Welcome to Our New Majors!
We’d like to extend a warm welcome to our 61 new English majors. We are happy to have you join our department and look forward to having you in class! Welcome to the best major on the Yard, #navyenglish2025.
Faculty Spotlight: LT Nichella Nal
What she's teaching now: Rhetoric and Introduction to Literature II (HE112); African American Studies (HE371)
Known across the Yard for her work with the Joy Bright Hancock Organization, her mentorship with SHAPE and as a Surface Warrior, and her fluffy white dog Alfie (aptly named for the illustrious Alfred Thayer Mahan), LT Nal has become a beloved instructor of plebe English, Shakespeare, and African American Studies. Her students’ enthusiasm is eagerly returned; she takes particular delight in seeing their unique perspectives and identities emerge in the classroom. One of her favorite works to teach? Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. Students give mixed reviews about the novel’s nonlinear plot, but it’s partly the reason she keeps the text on her syllabus: “We don’t think in chronological order,” she says. “We’re constantly thinking about the past, present, and future.” LT Nal’s advice for mids, facing pressures of the chain of command, peers, and parents, is to find and embrace their authentic selves: “The happiest people are the ones who find and stay true to their own identity.”
Faculty Spotlight: LT Tony Marchilena
What he's teaching now: Rhetoric and Introduction to Literature II (HE112)
For LT Tony Marchilena, teaching in the English Department at the Naval Academy is his Midshipman dream come true. As an English major at the Academy, Marchilena had instructors who attended St. John’s College, and knew that one day he wanted to do the same. He did, and he is now part of the Graduate Education plus Teaching (GE+T) program, which includes approximately 12 months of graduate education directly followed by a two-academic-year teaching assignment here at USNA. He even completed his graduate degree at St. John’s College, like the instructors he admired. His goals in the classroom are three-fold: create a positive experience with literature for his students, enable them for success as future officers by helping them develop communication skills, and give them a mental map of literature so they can place what they read (whether a classic or contemporary work). His passion for aviation and academia come together naturally on the Yard where he loves to share his fleet experience as an aviator and love for literature with mentees and students alike.
Faculty Research Spotlight: Prof. Alyssa Quintanilla
On the side of the route 286 in Southern Arizona is a bike. Rusted and worn away by the elements, the bike is an indication of changes in movement in the area which reflect border policy. My research on materiality in the United States-Mexico borderlands attends to the ways objects act and interact with their environments. This means considering how objects change and are changed by their surroundings. For example, the bike was buried in a creek bed and shows clear signs of interaction with its surroundings. It’s clearly a bike, but not a functional bike – you can’t really ride it anymore. Because of this, the bike shows its “objectness” or that it is a physical object regardless of the expectations that have been placed on it by its intended use. In my research I consider how objects show our expectations of the desert as well as the social, political, and economic realities of the border. Objects tell us a lot about people – how they move, what they use, what they leave behind, and where they might be going.
While objects can’t, and certainly don’t, tell us everything, understanding the bike as an object and a (former) mode of transportation tell us important things about the ways in which we discuss borders, deserts, and the people who move through them.
Where Are They Now?
Interested in what English grads have been up to since departing USNA? Learn more about Ronan Williams, class of 2020!
Ronan Williams, a Class of 2020 grad, played goalie for the water polo team and served as its team captain his junior and senior year. He was a Computer Science major his Youngster year until, being of sound mind and below-average QPR, found himself in the embrace of the English department. His favorite classes were American Literature, Creative Writing, and Film and Literature, although a day in any Sampson classroom is better than a day in Rickover.
Upon commissioning, Ronan enjoyed an extremely brief stint as a submarine officer before he found himself in Fort Meade studying to be a Public Affairs Officer. He is currently stationed in San Diego as the Assistant PAO for Naval Surface Forces, Pacific Fleet. After this first tour, he will most likely be attached to an operational command as the Deputy PAO. He applies skills learned in his major every day at work while reading reports and writing interviews and speeches. And while there isn't much room for creative writing in the Navy, he encourages every Midshipman to use the time they have to take the electives that appeal to them (there's a good chance they'll be with the English department).
English Department LREC: England and Scotland
Over spring break, English faculty CAPT (sel) Erin Meehan and Professor Jill Fitzgerald led a group of five intrepid mids on a trip to London (including a production of The Merchant of Venice at the Globe Theatre) before biking through the Scottish highlands. English major MIDN Chiara "Kat" Rappa '24 reports:
Never in a million years would I have guessed that the English Department would provide me the opportunity to explore the same London Shakespeare once knew and to bike 78 miles across the beautiful countryside of Scotland. Thanks to Professor Fitzgerald and Captain Meehan I had the experience of a lifetime watching The Merchant of Venice at The Globe, talking about leadership lessons in Shakespeare at the peak of The Great Glen Way, and reciting soliloquies at Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh. This trip has taught me that I am truly capable of anything that I set my mind to, no matter how steep a climb may be ahead of me. I never knew literature would open so many doors to learn about what kind of leader I want to be. In the wise words of Professor Fitzgerald, and Shakespeare himself, “we few, we happy few… we band of bikers.”