Assistant Professor Qiandi Liu and Associate Professor Michael Dowdy have joined the USC Department of English Language and Literature
Qiandi Liu received her PhD in Applied Linguistics from Northern Arizona University. Her MA in Foreign and Applied Linguistics was from Xi’an International Studies University (Xi’an, China). Before coming to USC, Qiandi taught English to international students at Northern Arizona University for four years. She also taught English at Chang’an University for eight years. She has striven to refine her teaching by understanding students’ needs and concerns, experimenting with new pedagogies and technologies, attending professional development seminars and workshops, as well as discussing her research findings with colleagues in regional, national, and international conferences.
Qiandi’s primary research focus is on ESL/EFL academic writing, particularly learners’ development of linguistic accuracy through a variety of feedback strategies. She is also interested in second language acquisition, L2 pedagogy, and research methodologies. Her most recent publication is a meta-analysis of methods employed by studies on corrective feedback in L2 writing over the past forty years. Currently, she is working on two manuscripts: one concerns the effectiveness of error codes in facilitating ESL students’ editing and revision; the other examines the relationship between learners’ attitudes and their improvements in accuracy resulting from error correction. Her research agenda also includes strategy use and instruction in second language writing.
Michael Dowdy’s specializations include U.S. Latina/o literature, Latino studies, poetry and poetics, multi-ethnic literatures of the U.S., and hemispheric American literature.
Michael has published two books of poetry criticism, each of which combines close reading, historicism, and theoretical intervention. Broken Souths: Latina/o Poetic Responses to Neoliberalism and Globalization and American Political Poetry in the 21st Century explore how poets, in the U.S. and Latin America, have since the tumultuous 1960s found innovative ways to engage the social and political realities of their communities, cities, and nations. As the first book to map the diverse field of U.S. Latina/o poetry, Broken Souths argues that Latino poets have been astute observers of inter-American relations, developing a poetic imaginary that is attuned to the transformations of space, place, nature, and citizenship in an era of free trade and globalization.
Michael’s essays on poetry and poetics—covering cultural ground from live hip hop to Appalachian Latino literature to “undocumentary” writing—have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Appalachian Journal, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts & Letters, College Literature, Hispanic Review, Journal of Modern Literature, MELUS, and Popular Music and Society, among other places.
Michael is currently co-editing, with the poet Claudia Rankine, a volume of contemporary poetry and criticism. Featuring selections from a range of innovative American poets, along with critical essays on their work, the volume highlights poetry’s unique capacity for social engagement, an idea that has been central to Michael’s scholarship and teaching.
Also a poet, Michael has published a chapbook, The Coriolis Effect, and his poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Crab Orchard Review, Kestrel, Luna Luna Magazine, Pembroke Magazine, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. He is currently working on a full-length collection of poems.
Before coming to the University of South Carolina, Michael taught for nine years at Hunter College of The City University of New York. During his time in New York, he was a faculty fellow at the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the CUNY Graduate Center, and a faculty fellow in the National Endowment for the Humanities seminar, “Toward a Hemispheric American Literature,” at Columbia University.
Michael grew up in the mountains of southwest Virginia, received his PhD in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is excited to return to the south.