St. Lawrence is hardly the only place to experience the work of Assistant Professor of English Pedro Ponce. His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, The Beacon Best of 2001, Double Room, Minima, Gargoyle, Alaska Quarterly Review and Quick Fiction. For Humanities, the magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities, he has written articles on jazz, photographer Edward Curtis, scholars' efforts to save Sephardic Spanish, post-World War II aesthetics, the American "voice" of honky-tonk music, scholarly work on the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, and how the Depression is taught in schools.

Ponce joined the faculty in the fall of 2003, following the completion of his Ph.D. in fiction at the University of Denver. He also earned degrees from Western Michigan University (MFA), Johns Hopkins University (MA) and Williams College (BA). His interests as a writer and scholar include narrative theory and the theory of history of different genres in fiction, and he is directing the 2005-2006 St. Lawrence Writers Series.

"At St. Lawrence, I see a serious commitment to helping students understand the connections between different disciplines," Ponce says. "The further we get into this complex Information Age, the more important it will be to discern connections that are easily overlooked and question those we take for granted. That's the essence of teaching students to teach themselves."

Ponce adds that his favorite thing about being at St. Lawrence is that "The interdisciplinary interests I see in my students are the same that I see among the faculty. For writers, anything can be a source of influence or inspiration. I really enjoy having so many colleagues in other disciplines to share ideas with."