pedagogical Methods
Dr. Galgan uses creative projects (such as writing short stories, creating visual artworks, designing games) within her literature courses to help her students better understand, and connect to, the works they are studying. In some courses, she uses design thinking as a way for students to co-create parts of the course. She also finds that a modified “blank syllabus” technique can be an effective way to improve student learning by providing them a way to participate in course design.